UNC Basketball Possible coaches - UNC hires ex-Nuggets HC Michael Malone

[4thgenheel]

His point was the emotion in the moment, and the need to defuse the volatility that comes from that. It’s clear emotion played a role because of the dramatic fashion of the loss.

i thought we took too long and left him hanging for days, now the decision was made too quickly?

you guys are all over the place.

there is absolutely, positively no putting lipstick on the pig that was the VCU loss in combination with the rest of a mediocre tenure.

people who didn't wanted him fired were on these boards acknowledging the unmitigated disaster and expecting him to be fired. people don't usually have those thoughts about someone who should keep the job.

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

I understand your logic here, I just don't think it holds when considering a college basketball coach vs CEO of a company. In the college coach context - especially the current landscape where you essentially have to re-recruit a new team every year - the downside of keeping an underperforming coach is higher than keeping around an "OK" CEO. There isn't a group of other executives around who can keep things running at an acceptable level if the CEO is just "fine." We were staring down the barrel of another wasted year. We couldn't just keep Hubert around as a lame duck while we did a year-long coaching search. And even after we did that coaching search and took our time we would still have the very real possibility of "signing up for another 3 to 5 years of mediocrity" after that.

Neither your preferred approach nor mine is necessarily the "right" or "wrong" choice. I just think you are overrating the extent we could have improved our chances of a more "sure-thing" coaching hire by waiting a year and underrating the extent to which another year under Hubert could have been a disaster.

"Neither your preferred approach nor mine is necessarily the "right" or "wrong" choice. I just think you are overrating the extent we could have improved our chances of a more "sure-thing" coaching hire by waiting a year and underrating the extent to which another year under Hubert could have been a disaster."

Fair enough. There is no way to prove me or you right vs wrong as to which way is the "rightest approach." As even the "right approach" sometimes delivers the wrong results. Hope you're right here! There is no turning back at this point.

 

[milom98]

Do the people talking about the risk of hiring Byington, McCollum or Donovan really think it's a bigger risk than it would have been bringing Hubert back next year?

Because I sure don't. The confidence has left the building when it comes to Hubert's coaching, roster construction, supposed lack of desire to fundraise..... I would have major concerns about the program being able to overcome the deficiencies listed above and pull in the talent needed to win at the level we're expected to if Hubert was retained.

I mean, sure it's all a risk but we were pretty much on a train to nowhere with Hubert as the conductor, so really not much to lose if you ask me.

 

[4thgenheel]

Your POV on the scope and scale of UNC's basketball coaching job is highly influenced by your passion for the team. For the last 25 years I've been working for $20B+ MNCs. This search is not as big or complicated as you think. Nor is it any more fraught with competitors who will use the search against you.

i'm not saying that there are no similarities but there are also a LOT of differences.

again, no disrespect intended. obviously you've been working for some fortune 500 companies - big time.

 

[duluoz]

Very few fans, and none that I know on here, wanted HD gone if we didn't believe that the program couldn't significantly upgrade the HC position afterward.

Jury’s still out of course… but my position all along has been that this is the key point the pitchfork brigade greatly underestimated the difficulty of. You all talked about what a desirable job it was and how anyone would be lucky to have it, and assumed there’d be a line wrapping around the Dean Dome. And IMO that was clouded by hubris and a lack of appreciation for the full scope of what keeping HD would’ve offered (continuity, legacy), choosing to focus only on the *very* debatable negatives instead.

The choice was weighed with a thumb on the scale whether you knew it or not. But some of us did, and had a strong feeling it would be a lot tougher to improve on HD than many expected.

 

[SnoopRob]

has a program ever done a planned coaching transition with a dead-man-walking coach rather than one who is retiring or leaving of their own accord?

i can't think of that ever happening and can't really see how it would be better - toxicity off the charts. and sounds like it was impossible for UNC to do something like that here anyway as the boosters simply weren't going to fund NIL.

I think it's interesting that those who support this path wanted to do so with HD, who wouldn't even agree to a negotiated resignation and forced the University to fire him.

