The Charlotte Bobcats began their coaching search seemingly by rolling a snowball down a hill and now it’s turned in to an avalanche. The Bobcats have begun Michael Jordan’s version of Oprah’s Favorite Things. You get an interview! You get an interview! You get an interview! EVERYONE GETS AN INTERVIEWWWWWWW!
ESPN reports Magic Assistant Head Coach and former Knicks Center Patrick Ewing will interview for the Bobcats head coaching job but he’s definitely not the only one.
“Golden State assistant Mike Malone and former Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan are also candidates, sources say. Stephen Silas, a current Bobcats assistant and the son of recently fired coach Paul Silas, will also interview for the job, the sources said. Rod Higgins, the club’s president of basketball operations, and Rich Cho, the general manager, were in California to meet with Malone Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the sources added. Next week in Charlotte, said the sources, the Bobcats will interview two fairly unknown assistant coaches, Mike Dunlap of St. John’s University, and Nate Tibbetts, an assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Before assisting Steve Lavin at St. John’s, the 53-year-old Dunlap worked at Arizona and Oregon. He also spent two years as an assistant on George Karl’s staff in Denver.”
That’s five names in addition to Ewing, but the fun doesn’t end there as the report also says the ‘Cats will interview Pacers’ Assistant Head Coach Brian Shaw and are also rumored in Jerry Sloan. Now we’re up to eight! One more candidate and we’ve got enough to play Hollywood Squares.
Jokes aside, the best thing the Bobcats can do is is avoid trying to get the big name coach who is going to get frustrated with a long rebuidling process and the franchise having a reluctance to spend money to improve their team. Specifically, asking Jerry Sloan to coach this team is a terrible idea. Sloan is the type of guy to take a team from good to great. He could even take a team with a lot of talent and promise and mold it into something special like he did with the post Malone-Stockton Jazz. The other reason coaches like Sloan and Nate McMillan don’t want any part of that job is expectations will be higher than they should be from the get go with experienced names like those two. A guy like Malone, Shaw or Stephen Silas would be best suited for the job because they’re young enough to be patient with a rebuilding effort and the expectations won’t be astronomical. Of course if the Bobcats get Anthony Davis that kind of changes everything.
