Ranking the Best Head Coach Replacements After Indiana Pacers Let Frank Vogel Go
It's a whole lot easier to list the teams that should be clamoring to hire recently ousted Indiana Pacers head coach Frank Vogel than it is to come up with superior replacements for his vacated position.
And that says a lot about Vogel's chops.
Team president Larry Bird declined to renew Vogel's contract anyway, per a team release: "I want to thank Frank for his time in Indiana," said Bird. "We know he'll be successful down the road and end up getting a job, but for us, I just feel it's time to move in a different direction."
Pushing the second-seeded Toronto Raptors to a seventh game and coaching 61 postseason contests (31 wins) in six years weren't enough. Fielding a consistently terrific defense wasn't enough. Gamely embracing the transition from the lumbering past to the uptempo future (and then, when pace and space didn't work, switching back on the fly) wasn't enough.
Bird determined the Pacers needed a change. Given Vogel's success and credentials, nobody—not even Bird—can be certain that change will constitute an improvement.
We'll make our best guesses at which candidates could help the Pacers get better.
957. A Collegian
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If the other 956 options don't work out, only then should Indy consider a college coach.
Whether it's Kevin Ollie or Shaka Smart or some as yet unnamed candidate, Bird should make this approach a last resort.
The success rate is just so low.
For every smooth Brad Stevens transition, there's a bumpier one: Fred Hoiberg this season, and Mike Montgomery, John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Tim Floyd, et al. if we go back a few years.
The payoff for landing the next Stevens would be immense, but the odds of snagging the next great head coach from a college world where the game is so different and the challenges of team management are completely distinct aren't high enough to justify the gamble.
Indiana just finished a seven-game playoff series against a high seed following a transitional season with its best player logging his first full year after a broken leg. And that wasn't enough success to keep the former coach employed.
Are we really supposed to believe Bird and the Pacers are interested in the learning curve necessary for a college coach?
Don't do this. Just don't.
5. Brian Shaw
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It wasn't so long ago that Brian Shaw ranked among the NBA's hottest assistant coaches.
Seemingly ticketed for success and mentioned as a potentially inspired hire whenever a vacancy opened up, the former Pacers assistant was next in line for years.
But when Shaw finally got a top gig with the Denver Nuggets, he proved woefully unfit. Undone by a .397 winning percentage and a parade of bewildering reports about his failure to connect with his players—he rapped gameplans, took away cell phones, accused his team of tanking, cancelled shootarounds and had players chanting countdowns to the end of the season with six weeks left—Shaw whiffed in a big way.
But maybe now that we've learned a few things about that Ty Lawson-led Nuggets roster, we can forgive Shaw for failing to resonate. And maybe he's learned better.
Frankly, there must have been something about his acumen and personality as an assistant that earned him such high regard. That can't all just be gone now, can it?
Shaw was never more admired than when he was with the Pacers in 2011-12. Maybe Bird has fond memories.
And maybe this is a situation where one catastrophic failure shouldn't erase an otherwise solid resume.
4. Nate McMillan
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It's been a while since Nate McMillan ran a team. He last coached the Portland Trail Blazers during the 2011-12 season, and his 12 years of experience come with a reputation as a defense-first guy.
In fact, McMillan's tenures with the Seattle Sonics and Blazers revealed him to be nothing of the sort. His teams played at slow paces that, in the era before the broad dismissal of points-per-game standards of measurement, made it seem like defense was there when it wasn't.
Here's Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo Sports with a reminder:
"McMillan, as an NBA head coach, has yet to even run a great or even good NBA defense despite 930 career games at the helm in Seattle and Portland. Sure, his teams looked solid enough on that end when you didn't pay attention to games and looked at the raw points allowed, but the snail-like pace McMillan demanded on offense helped hide the fact that his squads regularly either ranked amongst the worst in the NBA defensively, or at best the middle of the pack.
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Now, the Pacers have defined themselves defensively for years. So you'd think competence on that end would be a priority. But moving on from Vogel indicates it might not be the top one.
Perhaps that's good for McMillan, who actually has a track record as a good offensive mind.
McMillan's teams in Seattle and Portland were generally effective offensively. Seven of his 12 teams ranked among the top 10 in efficiency, per Basketball-Reference.com. His 2008-09 Blazers led the league in points per possession.
