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| | Friday, August 11 | |||||
Special to ESPN.com | ||||||
| In the perfect world (one currently being built by the neighborhood
madman in a neighborhood basement with Lego stolen from children's toyboxes
while cranked on Vicodin borrowed from the wife's last pregnancy), there is a
Mississippi Delta blues singer currently working on a thirty-three-verse opus
called "The Ballad Of Alvin Gentry."
In the imperfect world, there are just a lot of people shaking their
heads and wondering if there really is a job too lousy for anyone to take.
Gentry just signed on to push a large boulder up a tall mountain of
gravel with his face, and in doing so pass piles of bleached bones that were
once his predecessors. He is the new head coach of the Los Angeles
Clippers.
Now we have no question about Gentry's skills, or of his qualifications
to be an NBA head coach. He has walked the beat both as a head coach
(Detroit, Miami) and as an assistant. He was going to be an assistant in San
Antonio when Elgin Baylor called making him the prototypical "offer anyone
in their right mind would refuse."
But Gentry, like most people in the sporting industry, did what he was
compelled to do. He daydreamed how glorious life would be once the rock was
up the mountain, and he signed on.
The problem is, of course, is that the mountain has never been
conquered, and rarely been marred by footprints. In the entire history of the
franchise, only one time has it won a playoff round -- 1976, over
Philadelphia in a round-of-three series when the Clippers were the Braves,
Los Angeles was Buffalo and Donald Sterling was just another realtor with a
snappy line.
Indeed, although there have been some earnest contenders over the years
(Golden State over the last six years, Dallas and Washington over the last
decade, Sacramento from the mid-80s until a couple of years ago, Vancouver
from the get-go), the Clippers remain the zinc standard of NBA franchises,
and approach the Chicago/St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals, St. Louis Browns and
Washington Senators for all-time irrelevance.
More to the point, only one coach, Jack Ramsay, ever escaped the
franchise and made a name for himself. He was the coach who led the Braves to
that big win over the Sixers, and a year later led the Portland Trail
Blazers to their championship.
Larry Brown made a couple of showings and can be said to have succeeded.
Cotton Fitzsimmons has survived and more. Paul Silas overcame the Clippers by
waiting 17 years for his next job. Don Chaney and Jim Lynam made the playoffs
with other teams. The other 14 gents who put in their time either coached
losers or never got another NBA job.
Alvin Gentry is the 20th coach in franchise history. Now how do you want
to bet?
It can be said that more men have turned down Sterling than accepted his
money and hospitality over the years. Bob Huggins turned him down only two
weeks ago, on the basis that sending players to the Clippers every few years
is close enough contact.
Gentry, on the other hand, may have issues with which he would like to
contend. He picked up Kevin Loughery's mess in Miami five years ago, but was
found to be insufficiently Pat Riley for the Heat owners. He then went to
Detroit and picked up when Doug Collins crashed and burned, but couldn't get
out of last season, overburdened with player agendas and underburdened by
talent.
Perhaps the idea here is to show his contemporaries, and the world at
large, that he is more than just another assistant coach/lifer with two
incompletes on his record. Maybe he wants to show that the Clippers -- these
Clippers -- can be shown the way to credibility even while half the roster
is sharpening spoons and looking to tunnel out through the floor of the
Staples Center if need be.
OK, good on him. May the sun always be at his back as he tries. But
viewing this from the safety of the rest of the planet, it sure seems like
Gentry is playing with the last of his chips, taking the only job still out
there because it is the only job still out there.
We may, in fact, be looking not at the next Jack Ramsay, but at the next
Don Casey. Casey is one of those bone piles Gentry will be passing on his way
toward the mountain, crushed under the weight of Clipper-hood and sent as his
earthly reward to be crushed under the weight of Net-hood.
Hardly seems fair, does it? Then again, that's what normally comes of
trying to make the best of a bad situation in the NBA. And when it's the
Clippers ... well, here's to Alvin Gentry. He may deserve better, but he's
probably going to have to get a fourth job to get it.
Ray Ratto, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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