Accountability at St. John's

[NJRedman]

I like Willard. Love that they play his tournament speech in our commercials, it is perfect, and they WON. He seems to have taken the torch that Buzz lit before he bailed. He picked up the pieces of a broken team a couple years ago when everyone on this board was calling for his head and he won a championship and continues to overachieve.

I don't think we have any weak links in the 10-man coaching chain in this league except for Mullin. Love the guy but Creighton went through the "NBA-legend-coaching-thing" with Willis Reed and it was another example of the same "experiment" not working. Don't think it ever has in college basketball... ever. Coaches and NBA All-Stars are different things, and it's seldom to never that they are the same person.

Never ever huh? I guess you weren't paying attention to Iowa State like 2 years ago.

[SJHooper]

I like Willard. Love that they play his tournament speech in our commercials, it is perfect, and they WON. He seems to have taken the torch that Buzz lit before he bailed. He picked up the pieces of a broken team a couple years ago when everyone on this board was calling for his head and he won a championship and continues to overachieve.

I don't think we have any weak links in the 10-man coaching chain in this league except for Mullin. Love the guy but Creighton went through the "NBA-legend-coaching-thing" with Willis Reed and it was another example of the same "experiment" not working. Don't think it ever has in college basketball... ever. Coaches and NBA All-Stars are different things, and it's seldom to never that they are the same person.

Never ever huh? I guess you weren't paying attention to Iowa State like 2 years ago.

He is saying that the overwhelming majority of times programs hire inexperienced ex-NBA stars as coaches, it does not work out. That is 100% accurate. Hoiberg is the exception and not the rule at all. Just because it happened once does not mean the odds aren't against Mullin. If you remember when Mullin was hired, several prominent articles expressed this same concern and others praised the hire.

[Bill Marsh]

I like Willard. Love that they play his tournament speech in our commercials, it is perfect, and they WON. He seems to have taken the torch that Buzz lit before he bailed. He picked up the pieces of a broken team a couple years ago when everyone on this board was calling for his head and he won a championship and continues to overachieve.

I don't think we have any weak links in the 10-man coaching chain in this league except for Mullin. Love the guy but Creighton went through the "NBA-legend-coaching-thing" with Willis Reed and it was another example of the same "experiment" not working. Don't think it ever has in college basketball... ever. Coaches and NBA All-Stars are different things, and it's seldom to never that they are the same person.

Never ever huh? I guess you weren't paying attention to Iowa State like 2 years ago.

Yes, Fred Hoiberg. And Kevin Ollie won a national championship at UConn just 2 years ago after taking over the program with minimal coaching experience, none as head coach at any level.

[BigEast1]

Hooper, did you say that Sanchez & Obekpa were NBA talents?

[Bill Marsh]

I like Willard. Love that they play his tournament speech in our commercials, it is perfect, and they WON. He seems to have taken the torch that Buzz lit before he bailed. He picked up the pieces of a broken team a couple years ago when everyone on this board was calling for his head and he won a championship and continues to overachieve.

I don't think we have any weak links in the 10-man coaching chain in this league except for Mullin. Love the guy but Creighton went through the "NBA-legend-coaching-thing" with Willis Reed and it was another example of the same "experiment" not working. Don't think it ever has in college basketball... ever. Coaches and NBA All-Stars are different things, and it's seldom to never that they are the same person.

Never ever huh? I guess you weren't paying attention to Iowa State like 2 years ago.

He is saying that the overwhelming majority of times programs hire inexperienced ex-NBA stars as coaches, it does not work out. That is 100% accurate. Hoiberg is the exception and not the rule at all. Just because it happened once does not mean the odds aren't against Mullin. If you remember when Mullin was hired, several prominent articles expressed this same concern and others praised the hire.

Hoiberg and Ollie are a couple of recent success stories. If the overwhelming of such hires are failures, you must be able to easily come up with 5-10 examples of failures. Name me a few.

[GumbyDamnit!]

I think you'd be hard pressed to group Hoiberg and Ollie as "Ex-NBA stars." Ollie was a career backup and Hoiberg's career was even less impressive than Ollie's. I think of people like Isiah Thomas, Magic, Bird, Jordan and their attempts to coach when I look at Mullin. I think the biggest flaw of having a true NBA legend try to coach is that for many of them the game came easy. It's hard for someone like that to understand why lesser talents can't see the game on the floor or react in the game like they used to.

[brewcity77]

I think you'd be hard pressed to group Hoiberg and Ollie as "Ex-NBA stars." Ollie was a career backup and Hoiberg's career was even less impressive than Ollie's. I think of people like Isiah Thomas, Magic, Bird, Jordan and their attempts to coach when I look at Mullin. I think the biggest flaw of having a true NBA legend try to coach is that for many of them the game came easy. It's hard for someone like that to understand why lesser talents can't see the game on the floor or react in the game like they used to.

Neither were Ex-NBA stars. They played in the NBA, but were far from stars.

I think this point from Gumby is well made, and it's not exclusive to basketball. I watch a lot of soccer as well, and without having scientific data to back it up, more often than not it's the journeyman types, the guys who had to work their asses off just to get a sniff, that turn out to be the best coaches. When you're a great player, you just don't have to work on your game the way a journeyman does. The guys who bust their ass just to have an iota of ability to allow them to play at that level understand all the work that goes in and know the tricks to get the most out of players, not just the mediocre ones, but the tips that will take good players to great ones.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but I think if you are looking at ex-players as coaches, you are better off looking at the cerebral, journeyman types that had to fight tooth and nail just to stick around rather than guys who were All-Stars, Olympians, and would put up a 15/5 line and call it an off night.