Can you imagine the cluster of such a coach knowing/suspecting a year in advance that he's on his way out and expected to do his job under those circumstances?

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

i thought we took too long and left him hanging for days, now the decision was made too quickly?

you guys are all over the place.

there is absolutely, positively no putting lipstick on the pig that was the VCU loss in combination with the rest of a mediocre tenure.

people who didn't wanted him fired were on these boards acknowledging the unmitigated disaster and expecting him to be fired. people don't usually have those thoughts about someone who should keep the job.

Now you're just throwing out strawmen to be combative. Some posters may have been upset about the timing around the communication of the decision. That has zero to do with the fact that a decision previously made was quickly reversed in the heat of the moment in an emotional rection to the VCU loss.

 

[rodoheel]

You all talked about what a desirable job it was and how anyone would be lucky to have it, and assumed there’d be a line wrapping around the Dean Dome. And IMO that was clouded by hubris and a lack of appreciation for the full scope of what keeping HD would’ve offered (continuity, legacy), choosing to focus only on the *very* debatable negatives instead.

Completely false. But it's certainly not the first time that you have employed this exact straw-man in service of your argument.

 

[superrific]

Yeah, ultimately he was. Because with the 19 point collapse, he loses his job. Without the 19 point collapse, he doesn’t and is back next season. Period.

Your point is that it was cumulative but the outcome hinged on that one single event, which was a very emotional one for all involved, and clouded the air. That’s his point.

Suppose you and I bet $100 on coin flips -- we flip the coin 11 times and you win if heads comes up 6 times or more. After 10 flips, it's 5-5. You will win if the next toss comes up heads and lose if it's tails. That doesn't mean the outcome of our bet hinged on that one single event. It just played out that way in sequence, but obviously that last coin flip was no different than the coin flips that came before.

 

[duluoz]

people who didn't wanted him fired were on these boards acknowledging the unmitigated disaster and expecting him to be fired. people don't usually have those thoughts about someone who should keep the job.

Once the loss happened, I expected him to be fired. That doesn’t mean I wanted him to be fired nor thought he should be. And my position all along has been guided by a far more cautious view of what would be certainly be lost vs what might possibly be gained. And even with VCU, which hurt… the scale still didn’t tip far enough for me.

 

[superrific]

Your POV on the scope and scale of UNC's basketball coaching job is highly influenced by your passion for the team. For the last 25 years I've been working for $20B+ MNCs. This search is not as big or complicated as you think. Nor is it any more fraught with competitors who will use the search against you.

I consulted to a couple of Fortune 50 companies. At one, the janitor had worked there his whole life. I don't think that gave him any insight into executive hiring or compensation.

Not saying you are a janitor or anything of the sort. I'm just not sure how or why working at a big company has any bearing here, unless you were actively involved in the search.

 

[mpaer]

So rumour of the hour is Chicago may agree to fire the GM to make Donovan happy
Who the hell would want a paycut to go coach College and go be a baby sitter

 

[SnoopRob]

i thought we took too long and left him hanging for days, now the decision was made too quickly?

you guys are all over the place.

there is absolutely, positively no putting lipstick on the pig that was the VCU loss in combination with the rest of a mediocre tenure.

people who didn't wanted him fired were on these boards acknowledging the unmitigated disaster and expecting him to be fired. people don't usually have those thoughts about someone who should keep the job.

What's incredible to me was that what we heard over and over again during the season from HD supporters was "we shouldn't evaluate HD's future until the end of the season and then make a decision".

And the University did exactly that and a decision was not made until the end of the season.

But the complaint is now that that the decision wasn't made far enough in advance and so everything is haphazard and rushed.

I would have been fine if the AD would have privately notified HD on February 1st that he had failed to show enough improvement to be retained, but I can only imagine the howls of indignation on here that would have followed that plan of action.

It seems that the real complaint is that HD was relieved of his position and there would have been complaints no matter how it was handled.