There are worries here, and McMillan has had plenty of chances to succeed with mostly mediocre results. But if it's between him and Shaw, McMillan is the superior option.
3. Jeff Van Gundy
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Eventually, this guy's going to take a job, right?
Virtually every time an opening presents itself, Jeff Van Gundy is mentioned, loosely connected or, in rare cases, actually interviews for the position. So far, though, the ESPN and ABC commentator hasn't found a spot he likes enough to give up the TV gig.
Van Gundy's career winning percentage of .575 looks pretty good, and he's stayed close enough to the game to retain some familiarity with the changes that have occurred in the decade since he last coached. Still, Vogel won 58 percent of his games with Indiana, and we know he at least tried to embrace the stylistic tweaks the Pacers hoped would catapult the team into a more modern era.
It's entirely possible Van Gundy won't be much of an improvement. And even if he's been around the NBA nonstop since last coaching in 2006-07, Indiana should look hard at whether Van Gundy is philosophically equipped to sacrifice some of his highly prized defensive integrity for more scoring.
Little has changed since Adrian Wojnarowski and Chris Mannix of The Vertical reported Van Gundy was Houston's top choice in April. But perhaps the challenge of returning to an organization that fired him (and coaching a roster featuring James Harden and little else) will be too daunting.
Van Gundy might rather lead Paul George and a defense with a history of good effort and great results.
Shaw and McMillan come with major questions, and even if Van Gundy is no sure thing, his playoff success and respected status make him a significantly better option than either of those two.
2. David Blatt
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Remember this guy?
It feels like a bit of a stretch, but let's just climb out on a limb and make this point: Indiana isn't going to find another coach on the market who has made the NBA Finals in every NBA season he's completed. Nor will it locate someone on the market with a career winning percentage of .675.
Obviously, Blatt's resume is loaded with asterisks. He wound up on a team with LeBron James, a handful of other stars and a distinct win-now mandate from the front office. If you're a cynic, you'd cite his brusque dealings with the media, point out the fact he might have been little more than James' assistant and conclude Blatt did nothing to prove his mettle with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
But isn't that a little shortsighted?
All we really know about Blatt is that he wasn't cut out to deal with the circus in Cleveland, and it's hard to imagine an NBA rookie coach who is immediately outfitted to handle that specific set of circumstances.
Let's also remember that, like Shaw, but to a much more significant degree, Blatt's reputation before he became a head coach was fantastic. Wildly successful in Europe, he came to the NBA branded a genius. It's entirely possible that's still the case; we just never got a chance to see him flex his strategic muscles on a Cavs team where the best player called all the shots.
Blatt's imperfect. He made mistakes with the Cavs. But he was also set up to fail in many ways that, to him, were unforeseeable. He thought he was taking over a rebuilding team, then got blindsided by a complete shift into title contention.
Things would be simpler with the Pacers, and he deserves a chance to succeed on his own terms.
1. Mike D'Antoni
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"It’s no secret—I want us to score more points," Bird told Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star after the Pacers were eliminated.
We could practically stop the analysis there.
If it's points you want, hiring the guy whose offensive innovations are still shaping the NBA seems like the best move. We can add more, though.
Per SB Nation's Tom Ziller: "This is a situation tailor-made for a coach like D'Antoni. The defense is there; preservation ought to be less demanding and more foolproof than creation. On the other end, D'Antoni could focus his efforts to leverage PG-13's considerable abilities to torch up the Eastern Conference."
D'Antoni, currently an associate head coach with the Philadelphia 76ers, also interviewed with the Houston Rockets, per ESPN's Marc Stein.
The Rockets are a team that could also have interest in Vogel, but their problems aren't on offense—or, at least their biggest problems aren't. Houston ranked 20th in defensive efficiency during the regular season and stopped even pretending to try during the playoffs. That's a job for Vogel, whose teams in Indiana always competed like crazy on D and posted a defensive rating in the top eight in each of the last four seasons (third this year and first in 2013-14).
More broadly, D'Antoni deserves another shot. He didn't have much to work with in his tenure with the New York Knicks, and his time with the Los Angeles Lakers was doomed by injury, superstar ego clashes and expectations run amok.
Hiring D'Antoni to replace Vogel would be bold. But it gives Bird the best chance to have the kind of team he wants and, clearly, bold moves aren't something Larry Legend shies away from.
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