Patrick Ewing again has expressed interest in being an NBA head coach, but there could be one big obstacle.
He might be too tall.
The Orlando assistant -- who told ESPNNewYork.com he would seek the New York job if it is open next season, and who last year interviewed for the Detroit position -- is a 7-footer. If the former Knicks star center were to be hired next season to replace interim coach Mike Woodson, he'd be just the seventh coach in NBA history 6-foot-10 or taller.
For reasons nobody fully can explain, big men have had little representation as bosses on NBA benches. The only real tall guy currently in place is 6-foot-10 Hall of Famer Kevin McHale of Houston. Last season, there were no coaches of a similar size.
Consider about 30 percent of the approximately 430 current NBA players are 6-foot-10 or taller, and about 42 percent are at least 6-foot-9. However, McHale is the only current NBA coach taller than 6-foot-8.
There are 20 current NBA coaches who are former players. If one used the percentages from above, six should be 6-foot-10 or taller, with eight being 6-foot-9. However, there have been only 16 head coaches in NBA history to measure 6-foot-9.
“I think it has to do with how they’re perceived,’’ said Charlotte coach Paul Silas, a 6-foot-7 former NBA forward, while pondering the situation. “Tall guys are not perceived as being very smart. And, whether that’s true or not, I don’t think it is. But that’s just the way it is throughout our history. Very, very seldom have you seen a very tall president."
Perhaps hurting the chances for real big guys getting hired have been the struggles they have had on the bench. Of the six 6-foot-10 guys who have been NBA head coaches, none has a winning career record, and their combined mark is 163-286.
The others on that list besides McHale are 7-foot-1 Bill Cartwright (the tallest ever head coach), 6-foot-11 Hall of Famer Bob Lanier, 6-foot-11 Kim Hughes, 6-foot-10 Hall of Famer George Mikan and 6-foot-10 Herb Williams. If one counts the ABA, 7-foot-1 Hall of Famer Wilt Chamberlain coached the San Diego Conquistadors to a 37-47 mark in 1973-74, but he didn’t always help the cause for big guys due to sometimes not showing up for games.
“I would put my intelligence up with anyone,’’ Hughes said about Silas bringing up a perception about big guys not being smart. “I’m willing to take an IQ test."
Hughes went just 8-25 during a 2009-10 interim stint with the Clippers. He said it was a difficult situation due to taking over a losing team late in the season that had “nine or 10 players who were going to be free agents.’’
Cartwright went 51-100 while coaching Chicago from 2001-04. He attributes his record to having “the second-youngest team in the league’’ when the Bulls were still rebuilding after having won their sixth championship in eight seasons in 1998.
Those Bulls, of course, were coached by 6-foot-8 Phil Jackson. That was a pretty good height for a coach in the 1990s, considering the only two titles Jackson didn’t win between 1991-98 were claimed by the Rockets and their 6-foot-8 coach, Rudy Tomjanovich.
But the only coach taller than 6-foot-8 to have won a championship has been Bill Russell, dubbed 6-foot-9 by BasketballReference.com, but who also has been listed at 6-foot-10 in other places. It sure helped that Russell was coaching himself, having won titles as a Boston player-coach in 1968 and 1969.
When Russell couldn’t pencil in Russell as his starting center, he was a mediocre coach. He went 179-207 during the '70s and '80s in stints with Seattle and Sacramento.
“Guys like Willis Reed, Bill Russell and George Mikan, I think really good players don’t always make good coaches,’’ said Hughes, also mentioning 6-foot-9 Hall of Famer Reed, who went 82-124 in stints during the '70s and '80s with New York and New Jersey. “They were so overly talented that they sometimes can’t relate to an everyday player.’’
Among the 6-foot-9 guys, Dave Cowens, Dan Issel and Mel Daniels (two games as an interim coach) are Hall of Famers who had losing records as head coaches. It must be said, though, that 6-foot-9 legend Larry Bird had an impressive 147-67 run with Indiana from 1997-2000, winning Coach of the Year in his initial season. But Bird, a small forward, was hardly the typical big man who played in the post.
