Doug Collins, Great TV Analyst, But Is He A Great Coach?

Posted by Kyle Stack under SDC COMMENTARY

Doug Collins’ strange coaching career continues. The TNT analyst (and a very good one, I might add) will be coming full circle with his new head coaching job with the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls were his first stop in what has been an on-again, off-again NBA coaching career. He navigated the ship of a Michael Jordan-led squad from 1986-89 (137-109) that reached the brink of the NBA Finals in ‘89, losing to the Pistons. Chicago went 13-17 in the playoffs.

Fittingly, Collins’ next stop was Detroit ? in 1995. While there for three seasons (1995-98), he coached a player in Grant Hill who was pegged as The Next Jordan. However, Hill’s career seemed to parallel David Robinson at the time. The former Duke star was unquestionably talented, but the prevailing thought was that he was too nice of a guy to win big in the playoffs. He didn’t have a mean streak. Despite going 121-88 during the regular season, Detroit lost six of eight playoff games as Collins seemed out of touch with his young star.

Three years later, Collins coached Jordan again for two seasons (2001-03) with the Washington Wizards. With a much older and much less effective Jordan, along with No. 1 overall draft pick Kwame Brown, the Wizards posted back-to-back 37-45 seasons, with nary a playoff appearance. Collins again appeared lost coaching young players as he (and Jordan) couldn’t find a connection with Kwame. Of course, nobody can really connect with the man with hands of stone.

Anyway, it feels like each of Collins’ coaching jobs was more or less a reflection of his prior job. When I think about Collins as a coach, I think of a guy who has had two legitimate great young players (MJ, Hill), yet underperformed in the playoffs. And when you include his stop in Washington, it seems that Collins is another one of many ex-players ? including Magic and Isiah ? who have not been able to relate to the sensitive emotional states of the young, modern players.

Collins seems like a great guy during the TNT broadcasts and he is one of the few color commentators in sports who seems to take pride in dissecting the X’s and O’s of games instead of lazily drifting through games without educating viewers. He also does it without sounding condescending or, frankly, crazy, like ESPN’s Joe Morgan. With that said, he’s a barely above-average NBA coach. With his track record of not tapping the potential of young players, I can’t imagine what the Bulls think will happen with their slew of young players (Deng, Noah, Gordon, Ty Thomas) who will only get younger once Beasley or Rose join the squad. Maybe they’ll trade the pick and players for Carmelo Anthony, who’s on the trade market. The hire just doesn’t make sense.

Avery Johnson or Mark Jackson would have made sense. But to hire a great guy who just seems in over his head running a basketball team seems like a move that will continue Chicago’s inability to get over the proverbial hump in the Eastern Conference.

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One Response to “Doug Collins, Great TV Analyst, But Is He A Great Coach?”

Basketball Bet Man on May 29th, 2008 4:51 pm

Doug Collins has given us some great years of commentary, so I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. I mean, to be fair, this is gonna be his first real shot at coaching in since Detroit, which was really his only decent shot, but that was marred by the Jordan years and incompetence building around Grant Hill and Grant Hill injuries, if I remember correctly. Even though Jordan liked him for the most part, no old school coach could corral Jordan, and in Washington he was handcuffed by Jordan.

After not being able to mesh the young bulls way back when, I’m a little skeptical just like the rest, but you have to imagine the man has learned some things from his less than stellar experience with MJ and probably benefited from some years away from the game. He’s probably observed the state of the game a lot and chilled out a little in the absence of the wear and tear of NBA coaching in his life.

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