 

[superrific]

Meh... people blow off steam after a gut wreonching loss. We wait a couple days, and cooler heads likely prevail. What people claim they will do in the heat of the moment vs what they actually do are often very different.

As for doing a quiet, behind the scenes planning/ evaluation process with discreet feelers going out next Feb... there are ways to do a confidential search where you don't have a dead man walking scenario. I can't tell you the number of nondisclosure agreements I've been forced to sign by recruiters before they tell me the name of the company they are recruiting for. It happens 10,000 times a day in the business world without the person currently in the role knowing.

The head coaching position at UNC is far more visible than any but a handful of corporate CEOs. The average corporate search doesn't have leakers to an entire industry built around early scoops.

 

[4thgenheel]

Now you're just throwing out strawmen to be combative. Some posters may have been upset about the timing around the communication of the decision. That has zero to do with the fact that a decision previously made was quickly reversed in the heat of the moment in an emotional rection to the VCU loss.

i'm being combative?

lol dude, you and a few others are re-litigating a firing that happened nearly 2 weeks ago and has been brewing for a couple of years as if it was both totally unfair and totally unexpected.

i haven't seen anyone report that UNC decided that HD was definitely staying prior to the end of the season. seems more likely it was hoped/expected that we could keep him and then we couldn't when the results were such an abject disaster.

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

i'm not saying that there are no similarities but there are also a LOT of differences.

again, no disrespect intended. obviously you've been working for some fortune 500 companies - big time.

There are differences to every hire... and none of them are as esoteric as the people closest to them like to think they are.

Before my MNC days, I was in consulting. The companies who made the worst decisions were the smallish (<$500M) family-run companies who had gotten to a certain size based on a good idea and an iconic founder... where the next generation couldn't make the mental/emotional shift from being a family-run business to being run like a successful company.

Publicly making emotional decisions in the heat of the moment pretty much never ends well. I'm not discounting the 1,000 miles of road that lead up to the decision. I get it and why the decision was made. But the how and the why were horribly mangled... and it's impacting the process now.

 

[Icky Mettle]

i thought we took too long and left him hanging for days, now the decision was made too quickly?

you guys are all over the place.

there is absolutely, positively no putting lipstick on the pig that was the VCU loss in combination with the rest of a mediocre tenure.

people who didn't wanted him fired were on these boards acknowledging the unmitigated disaster and expecting him to be fired. people don't usually have those thoughts about someone who should keep the job.

It also wasn’t just the VCU loss that was the last straw in and of itself. The last straw was that loss combined with the horrible performance vs. Clemson before it and the blowout loss to Duke before that. A couple of wins in the ACCT may have saved his job despite that VCU loss and the way it happened.

 

[SnoopRob]

i haven't seen anyone report that UNC decided that HD was definitely staying prior to the end of the season. seems more likely it was hoped/expected that we could keep him and then we couldn't when the results were such an abject disaster.

All of this.

In fact, I remember a very specific update from IC before the dook game that went something like "it is expected that HD will be retained, although going 0-3 to end the season could affect that expectation."

And we all know what happened over those last 3 games.

 

[superrific]

The idea that we should have kept HD as a caretaker for a year while conducting a search is utterly loco. There's a reason why companies don't even let fired employees in the building to get their stuff, lol.

In general, you never want to put decisions in the hands of people with no stake in the outcome. Especially people that might be angry at you for what they see as unjust treatment. Even if HD would never try to sabotage the program, he's also to be motivated to do a really good job. If there's a two game losing streak, think he's going to be in the film room scrutinizing everything to fix it, or will he say, "fuck it, it's the next guy's problem."

I would not treat the "keep HD as a placeholder" as a serious idea at all.

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

I consulted to a couple of Fortune 50 companies. At one, the janitor had worked there his whole life. I don't think that gave him any insight into executive hiring or compensation.

Not saying you are a janitor or anything of the sort. I'm just not sure how or why working at a big company has any bearing here, unless you were actively involved in the search.

I'm intentionally being vague, so I completely understand your POV... but my role does happen to give me a lot of insight/ involvement in executive hiring and compensation.