Donovan to the Pros
Will the latest and greatest college coach win at the next level?
So Billy Donovan is headed to the NBA. And the results after a couple of years shouldn’t surprise anyone. Donovan is going to fail in the big leagues just like every other premier college coach, with the exception of Larry Brown, who somehow won a championship in both the NCAA and the NBA.
But unless Donovan possesses superhuman patience or develops a sudden tolerance for a slow-paced game with no shooters, no defense and no passion, he will be heading back for the college ranks in no time.
Donovan has to look no further than some of his counterparts that coach in the neighboring states. John Calipari and Rick Pitino are the obvious guinea pigs for this jump from college to pro. Neither could handle guaranteed contracts or players who didn’t listen.
Calipari coached the New Jersey Nets after he took UMass to the national championship game at the end of his seven-year career in Amherst. In Cal’s first year in the home of The Boss, he won just 26 games, dropped 56 and missed the playoffs. The next year was somewhat better. The Nets cracked the .500 mark at 43-39 but lost all three playoff games in a first-round sweep. Cal left the team after a 3-17 start to the 1998 season. Not exactly the most prestigious pro career.
Calipari is back with the amateurs now. He took a job at Memphis and transformed that program into an annual title contender and the perennial beast of Conference USA.
Pitino is one of the best college coaches of all time. But his NBA career falls somewhere short of brutal. Pitino coached the New York Knicks in 1987 and 1988. He made the playoffs in both years. He finished below .500 (38-44) in ’87 and had the best year of his career in the pros in ’88 when the Knicks won 52 games and went a respectable 5-4 in the playoffs.
Pitino left for Kentucky in the ensuing years and his turnaround of the embattled UK program, struck hard by allegations of player misconduct, is legend in college basketball history. Pitino cemented his legacy with the Wildcats with a national championship in 1996 and he, like Calipari, skipped to the next level. In Pitino’s case, it was the Boston Celtics.
Bostonians hailed Pitino as the savior of the winningest basketball franchise in the history of the game upon his arrival and the Celts gave him complete control over the franchise – the draft, free agents, and coaching. It was a well-documented disaster for Pitino and his Celtics. A beaten man, he retreated to a familiar state and began coaching in a different town: Louisville.
So that’s the college-coaches-to-the-NBA history 101, and of course that does not include many successes and failures that occurred throughout the league’s history. But it does provide a fresh microcosm of what could happen to Donovan if he doesn’t coddle the superstars.
Donovan is from the same school of thought that his predecessors subscribed to. He even looks like Pitino and Calipari. The slicked-back hair, the energetic personality and flamboyant coaching style reeks of big-time college coach. And Donovan will confront the monumental task that previous coaches of equal caliber could not complete.
Donovan proved his worth many times over at the college level. He is a dynamic recruiter and has a brilliant knack for evaluating talent. But the NBA is a different monster. Donovan might be the king of college ball, but even NCAA royalty comes up short in The Show.
