A program introducing a former NBA player as coach without college coaching experience, as Michigan will formally do with Juwan Howard on Thursday, isn't necessarily a new thing. Several high-major schools have done it in recent years, with St. John's hiring Chris Mullin, Georgetown bringing back Patrick Ewing and Memphis going for Penny Hardaway. Iowa State went for Fred Hoiberg and Alabama hired Avery Johnson. There was FIU hiring Isiah Thomas and FAU hiring Michael Curry. Tulane springing for Mike Dunleavy Sr., Portland hiring Terry Porter and Charlotte bringing in Mark Price. Dan Majerle was tapped for the Grand Canyon job. And it's a trend that goes even further back, when Houston hired Clyde Drexler in 1998.
Most of these moves have not worked out. But with Hardaway's recruiting success, Michigan bringing back Howard and Vanderbilt hiring Jerry Stackhouse, it's a movement that's continuing to gain steam. So we spoke to a half-dozen college coaches with experience working with college and NBA coaches to figure out what's behind the trend.
What's the appeal of guys like Juwan and Penny?
There have been several instances of a school hiring a former playing great to help breathe some life back into a program. It's part of the reason St. John's went for Mullin and Georgetown went for Ewing, and it's certainly the reason Memphis fired Tubby Smith to bring in Hardaway.
Getting a legendary name is sometimes enough to make a hire.
"You are capable of winning the press conference just by making a splash, by getting a household name," said one coach who has worked on both college and pro staffs. "From a recruiting standpoint, you're able to walk into a living room or walk into a gym, and there's already some notoriety, there's some buzz. Maybe he's proven, maybe he's not. But you don't have to go on Google and do research on who he is. It's the eye test, the immediate relevance. Schools get excited about that."
Most of the time, there's also the fact the coach was one of the elite basketball players in the world at a given time. Having extensive NBA experience is attractive to recruits and it's attractive to boosters.
"The pedigree itself. It's the highest level of basketball," one coach said. "They're coming from working with or being the elite of the elite. They know what it looks like to be the best."
On the other side, the NBA guys feel like they're ready to become head coaches -- and sometimes college is the best way to get there. Both Howard and Stackhouse had interviews with NBA teams this spring, while Ewing had been an assistant for 15 years.
"There's only 30 jobs in the NBA," said one assistant who has worked with multiple former NBA guys. "Therefore, with the amount of money these colleges are paying, they would be foolish not to take a couple-million-dollar job. ... The money has gotten so much better. It's a platform where they can go out and coach and win and then get an NBA job."
There's Penny. There's Stackhouse. Why Juwan Howard is different.
Many of the previous hires happened because a high-profile program was floundering and the school thought a legend could reignite the fan base. It was that way with Hardaway, Ewing, Mullin, even Hoiberg and going all the way back to Drexler.
But Michigan is different. The Wolverines aren't struggling. They were in the national championship game two seasons ago. They've been to the Sweet 16 three straight seasons. It's one of the best programs in college basketball. The timing of the search wasn't ideal, but it's not as if the school was forced to hire Howard.
"I do think there's going to be a lot of eyes on Juwan," one coach said. "This is going to be what changes the balance a little bit. ... Michigan's state of the program is vastly different than those trying to rejuvenate and revitalize the fan base. Juwan has to continue the success, and that's asking a lot."
"The success or failure is going to start being evaluated as early as late November," another coach added. "You're talking about a program that loses four or five or six games a year. They hardly ever lose in the non-conference. There's added pressure."
One coach raised an interesting point. What if Howard crushes it in Ann Arbor? What if he wins at a very high level? When North Carolina, Duke, Syracuse and other traditional elites have to replace legendary coaches, will they look to former players who have been on NBA benches as potential replacements?
"I'm not saying those places are going to immediately get filled by a former NBA head coach, but we do know there's a lot of alumni that played in the NBA and would be interested in doing that," he said. "What I do know is if Juwan Howard knocks it out of the park and Penny Hardaway continues to recruit and wins a little bit, I'd be hard-pressed to say those guys don't have a good case.
"I do see a trend, and it might completely see-saw on Juwan's success for that level of program."
The Penny Factor
Penny Hardaway has taken the college basketball world by storm during the 2019 offseason. His Memphis team reached the NIT last season and won 22 games, but it's his recruiting that is stealing headlines. The Tigers have the No. 1 recruiting class in the country, led by the No. 1 recruit in the country, James Wiseman. They had one stretch this spring when they landed three ESPN 100 prospects and a high-level graduate transfer in a one-week span.
