I haven't read/heard everything about the whole Louisville basketball situation yet, so I currently have no opinion on the matter. I've got plenty of thoughts on the MLB playoffs, but we'll have plenty of time to discuss that between now and the seemingly inevitable Mets-Royals World Series.
Both of those subjects are topics for another day. Today I want to talk about Mike Krzyzewski's news from a few days ago that he'll "retire" after a decade as head coach of the U.S. men's basketball national team after next summer's Rio Olympics. U.S. National Team general manager Jerry Colangelo hasn't unveiled his succession plan, but has hinted that whoever it is will come from the pros.
Until the decision to revamp the National Team program after the embarrassing sixth-place finish at the 2002 World Championships (in Indianapolis) and bronze medal at the Athens Olympics, the coach of Team USA at the World Championships and Olympics was always an NBA coach. The three gold medal-winning coaches at the 1992 (Chuck Daly), 1996 (Lenny Wilkens) and 2000 (Rudy Tomjanovich) Olympics all came from the NBA.
Once it stopped working and they decided to have a semi-permanent National Team coach, they turned to the college ranks and got the most respected coach they could--Mike Krzyzewski. It was the perfect choice. Even though he was a college guy, the pros absolutely respected him. Better yet, they all wanted to play for him. And the results were more along the lines of what's expected from Team USA. Bronze at the 2006 World Championships, followed by back-to-back Olympic titles in 2008 and 2012 and two World titles in 2010 and 2014.
After the Rio Olympics, FIBA is changing the structure of world basketball. For starters the World Championships, which has been renamed the "World Cup," has been moved to the year before the Olympics. That means there's no major tournaments in 2017-18, followed by the World Cup and Olympics back-to-back in 2019-20. They're also trying to make international basketball more like international soccer and have different international competition windows throughout the year where teams have actual home games for the first time. Most professional leagues are going to shutdown during these international windows so that every country can have its best available players. Every league except for...you guessed it...the NBA!
This new FIBA structure presents an incredible opportunity for USA Basketball to completely change up the system. Being the head coach of the U.S. National Team isn't an easy job. And it's a very time-consuming one. Mike Krzyzewski has spent his summers juggling his full-time job as Duke's head coach with USA coaching duties effortlessly for a decade now. And making it look easy. Much easier than it actually is.
College basketball season starts in early November and ends in late March/early April. Contrast that to the NBA, which starts training camp in October and the regular season ends in mid-April, with a long playoff run adding up to two months, then it starts all over again. College coaches obviously have offseason workouts and recruiting trips throughout the summer, but that competitive window is significantly smaller than the NBA's, so a college coach would be able to devote more time to the National Team than an NBA coach would.
That's why I think USA Basketball should make the bold move of hiring a full-time National Team coach. Not somebody who also works for a college or pro team. Somebody whose job is only to coach the U.S. Men's National Team. Just like Jurgen Klinsmann and Jill Ellis are the head coaches of the U.S. Men's and Women's National Teams in soccer and nothing else. They have no club responsibilities. Their sole job is the development and coaching of the U.S. National Team. And look at where the soccer U.S. National Teams are compared to the days before they had a full-time, exclusive coach.
It's obviously not a perfect parallel, but it would definitely work. In fact, with the new FIBA schedule, it might be the only thing that would work. If, during one of these international windows, Team USA has to play a game in Mexico then another in Puerto Rico a few days later, they don't just need 12 players who are available, they need a coach that's available too. And, if it's an NBA coach and their NBA team has a game on one of those days or somewhere that would make travel prohibitive, you'll need to find a different Team USA coach for that game(s). How does that help the development of a cohesive unit if you don't even have the same coach for every game?
If USA Basketball were to hire someone to be strictly the National Team coach, working around NBA/college schedules wouldn't be an issue. Neither would recruiting players to play for the National Team. It's gonna be hard enough to get NBA players to commit two summers in a row to playing for Team USA. Imagine how much harder it'll be to find 12 guys to play during an international window in December (when the NBA guys are busy playing regular season games). Now imagine trying to do that with some random coach who they don't know.
At least if it's the same coach for all Team USA games, who's on the roster will be less of an issue. That coach can pick players based on his system and who best fits into specific roles. It can be the same guys, but it doesn't have to be. Managing that roster is difficult enough. That's why Colangelo left his job with the Phoenix Suns to go work for USA Basketball. And I'm not saying Colangelo should be taken out of the process, either. I just happen to think the whole system would work better if Colangelo and his head coach could work together year-round.
So who's the right man for the job? I have no idea. I don't even know if there's an NBA-caliber coach out there who'd even want to coach the U.S. National Team exclusively. But I think it would be worthwhile to give it a try. The rest of the world is catching up. Team USA needs to do something to remain at the top. Like hiring a full-time head coach for the National Team (which a lot of countries already have).
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