There's an important lesson to be learned from the fact that a pair of failed NBA coaches are coaching two of the NCAA's most highly regarded teams: Rick Pitino at Louisville and John Calipari at Memphis.
The lesson is simply this: It's much more difficult to be a successful coach in the NBA than to succeed in the college ranks. And the respective pro careers of both Pitino and Calipari are primary examples of why this is so.
After serving his apprenticeship under Hubie Brown and having a short but successful run at Providence, Pitino actually had a fairly good two seasons as head coach of the Knicks. From 1987-89, Pitino's Knicks went 90-74, with a first-place finish in the Atlantic Division in his last season in New York. Despite these positive results, Pitino's arrogant personality and high-tempo game plan alienated so many of his players that the mix was never a good one.
It was Pitino's idea to employ full-pressure defenses for 48 minutes, a strategy that was ultimately doomed to failure for the following reasons:
A player who'd been averaging let's say 38 minutes a game got only about 30 in Pitino's scheme.
In fact, Fitch went so far as to use halftime intermissions to show game tapes of the recently concluded first half of action. But, more often than not, the dimmed lights made too many players drowsy and led to a notable lack of energetic play when the game resumed.
Of course, Larry Brown was the only coach to win both NCAA and NBA championships — with Kansas in 1988 and the Pistons in 2004.
Brown's advantages include his learning the college game in four full seasons under Dean Smith at North Carolina, playing in the ABA for five years, then coaching in the ABA for four seasons and the NBA for three seasons before signing on to lead the UCLA Bruins. Moreover, before Brown wound up at Kansas, he had also coached the Nets for another two years.
Such a varied and inclusive resume is incredibly unique — which is one reason why Brown's dual championships will never be duplicated.
Not that coaching in today's collegiate competition is a piece of cake. The refs are part-timers and are uniformly inept. The players frequently make sloppy and/or boneheaded plays. And the one chore that college coaches must suffer that their brethren in the pros can avoid is recruiting.
Recruiting blue-chip schoolboys is a highly competitive activity. As a result, it usually means either outright lying to the youngster — "You'll be a starter as a freshman." — or having the hoopling's projected fantasies overwhelm whatever truths he might be told and whatever realities he might face.
Even worse are the immoral practices that many recruiters have employed.
Pity the poor college coach — especially the honest ones — whose best player will frequently play one season before declaring for the NBA draft. This means another superstar must be successfully recruited every year.
And meanwhile, the players who remain in school for multiple seasons are usually super-talents with serious off- and/or on-court problems. Or else they're little more than role players.
But Kevin Loughery quixotically summed up the joys, miseries and mysteries of coaching at any level when he said this: "Coaching is better than working for a living. And coaching is also better than not working at all."
