As everyone in the free world knows by now, Dan Gilbert wants to hire Tom Izzo to be the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He wants Izzo so badly that he’s willing to pay him $30M over 5 years and even give him a private jet to use whenever he wants.
So what does Mesa think about all of this?
Well, I was pretty tempted to say that only one coach in the history of basketball has won both a NCAA championship and a NBA championship (Larry Brown) and leave it at that, but if Gilbert wants to throw around $30M does steal the head coach of his alma mater than I guess I should devote more than one sentence to his pursuits.
I’ve said before that nobody in the Mesa family truly watches, or cares, about college basketball or college sports in general. We weren’t raised in an Ohio State family, and I went to college at a school that doesn’t even have a football team. So I can’t comment in depth on Izzo’s coaching abilities. I do know that “amateur” and professional sports are totally different ball games. Coaches make the most money in college and therefore have the most power; the exact opposite is true in the pros. I have to imagine that a lifelong college coach would have a very difficult time adjusting to that very important fact.
I also know that Izzo has been to the Final Four six times … and only won once.
This is part of what makes Gilbert’s desire to hire him more than a little bit odd. Based on his stream of comments after the end of the season, Gilbert seems to be stuck on the notion that the postseason is different from the regular season, and you somehow need to plan for that. We’ve seen Mark Cuban do this to a certain extent by emphasizing so-called clutch stats in Dallas - and we all know how many championships the Mavs have won since he got there. One of the alleged reasons the Cavs made the deal for Antawn Jamison was that he had produced well in the playoffs - and he clearly shit the bed against Boston. In other words, I’m not entirely sure that it’s possible to plan for the postseason. It’s also flat out wrong to act as if the regular season doesn’t matter, as evidenced by the fact that no #4 seed had even made it to the conference finals before Boston did so this year.
In the case of the Cavs in these playoffs, you could also argue that Shaq had a negative adjusted +/- all season … and, guess what, he also had a negative adjusted +/- in the playoffs. On the flip side, how many times did LeBron have a game like he did in game 5 in the regular season or in the playoffs in his whole entire career?
My point is that you can try to predict everything, but you can’t. Especially in the best of 7 format, which is an inherently small sample size.
All of that aside, even if we were to trust in the man with the slicked back hair (which seems like an oxymoron doesn’t it?) and say that yes, you can plan for the postseason above all else, I don’t see how a coach who has gone 1/6 in the Final Four addresses Gilbert’s hypothesis.
The idea of hiring Izzo then has to be about something else. Yes, Izzo is a good defensive coach (or at least that’s the national perception), but is he really a better defensive coach than, say, Jeff Van Gundy, particularly since Izzo has no NBA coaching experience? That’s a pretty hard argument to make. Further more then, what makes Izzo worth $30M? Again, he has no head coaching experience. If Izzo hand delivers a LeBron James 6-year deal than yes, he is worth $30M, but unless Gilbert knows something we don’t - and I know that’s possible - LBJ’s signature isn’t under Izzo’s control. Izzo doesn’t even have a particularly great track record developing pros. Since 2000, 11 Michigan State players have been drafted and only two - Zach Randolph and Shannon Brown - are still having any sort of meaningful impact.
All of this adds up to very few reasons to hire Izzo, especially at a very high price. But Dan Gilbert isn’t stupid. We have to at least assume that, given the success of Quicken Loans, the Cavaliers over the past 5 years, and the passage of the casino law in 2009. So this decision must be fueled by something - the question is whether or not it’s fueled by the right thing. In truth, I have to guess that it isn’t. I have to guess that it’s being fueled by the desire to make a splash. To do something loud. To hire a “big name.” And Izzo is probably Gilbert’s best shot at doing that, at least right now, before he has a commitment from James. In a way, the pursuit of Izzo may be about Gilbert wanting to prove to James that he has the power, the money, and the drive to get seemingly impossible things accomplished - without Danny Ferry. This, after all, is the first move of the Dan Gilbert as Jerry Jones era, if we’re to believe everything we’ve read and what all of the signs are pointing to. Gilbert is now in control. It’s time for him to prove to James and his “team,” as well as all of Cleveland and the rest of the NBA world, that he can make shit happen.
But is Izzo a better NBA coach than a current assistant like Brian Shaw, or a former head coach like Van Gundy? Nobody knows. And $30M is a lot to pay to figure that out.
