Coaching a team and a full season is still the ultimate test of whether we got the right guy. But he hasn’t put a foot wrong yet. He just seems to get it across the board.
I wish I could see the full footage for that. My daughter and I coach a HS team (she's the HC) and it looks like his approach to practice is what we hope to reach. People think the hard-ass drill instructor is the only way to coach and that players these days are soft. There are plenty of examples of hard-asses who lost their team and thus their season. Doesn't have to be that way. And as work, military, and society become less top-down, the days are past when Dear Leader dictates to robots. Teams like this help prepare the needed leaders.
A really good coach knows when to be a hard ass and when to take a softer approach. There are many layers here and a really good coach does not take either approach on the spur of the moment. Coaches need to be cold blooded killers. They will have thought long and hard about what to do beforehand. And what the next few moves are. Or maybe I overestimate them.
His approach somewhat worries me, because it's exactly what you like to see in an NBA coach dealing with pro athletes and big egos. Success at UF might have him getting called up to the pros sooner rather than later.
Success in college coaching is relative mostly to what you do. Success in the NBA is relative mostly to what the front office does. But it's the coach that takes the fall when the front office fails.
He does seem to have a Brad Stevens’ kind of basketball mind. Darn it. I knew we should have kept Mike White.
Brad Stevens, Larry Brown and Billy D have something in common that few coaches have. They were all successful at the college and pro level. If Golden also has this quality we might not have him very long.
As much as I liked Mike White, I am glad he is gone so that you and I are free to argue about more important matters like how high an arch should be on a jump shot.
We can hope to have such a predicament. Being a target from NBA teams generally means some college championship runs.