[NJRedman]

I think you'd be hard pressed to group Hoiberg and Ollie as "Ex-NBA stars." Ollie was a career backup and Hoiberg's career was even less impressive than Ollie's. I think of people like Isiah Thomas, Magic, Bird, Jordan and their attempts to coach when I look at Mullin. I think the biggest flaw of having a true NBA legend try to coach is that for many of them the game came easy. It's hard for someone like that to understand why lesser talents can't see the game on the floor or react in the game like they used to.

Larry Bird was an NBA coach of the year and while coach achieved the Pacers best regular season record up to that time.

"In 1997, Bird accepted the head coach position with the Indiana Pacers, a move that returned him to his home state. Despite no previous coaching experience, he led the Pacers to a 58-24 record—the franchise's best at the time—in the 1997-98 season and was named the NBA Coach of the Year. After leading the Pacers to the NBA Finals in 2000, he stepped down as head coach."

http://www.biography.com/people/larry-bird-9213087

[NJRedman]

I think you'd be hard pressed to group Hoiberg and Ollie as "Ex-NBA stars." Ollie was a career backup and Hoiberg's career was even less impressive than Ollie's. I think of people like Isiah Thomas, Magic, Bird, Jordan and their attempts to coach when I look at Mullin. I think the biggest flaw of having a true NBA legend try to coach is that for many of them the game came easy. It's hard for someone like that to understand why lesser talents can't see the game on the floor or react in the game like they used to.

Neither were Ex-NBA stars. They played in the NBA, but were far from stars.

I think this point from Gumby is well made, and it's not exclusive to basketball. I watch a lot of soccer as well, and without having scientific data to back it up, more often than not it's the journeyman types, the guys who had to work their asses off just to get a sniff, that turn out to be the best coaches. When you're a great player, you just don't have to work on your game the way a journeyman does. The guys who bust their ass just to have an iota of ability to allow them to play at that level understand all the work that goes in and know the tricks to get the most out of players, not just the mediocre ones, but the tips that will take good players to great ones.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but I think if you are looking at ex-players as coaches, you are better off looking at the cerebral, journeyman types that had to fight tooth and nail just to stick around rather than guys who were All-Stars, Olympians, and would put up a 15/5 line and call it an off night.

Okay, but Mullin isn't a guy like Drexler or Magic who could naturally jump through the roof or naturally fast enough to blow by you. The guy was a gym rat who was constantly working on his shot and running drills. He had like a 3 inch vertical and a 5 minute 40 time.

[misterbob]

Does it exist for us? I had to sit here through the Lavin and now Mullin years constantly told that we were a year or two away. We are in a perpetual cycle of "just wait!", "we are young!", "well, we had some injuries", "we had bad luck", "we played a great team", "this conference is tough", "give it time", "hammer to rock", "trust the process", "we were in some of the games". I've heard every excuse in the book and not nearly enough straight talk regarding results and the lack of accountability. At times I honestly feel like I'm one of the very few SJ fans that demands results at the end of the day. Syracuse felt great, Butler felt great. DePaul is DePaul, we were supposed to beat them. But to act like those 2 wins made up for this dumpster fire of a season is outrageous. People seem to forget the expectations coming into this season. There was chatter of an NIT berth and even a possible dark horse NCAA berth. Reading Redmen I even saw some predicting 21+ wins. Maybe one poster predicted 15 and that was the extreme low end but this is what I believed was doable. We brought in some good recruits and we knew we would likely struggle some games but figured we would be able to take care of business against the LIU/Delaware State/Penn State's of the world. We figured we could snag at least 1 game in the Atlantis tournament but could not even beat ODU.

I wrote to our Athletic Director and I urge you to do the same. I urged him to install accountability and separate emotions from results. We all love Mullin, but it's clear he is not the answer. He got a little break from the pitchforks and torches when we won those 2 big games, but any real college hoops fan knows 2 games is nothing in an entire season. I used to get the feeling under Lavin that he was an awful coach and the only reason they won 20 games a few times and went to the tourney was because of their talent alone. I get the sense that no matter who is coaching this team, we can beat Cuse/Butler on rare occasion just based on talent and red-hot shooting. Our season is akin to failing 10 tests miserably then getting 90's on the next 2 before getting 3 more failing grades. Those two 90's don't even come close to washing away all the failing grades and your final grade will still be very low. So I ask, is anyone else on board? I know most of you are way more optimistic than me (I think to a fault...it goes both ways), so for that crowd, what exactly will it take to get you to realize we are on a train with no conductor?

I'm not a St. Johns guy (Nova alum) but IMO Mullin has neither the passion, enthusiasm nor the coaching intellect to be a successful head coach at St. Johns, or anywhere else for that matter. From what I've seen so far, all too often he seems either disinterested or totally lost on the sideline, especially during a timeout when instruction, criticism, and enthusiasm are needed-----from HIM, not someone else on the staff!! No matter how many quality players he recruits, I believe Mullin will almost always be at a coaching disadvantage, and because of that I dont think he'll ever be able to "maximize" the talent and potential of his players, which should always be the goal-------and in my mind thats really the biggest issue. To me he just doesnt seem to want it bad enough, nor does he seem to have the interest or desire to "better learn" how to be an effective and knowledgeable head coach (I see no improvement) ---------and thats a shame!! I really do think they can do better than CM-------and hopefully they will because in my mind the Big East really needs St. Johns to be a good upper tier program going forward because its been far too long since they've even been relevant in this sport, let alone this conference!! I'd love to see them return to the glory days when Mullin was a great player, but unfortunately I just dont think they'll ever get there with Chris Mullin as their coach----unless or until he makes some serious changes in how he approaches and fulfills his overall job as a leader, a teacher and a head coach!!
Just my 2 cents as an ""outside" observer!