Should Dave Joerger Be An Option For Brooklyn?
The Brooklyn coaching search is what you can call “slow and steady” at this point with many candidates coming out daily although the key is to sift through all of the minutiae and find what will work best for this roster.
Lionel Hollins is now in play as the Memphis Grizzlies finished getting swept last night by the San Antonio Spurs. He is under contract until July 1st with Memphis and reports are out that Memphis will not allow him to talk to other teams.
Netsdaily noted today that Chris Herrington’s tweet could be a sign of Memphis wanting to keep Hollins under wraps for a bit.
The en vogue thing in the NBA today is taking a top assistant coach from a winner and hoping that coach can bring the same winning mentality to his new team. There is evidence today with the hire of Mike Budenholzer from the Spurs to coach the Atlanta Hawks as well as Jeff Hornacek (Utah) to the Phoenix Suns and Steve Clifford (Lakers) to the Charlotte Bobcats.
Hollins lead assistant/defensive coordinator is Dave Joerger and if you take the words of Memphis players and other people around the organization, he would be a great head coach at the NBA level. Joerger has paid his dues and coached in the IBA, CBA and D-League before getting his shot with Memphis and his defensive strategies and philosophies have people around the league thinking he could be a great head coach with the right team.
Is Brooklyn the right team?
[quote_simple] Kevin Arnovitz – ESPN.com Who’s ready to be an NBA head coach?
David Joerger, Memphis Grizzlies assistant coach
Not long ago, success as a head coach in the Continental Basketball Association was a reliable predictor of success in the NBA. Phil Jackson, George Karl and Flip Saunders, among others, all came up through the minor leagues before landing on an NBA bench. So did Joerger, who won five championships in seven seasons as a head coach in the IBA, CBA and D-League — all before turning 35 years old.
“He loves the craft,” says an NBA general manager. “Look what he’s done with [the Memphis] defense. He’s got Thibodeau’s thing for defense, but he’s a lot more likable than Thibs.”
When Lionel Hollins delegated the Memphis’ defensive game plan to Joerger, the Grizzlies were the league’s 24th-ranked defense. In the three seasons since, they’ve finished ninth, then seventh and now second in defensive efficiency, and they did it with Zach Randolph at power forward and an unusually small point guard in Mike Conley. It’s rare that NBA players cite their assistants by name, but Tony Allen routinely praises Joerger’s defensive blueprint as an essential ingredient in the Grizz’s success.
Joerger loves to problem-solve and grapple with game theory, and he has an appreciation of analytics. He knows which NBA point guards, in descending order, reject screens most frequently and understands how to impart that information to players. Most of all, Joerger has an acute awareness of what each player on the roster can and can’t do. Randolph won’t be asked to perform Joakim Noah tasks, and a unit’s collective shortcomings are priced into coverage schemes.[/quote_simple]
[quote_simple]NBA.com
David Joerger enters his third season on the Grizzlies’ bench after recently coaching the Grizzlies summer league squad to a perfect 5-0 record in the 2009 NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. Before earning his first NBA assistant coaching job with the Grizzlies, Joerger gained fame as one of the most successful minor league basketball coaches in history, serving as head coach of the 2006-07 NBA D-League Champion Dakota Wizards.[/quote_simple]
