It’s NBA head coach hiring season

Head coach hiring season is upon us. The opening salvo came last week, as four new head coaches were hired: Kenny Atkinson (Brooklyn Nets), Tom Thibodeau (Minnesota Timberwolves), Scott Brooks (Washington Wizards) and Earl Watson (Phoenix Suns, formerly their interim coach).

The Timberwolves and Wizards will probably be satisfied with Thibodeau and Brooks, who weren’t without criticism in their last coaching tenures, but there’s plenty of reason to think that they’ll be successful to some degree. The process leading to their hires, however, mostly stuck to well-trodden ground. The Timberwolves rushed to offer Thibodeau a dual position as coach and president of basketball operations – a model which has rarely fared well – and the Wizards had likewise narrowed their scope to Brooks early.

Meanwhile, countless other well-deserving coaches due their turn are being looked over in the process. Even from the outside, we know a fair bit about which would-be head coaches are generating interest. Every year, ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz lists the hot assistant or college coaches flying just under the radar. Members of the Golden State Warriors or San Antonio Spurs staffs are thought of very highly: Luke Walton, Ettore Messina, Becky Hammon, Ime Udoka, Jarron Collins, etc.

There’s something to be said for a breath of fresh air, and teams that cross off names without due consideration are doing themselves a disservice. New and different offers the full range of possibility, and it sure seems like there’s a lot of potential sitting out there unexplored when it comes to NBA head coaches.

A wave of first-time head coaches were hired in the summer of 2013, including some of today’s top bench bosses: Brad Stevens, Mike Budenholzer, Steve Clifford and Dave Joerger. Currently, over half of the league employs head coaches that were hired as newcomers to the position. As Ian Levy noted for The Cauldron, that’s largely the result of the outlying 2013 offseason: “Over the past decade, 82 coaching vacancies have been filled and only 29 — about 35 percent — went to a candidate with no previous NBA head-coaching experience.”

Arguably the most well-received of last week’s hires was the Nets’ signing of Atkinson, formerly an assistant with the Atlanta Hawks and now getting his first chance to be the man in charge. Players like Al Horford, Kyle Korver, and Jeff Teague have showered Atkinson with praise. It’s early, but for now the Nets feel rejuvenated by the hire, which is seen as Atkinson finally getting a chance.

Many other bright assistants are still glued to the second or third seat on the bench. Three of the seven names from Arnovitz’ inaugural list of upcomers in 2013 have seen minimal reported interest since (David Fizdale, Alex Jensen, Robert Pack), while other names, stale in comparison, dominate the news cycle. Some front offices are more progressive, but others grant second and third chances to especially groan-inducing retreads — interim New York Knicks coach Kurt Rambis, he of ‘triangle point guard Rajon Rondo’ infamy, is still very much in the running for the permanent job.

There’s also this strange closed loop, after Brian Shaw’s name cropped up in the Sacramento Kings’ head coaching search:

Anybody that gets a job in the NBA will have their merits, and there are myriad reasons — external and internal — that head coaches are successful. Having been at the helm before is probably an advantage. There are also other reasons, and previous NBA head coaching experience appears hugely overvalued in proportion to the rest. Even D-League experience has correlated well with success, and last season, Steve Kerr won a championship as a rookie head coach with no professional coaching experience to speak of.

Not every rookie head coach pans out. The two first-time hires last summer, Billy Donovan and Fred Hoiberg, won’t inspire teams to be even more daring. But, despite having previous experience in the league Scott Skiles and Alvin Gentry haven’t proven to be better hires either.

A lot of it comes down to what we don’t know. Prospective coaches due their chance aren’t inherently better than retreads — Gentry and Skiles seemed like good hires at the time (and might yet be!), same as Donovan and Hoiberg. Assessing coaches is an imprecise thing to begin with, steeped in outside perceptions, hearsay and touchy-feely assumptions. There’s a lot of guesswork involved to say that teams would be better off hiring more first-timers, but the only way to find out is by handing the keys over.

In a perfect world, the 30 best coaches already have the jobs and there’s no need for anybody to get fired, but there are probably very few surefire coaches out there and everyone else just tries their best. So why not make a bet? If he’s so well thought of, why not throw some money bags at Messina and dare him to leave the Spurs?

Assistants spend years being talked about, sometimes being linked to open jobs but mostly lingering before getting that first job opportunity. It probably didn’t have to take this long for Atkinson to get hired. Teams had their chance at him, but most seem content to recycle through the usual list of retreads.

Maybe female coaches like Hammon or Nancy Lieberman of the Sacramento Kings would have had their opportunity by now under different circumstances, or similarly deserving black or foreign coaches. It doesn’t seem too much to ask for a thorough and open-minded search. Anything else obstructs progress, in representation and in hoops innovation.

Every team is looking for a competitive advantage. You can figure why teams may err on the side of caution and play to name recognition, familiarity, experience, safety. But coaching turnover runs rampant anyway, and competitive advantage is a strong reason to broaden the horizons.

Maybe the league is coming around. Of this summer’s first four hires, Atkinson and Watson are brand new to the head coaching ranks, while Thibodeau and Brooks come seasoned. They all seem like reasonably good hires, which is the best thing that can be said about them right now.

That’s what it comes down to — making good hires — and there would seem to be a great many of them waiting in the pool of yet untapped coaches. Don’t hold the lack of experience against them too much, because somewhere in there might be the next great coach.