Only once before have the Milwaukee Bucks treated
their head coaching job as an entry-level position, and they weren't sorry.
Don Nelson had been an assistant for all of six weeks
when he was promoted over his own protests to replace Larry Costello. The Bucks
rejected his suggestion that they give the job to career assistant John
Killilea while he learned the trade.
Nelson took one year to lose his humility and 11 to
win 540 games for Milwaukee. The job has never been done better.
Nobody can tell whether Terry Porter will be as
successful as Nelson. We just know the possibility can't be ruled out on the
basis of inexperience. They say a man has to pay his dues, but George Karl has
been around long enough to start his own union, and that wasn't doing much for
the Bucks lately.
Porter might never turn out to be Nelson, but we
already know he's not Karl. In fact, he's the anti-Karl, which is what the
situation requires. Where the one was disgruntled, the other is eager. The
first was hard-won knowledge, the second recent evidence. Karl was old money,
Porter is venture capital.
Terry Stotts might have been a safer choice but
there's no point in getting skittish now. In the past two years, the Bucks have
sent away all of their best players, fired a $7 million coach and an old guard
general manager and spent a lottery choice on a trial-size point guard who will
have to learn to shoot on the job. It's a little late to be hedging their bet
by hiring a former employee.
More than anything, these Bucks need a training camp
where seniority doesn't count. Tim Thomas, Anthony Mason, et al. should be
required to prove themselves to a new regime, not that they ever distinguished
themselves with the old one.
If they can't take advantage of a fresh start, they
should be looking for a fresh address. By swallowing the last year of Karl's
contract, Herb Kohl has already demonstrated that a big salary doesn't
guarantee employment. Porter, the newcomer, will have a hammer that Karl, the
lame duck, could never swing.
He might even have a fair idea of where to aim. Having
played the game as recently as a year ago, Porter should know better what's
going on in the modern athlete's head. That doesn't mean he has to approve of
it.
Porter's job will be to get the help to compete the way
he did. That's what Karl had in mind, too, but he left the league before most
of his players left the womb. Much of what he said seemed to disappear in the
generation gap.
When a rookie coach leads a young team, there are
bound to be times when it looks as if nobody knows a rebound from a rebate, and
Porter's first job will be to surround himself with some grizzled assistants.
But it's not as if this group will be marching into the NBA Finals in the next
year or two anyway. This was a better time than most to remodel.
There's a chance for the coach and the program to grow
together. Nelson did it when he took over Costello's 3-15 club and had it in
the playoffs a year later. He didn't have anybody who could play under the
basket, either, although he did have youngsters like Marques Johnson, Brian
Winters, Junior Bridgeman and Quinn Buckner growing up in a hurry.
Desmond
Mason, Michael Redd, T.J. Ford and Thomas have a lot of climbing to do to reach
that level, and Porter is about 1,100 victories and three coach-of-the-year
awards behind Nelson. But if he ever catches him, this would be a logical place
to start.
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