Dig on Doug, Dude

By: Kolsky

Let me begin with a caveat – Doug Collins is not (yet) the head coach of the Chicago Bulls.

Sure, I’m a realist. I know these stories saying that “the deal is in place” don’t come from nowhere; I’m prepared to accept that Bulls GM John Paxson and the excitable Mr. Collins have an agreement in principle, and that in all likelihood Collins is just a couple of phone conversations away from putting pen to paper on a new Bulls contract.

But it hasn’t happened yet. And I’ve seen enough – see “Bill Parcells agrees to deal with Atlanta” for a recent example – to know that nothing is a done deal until it’s… well, until the deal is DONE. Not proposed, not “in place,” done!

That said, get used to it Bulls fans, because this is likely what’s happening; and though there are certainly scenarios where it falls through, I promise it won’t be because you’re writing angry letters to the Berto Center. So instead, let’s see who’s coming to dinner – or, rather, who’s coming to be dined on by this team full of vulturous malcontents.

There are plenty of reasons to hate this hire. (1) Doug Collins has never won a Conference Finals, much less an NBA Finals. (2) Doug Collins is old – perhaps too old to relate to the youngest team in the NBA (which is about to get younger). (3) Doug Collins wore out his welcome with the 1988-89 Bulls in much the same badgersome fashion that Scott Skiles wore out his with the 2007-08 Bulls – yelling and screaming, demanding too much. (4) Doug Collins has never lasted more than three seasons as any team’s head coach. (5) Doug Collins has not coached a team to a winning record since the 1996-97 Detroit Pistons.

Those are five relatively significant concerns (and that’s just off the top of my head… clearly I haven’t put much thought into this article :). In short, it’s not hard to see why Paxson’s apparent decision to bring back a guy that coached him here 20 years ago is being lambasted in every corner of the world – from ESPN’s Gene Wojo-whatever-his-name-is to your buddy Jimbo down at [insert corner tavern here].

I’m well aware of – and, in some cases, nervous about – Collins’ shortcomings. But I’m not so sure this isn’t a sneaky-good hire by Paxson.

Let’s take our aforementioned criticisms one by one, for starters…

(1) If we start eliminating coaches who have never won Conference Finals, it’s gonna be a short list of potential candidates. Not everyone steps into a championship-ready situation in their first head coaching job and then gets to pick and choose the best jobs in the nation forevermore (Phil Jackson). Larry Brown – considered a giant of the coaching industry – was on his sixth NBA coaching job, in his 18th season as an NBA coach, before he won a Conference Finals. And it took a seventh job before he won a Championship, in his 21st season. Collins has only three jobs and seven-and-a-half years on of coaching on his resume, so let’s not close the door on his winning ability.

(2) Doug Collins isn’t as old as you think. Specifically, he’s 56. Current head coaches older than Collins include: Greg Popovich, Larry Brown, Mike D’Antoni, Phil Jackson, Rick Adelman, Don Nelson and George Karl. That’s a pretty distinguished list, and it doesn’t include a handful of guys that are only a year or three younger. 56 is pretty average for an NBA head coach – and if Don Nelson can relate to a team full of perceived thugs in Golden State, I’m confident Collins can make adjustments to the youth of America today. Which brings us to…

(3) Skiles was a young coach, and he couldn’t relate, so let’s toss out the idea that age has anything to do with relating. Yes, Doug Collins has been criticized for riding players too hard, for being too demanding – it’s possible this is why his stays in Chicago and Detroit didn’t last long or end particularly well. But he’s very different from Scott Skiles in that he’s a people person; a likeable guy. Skiles, for all that fans and media may have enjoyed his candor, was anything but – he was a poor communicator, and it that was his downfall, much more so than his lofty expectations and demanding demeanor. Collins will demand the players’ best, but he will also talk to players. Plus, Ben Wallace was the ringleader of the revolt against a demanding coach, and he’s long gone (thank God!)

(4) Let’s not make too much of the three-season thing. In Washington, Michael Jordan brought Collins in as his own sort of personal coach; so when Mike left, Collins was done there. Not because he did a bad job, but because he never would have been there in the first place if not for MJ. In Detroit, he led a decent team to a decent record and a disappointing playoff loss in his second year, then followed that up with a slow first half the following season. As so often happens in those situations, the guillotine fell on the head of the coach, despite a team that featured Grant Hill supported by… approximately nobody. And with the Bulls, he took over a 30-52 team – albeit with a maturing and improving Michael Jordan – and turned them into 50-win team in a couple of years. He also advanced further in the playoffs in each year of his tenure, before being canned in favor of the Zen Master after his team’s first Eastern Conference Finals loss. Who’s to say the Bulls wouldn’t have progressed further in 1989-90 if Collins had been kept around?

(5) Ok, this is true. But look who he’s been coaching since then… It starts with the 1997-98 Pistons, featuring Grant Hill – and I’ll give you five bucks if you can name their second leading scorer [tick, tock… tick, tock… tick, tock] Give up? Bison Dele (R.I.P.) Sure, they also had Jerry Stackhouse gunning 3-pointers at a 20% success rate and Joe Dumars limping up and down the floor to dish out a measly 3.5 assists per game, but can you really expect much better than a 21-24 first half when your front line is Dele and Jerome “Junkyard Dog” Williams? I think not. And in Washington, for two years, he coached a too-old Michael Jordan, a too-young Rip Hamilton and a bunch of damn losers to a 37-45 record; then an even more decrepit bunch with Stackhouse acquired for Hamilton. This time around, the big men included Kwame Brown, Christian Laettner and Jahidi White. All I’m saying is, teams full of losers usually end up with losing records, and Doug Collins has never been anybody’s GM.

But all this jibber-jabber may eschew the most interesting and potential-filled part of this surprising hire.

Doug Collins was the guy who took a skinny, athletic kid without a whole lot of game and turned him into a tough, bruising, beast of a power forward. He also took a skilled wing player without a true position and began to mold him into one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history. Those guys were Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen, respectively – but couldn’t he have a similar effect on guys like Tyrus Thomas and Luol Deng?

John Paxson was there, on the team, when Collins kicked Grant’s skinny ass into the weight room. He watched Collins work with those two talented youngsters, and he saw what they became when the Bulls were winning Championships just a few years later. If he thinks Doug Collins is the right man for the job, I have to believe it’s because of what he saw at that time.

Paxson knows how Skiles lost this team, and he knows how Collins lost his job 20 years ago. So he must know that Collins is better suited to handle this bunch – whether because his years spent in the broadcast booth have mellowed him out, or simply because he’s a better match for the personnel.

With the first pick in the draft, this Bulls group is a team that should be able to compete in the Eastern Conference in the upcoming season, and if a man who knows the team and their new coach as well as anyone sees a good fit, I can accept that he knows what he’s talking about.

Or I can at least reserve judgment until Collins coaches his first few games for this team, or presides over his first locker room revolt. That’s assuming, of course, that he does in fact get hired. Which, as we know, is not yet a certainty.

So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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Matt Kolsky (please feel free to call him Kolsky) is the contributing editor of the Chicago Sports Review and the editor-in-chief of Serious Sports News Network. You can hear Kolsky live on Chicago's kookiest and most fun sports radio show, The Morning Break, on Fridays (from 10-Noon on WSBC 1240 AM). As you can see, he's very busy, but you can also send him email via serioussportsnewsnetwork@gmail.com, and it's entirely possible that he'll respond.

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