May 20, 2013
With the head-coaching market in full spin, I’ve been pestering a few long-time acquaintances now attempting to jump from brainy assistant into one of the unoccupied big chairs.
Two such hopefuls – in separate phone chats – were mildly lamenting what really seems like a confounding issue. That issue is getting their names in front of those setting up interviews of head coaching candidates.
That’s odd, right? Simply have your agent make contact on your behalf, right?
Well, it’s not that easy. With very few agents representing NBA coaches, teams often are targeting multiple candidates represented by the same person or agency. The agent then prioritizes which coach in his stable is the best fit for – or has the best opportunity to land – a particular job.
Pushing someone else just as vigorously for the same job can seem like a conflict of interest, so this clumsy situation ends up requiring mostly self-promotion from a coach eager to score an interview.
Why not change agents? Well, there haven’t been many agents available who specialize in coach representation. Beyond that, assistant coaching can be quite transient; if you suddenly need to find another assistant’s gig, your long-time agent knows where the vacancies are and is your best bet to land the next one.
But with more coaches realizing they don’t have to retain agents who only represent coaches, more player agents will begin to land coaching clients.
And that seems like another conflict of interest ...
-- Randy Hill
