One can certainly look at the New Orleans Pelicans’ “sweeping” exit from the 2015 NBA Playoffs and conclude that head coach Monty Williams is not likely to lead this franchise to greater riches. However, there’s a difference between “not likely” and “certain,” and it’s this fundamental point which sits at the heart of the matter for basketball analysts.
The New Orleans coaching situation does merit a discussion, but it’s a discussion which needs to be handled with care. A basic way of cutting through the clutter on “The Monty Williams Debate” is to advance this particular notion: One can be skeptical of Williams’s abilities yet also acknowledge that he should be given a chance to work with this team next season. Such is the art of doing what grown-up human beings always have to do: handle competing tension points and hold them together in a complicated world.
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It should not be lost on anyone that while plenty of bloggers on #NBATwitter are thoroughly unimpressed and would like to see Williams get a pink slip from the Pelicans, this past week has seen the ouster of Scott Brooks in Oklahoma City. It’s worth it to touch on the subject of Brooks as a way of putting Monty Williams’s career in perspective.
Brooks, in the eyes of many, should not have been fired this year… but last year. While injuries to core players certainly cut against him in Oklahoma City, the Thunder’s endgame execution and lineup combinations got in the way of their aspirations… enough to make a defining difference. Brooks should not have been held responsible for this past season, one in which Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka were both unavailable for the stretch run, but in a much larger context, firing him made sense.
This next reason formed the fairest and most reasonable basis for terminating Brooks: He had been given a lot of time to get OKC to the mountaintop. To put the matter even more plainly: Brooks was given a reasonable chance to succeed. No one can legitimately claim that Brooks wasn’t allowed to make several runs at the brass ring. If anything, the Thunder stuck with him too long; “premature” is the last word you’d use to refer to the firing of Brooks this past week.
This enables us to pivot back to the Williams situation in The Big Easy.
Firing Williams now would be akin to firing Brooks after the 2009-2010 Oklahoma City season, when the Thunder won 50 games and were bounced in the first round of the playoffs. The Thunder were just beginning to find out how good they were. Young stars were on the cusp of reaching a much higher level of efficiency. The work of surrounding a hugely talented nucleus with the right complementary parts was taking root.
As any student of the NBA should know, this is a league in which young teams generally don’t succeed without first absorbing a harsh playoff lesson. It is the law of the jungle: One year’s bitter playoff defeat leads to next year’s advancement past that same playoff round.
No one should have expected the New Orleans Pelicans to have beaten the Golden State Warriors; few should have expected the Pels to take this series six games, though if you were really sold on the ability of Anthony Davis to play at a high level, a “Warriors in six” pick comes across as perfectly reasonable. Moreover, had the Pelicans not gacked away Game 3, a six-game series very easily could have unfolded.
It is easy to look at this sweep for Golden State and say that based on the way Davis played — and how seldom he received the ball in crunch time in Game 3 — Williams obviously fell short in his handling of crucial situations. Moreover, Williams’s repeated overuse of Omer Asik, who never had a place on the floor in this series due to Golden State’s quickness and agility at every position, also represents an indictment of Williams’s chess moves. He was checkmated in the fourth quarter of Game 3, and that kind of undressing lends emotional weight to the idea that a coach should be fired. The inclination is understandable, given that a lot of neutral parties don’t want Anthony Davis’s immense potential to be squandered.
However, emotionally wanting to fire a coach and intellectually needing to fire a coach are two different things. An interested neutral party (there are many of them) might very well be accurate in saying that Williams will never turn the corner in New Orleans with the Pelicans. However, one of the essential and most beautiful aspects of elite athletic competition is found in the drama of seeing players and coaches earn the chance to prove whether they belong in the arena or not.
Firing shouldn’t occur because one thinks a coach won’t succeed; firings should occur because management knows its coach isn’t going to work out. This process ran its course in Oklahoma City. It has not done the same in New Orleans.
Very simply, Williams deserves the chance to prove if he’s up to the task of coaching Anthony Davis and leading the Pelicans into the future with their burgeoning superstar, who was magnificent against Golden State despite the four-game sweep.
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There’s one more thing to be said about this topic:
Let’s entertain the possibility that the Chicago Bulls will lose in five quick games to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the upcoming second round. (Probable? That’s up for debate. Possible? Absolutely.) Tom Thibodeau’s stay in Chicago might come to an end. If that one possibility opens up, it could be argued that the Pelicans should play hardball and spring for Thibs, casting aside the notion that Williams should get a chance to develop Davis and his supporting cast in the 2015-2016 campaign.
That idea is, one supposes, allowable. After all, Pat Riley sacked Stan Van Gundy and then won the 2006 NBA title. Was Riley fair in how he handled Stan Van The Man? No, sir. It was a dirty, low-down move, cutthroat in the extreme.
Did Riles’s move pay off, though? In a bottom-line business, it’s very hard to argue against championships… even if one has to be a jerk in the process of attaining them. The people in this profession are paid to pursue and claim trophies. Riley did in 2006, while Stan Van is starting over in Detroit. Those who are sold on the idea of firing Williams now are fervent believers in being cutthroat more than giving people chances to succeed. That’s not the way I would personally work, but it’s certainly understandable, and moreover, when such a move does produce a championship, it’s impossible to deny that it was — in retrospect — the right call.
There’s just one problem with seeking the hardball cutthroat route in situations such as this one: If your move fails, you become a loser AND a jerk, and who wants that double-whammy over one’s head for the rest of one’s professional existence as a general manager or team owner?
Just give Monty Williams this next season, critics. See what he does now that he and Anthony Davis have tasted the playoffs together. See how Williams responds to the realization that he is the custodian of an organization with much greater expectations and standards compared to 12 months ago.
New Orleans was one of seven NBA teams that did improve by at least 10 games this past regular season. This doesn’t seem like the time to sack a coach… even if Anthony Davis didn’t get enough crunch-time touches or Omer Asik played way too many minutes against Golden State.
If we’re still asking these basic kinds of questions in April of 2016, Williams should go, and no one would feel the need to insist that Williams must stay on for another season. For now, though, let’s give a man an honest chance to develop a team with a luminous superstar presence.
It shouldn’t cost a pro sports franchise and its leaders too much to give a coach one more year with a team that will still have a chance to be great when the 2015-2016 season concludes. Being fair and decent still ought to count for something, even in a ruthless billion-dollar industry.
