St. John’s very capable yet unknown assistant coach Mike Dunlap, who served more as the team’s head coach while coach Steve Lavin was recovering from surgery this past season, has accepted the head coaching job for the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats according to a report on the NBA’s website.
The Charlotte Observer first reported the news and already coach Lavin has offered up his congratulations. “The Johnnies basketball family is ecstatic for coach Dunlap’s opportunity. Mike’s selection as the Charlotte Bobcats’ head coach is a well-deserved honor. To make the unprecedented jump from college assistant to NBA head coach is testament to both Mike’s abilities as a teacher and our basketball program’s marked improvement over the past 27 months.”
A few questions may come to mind about this somewhat unlikely hiring. Here are the immediate ones and the rationale behind them.
1. Why would an NBA franchise hire a college assistant coach when college head coaches already have enough trouble making the transition?
The track record for college coaches making the transition to NBA head coaches is not considered a great one. A number of them have tried only to be released after the experiment failed. Just take a look at one of the best college coaches in the game, John Calipari.
Calipari was hired as coach (and general manager) of the New Jersey Nets in 1996 after resurrecting UMass’s basketball. He led the team to the playoffs in his second season (they were swept in the first round) and after starting the next season at 3-17, Calipari was promptly fired and headed back to the college ranks in Memphis.
There have been other greats that have failed. College coaching legend Rick Pitino was coach of the New York Knicks for two seasons before going to back to the college ranks to lead the Kentucky program back to greatness. He then took over the Boston Celtics as head coach (and general manager) starting with the 1997–98 season. After three and a half playoff-less seasons Pitino was out and headed back to the college ranks.
Were both coaches bad NBA coaches? Not really. They just didn’t have the talent to win immediately or enough success under their belts to let management allow them time to find and then coach the right players to lead them to success.
Hopefully Mike Dunlap enjoys more success than those two.
2. Why would an NBA team want coach Mike Dunlap in particular?
Dunlap does have some NBA experience on his resume, serving an assistant on George Karl’s staff at Denver from 2006–08 when the Nuggets went a combined 95–69.
Even more than that, the Bobcats probably looked at his coaching these past two seasons at St. John’s and realized what a tremendous job he did.
First in the 2010–11 season, Dunlap was part of tremendous turnaround that saw the St. John’s program go from a 17–16 also-ran to a 21–12 contender that really came on in January to finish in the upper half of college basketball’s toughest conference, the Big East.
Certainly there is a lot of credit that could go around for that success, after all Steve Lavin was in charge during that time. But in all fairness to both Lavin and Dunlap, Lavin’s biggest skill is his recruiting prowess, while Dunlap is more of a strategist.
The likeable Lavin is the perfect face of the program for a major contender like St. John’s while Dunlap was known as a tremendous “Xs and Os” coach, and the two made a great team.
But with Lavin out most of this past season, Dunlap was at the helm of the program and was complimented everywhere for the miracle job he pulled off.
The 54-year-old somehow kept the team competitive despite the loss of everyone who played meaningful minutes the year before. After some attrition early in the season he was left with just six players—five were freshman—and somehow the team went 13–19 and 6–12 in the Big East, finishing ahead of programs like Pittsburgh and Villanova.
3. Is this a good job for Dunlap?
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