So, there are two issues at play. Why can’t really big guys get NBA head coaching positions, and why aren’t they successful when they do?
Ewing, who retired in 2002 and was named to the Hall of Fame in 2008, has been trying for several years to land a job. He has surmised he’s being pigeon-holed as a big man’s coach.
“I can coach anybody. Jeff worked with me when he was an assistant coach, and was he a big man's coach?" Ewing said, referring to former Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy coaching him before he became a head coach himself.
Other notable big men who have tried unsuccessfully in recent years to land head postions have included 7-foot-2 Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and 6-foot-9 Clifford Ray, a former NBA center and a longtime assistant.
“I really don’t know why, because he was one of the most intelligent guys I’ve ever been around,’’ Cleveland coach Bryon Scott, a teammate of Abdul-Jabbar’s on the Lakers in the 1980s, said of the big fella never having gotten a chance. “He knew the game. I thought he was able to communicate.’’
Some believe not a lot of former big men want to go into coaching because big guys generally are paid better than other players and might not need the money. Miami’s 6-foot-11 Chris Bosh said he has no desire to go into coaching after he retires. While Bosh didn’t cite money, his current contract stipulates he will have made $165 million as a player through 2015-16.
Bosh’s teammate, 6-foot-8 forward Shane Battier, offered one theory on why some big men don’t want to go into coaching. And he was serious.
“Maybe a culprit is bad knees,’’ Battier said. “Big guys historically have had poor knees, and (with coaching) you got to stand up all the time. … Coaches are up and down.’’
Ewing, though, hardly has great knees, and he’s clamoring to become a head coach.
Often, it comes down to opportunity.
“I think there’s kind of the perception that guards are the quarterbacks and that we are the receivers,’’ said Cartwright, a Phoenix assistant who wants again to be an NBA head coach. “And then there is perception that the guard runs a team.’’
Of the 20 former NBA players now head coaches, 15 were guards and two were swingmen.
“Little guys were always closer to the coaches because they were the coaches on the floor when they played,’’ said 7-foot Hakeem Olajuwon, who has not attempted to go into NBA coaching since retiring as a player in 2002 and being enshrined along with Ewing into the Hall of Fame in 2008. “That doesn’t mean a big man doesn’t know the game as well as a point guard. It depends on the individual. … But the general managers put in a position (to hire coaches) are afraid to make a bold move. So everybody wants to play it safe. So everybody is hiring the little guy.’’
Olajuwon commended his former team, with Houston general manager Daryl Morey calling the shots, for taking a chance on McHale. While McHale was a cerebral player and also had a solid run as Minnesota’s general manager in the previous two decades, his interim coaching records of 19-12 in 2004-05 and 20-43 in 2008-09 with the Timberwolves hardly made for a no-brainer choice for the Rockets.
Overall, McHale has been solid, steering Houston to a 27-24 mark and into playoff position. But don’t expect him to offer any ideas why so few really big guys have had success as NBA head coaches.
“I have no idea why,’’ said McHale, who was mostly a power forward with Boston from 1980-93, but also played some center. “I couldn’t even begin to think why not.’’
But Battier, named by the Sporting News in 2010 as the NBA’s smartest player, does have a theory on the subject. He points to the game having gone away from the post to a more perimeter-oriented style, which could hamper matters for big men who coach.
“When you have so few true centers anymore … I don’t know if it’s a different game or what,’’ Battier said. “You don’t have the power centers like you used to.’’
Ewing was one, and now he’d like more power on the bench.
Ewing hopes somebody will take a chance on him. That wasn’t the case last year when the Pistons, instead of putting in place the second-tallest coach in NBA history, went with 5-foot-8 Lawrence Frank, now the NBA’s shortest coach.
Chris Tomasson can be reached at christomasson@hotmail.com or on Twitter @christomasson