But Hardaway is unique. For one, he has a signature sneaker line -- and a style unlike any other coach in the country. He also put in the work on the high school and grassroots side of things, running his own Nike AAU program and coaching at East High School in Memphis.
"No other NBA guy has had the AAU and high school experience that he had," one coach said. "Automatically he's involved with higher-level players right from the jump. It put him ahead in accruing talent as quickly as possible. He's taking advantage of that. One piece turned into two, turned into three. It's been the perfect run for him. He already had his claws into higher-level kids based on relationships before Memphis. That bet paid off for Memphis."
"It's all aligned," one coach said. "Here's a star player, a former NBA player, someone that was involved with Memphis AAU, someone that was involved in Memphis high schools, and he played there. And oh by the way, Mike Miller played for the Memphis Grizzlies and he ran an AAU program in Memphis. Penny was really smart to hire Mike. One was a former Tiger, one was a former Memphis Grizzly."
And with Hardaway's success on the recruiting trail, it might have been a little easier for Vanderbilt and Michigan to hire former NBA players without college coaching experience.
"[Michigan is] probably thinking, 'If Penny can go back to his alma mater, we can bring back a Fab Five member. We're a top-10 program in the country, of course we can do what Penny is doing. Juwan will be able to do that.' Stack was getting interviewed for NBA head coaching jobs, he'll be able to get guys. He's got connections to AAU, which I think people overlook," one coach said. "Penny doing what he's doing is probably creating a little bit of a craze right now."
What's the steepest learning curve for inexperienced coaches?
The biggest challenge, according to coaches who have worked at both levels, is everything besides the actual basketball.
"If you're Juwan or Patrick Ewing, your focus goes from 100 percent basketball, and now it's 50-50 or 40-60," one coach said. "You're now focusing a lot of time on other things: recruiting, compliance, scheduling. That isn't part of the job. That is the job. The basketball part is easy."
Arkansas coach Eric Musselman, who has been both an NBA and college head coach, said his time as an assistant coach at Arizona State and LSU was crucial in his early days as a college head coach.
"The three years as an assistant coach at the college level really helped me prepare for transitioning to a head coach," Musselman said. "I had to understand about buy-games and buy-game contracts. There's the most important aspect, which is the student-athlete piece, understanding the APR. Influencing your student-athletes. You're not just coaching them, you've gotta get them ready for life. Teach them how to be on time, how to rest properly, how to eat. There's obviously the recruiting aspect. My time as an assistant coach really helped me understand the recruiting aspect -- even doing a home visit. In the NBA, you coach and develop your players. It's X's and O's. In college, it's a CEO, general manager and head coach."
Recruiting is perhaps the biggest adjustment -- and also the area where most NBA guys are expected to make the biggest impact early on. Nearly all of the aforementioned names have evaluated at the NBA level, whether as a coach or in the front office, but it's different in college. And as one longtime assistant in the NBA and college put it, the balance of power is different.
"In the pros, it's basketball-only and guys are begging you to get on the team. They're begging you to draft them, sign them," the coach said. "In college, it's almost opposite -- and you're competing against 15 other schools for the services of one kid."
Overall, though, it's the time commitment.
"It's not only the commitment in recruiting, it's the commitment in running the program," one coach said. "They're not pros [the players]. You have to massage so many different things on a daily basis."
Do X's and O's matter? Opinions vary.
The common knock you'll hear on some of the NBA guys hired for college is that they've never been a head coach before, as if they don't know how to draw up a successful baseline out-of-bounds play or come up with a game plan.
While developing strategies and tactics is certainly a factor in coaching, the college level is more about getting players -- and then getting players to buy in to the culture of the program.
"I think a lot of the reasons NBA guys failed was a lack of talent. They couldn't get players," one coach said. "[X's and O's] is not as important as people think. You need these kids to understand they want to fight for you. They need to buy into everything you're selling them. You can be the best X's-and-O's coach in the world, but you need the relationship with them."
"I don't believe it's the make-or-break as far as whether these coaches are successful," another coach said of on-court tactics. "It's about establishing style of play and what type of intensity level they want to play at both ends of the floor. ... Patrick [Ewing] runs a lot of NBA stuff. He goes with what he knows. But his kids play really hard and his kids compete, which I think is more important than what he's drawing out of a timeout. Getting them to buy in and compete is priority No. 1. In the NBA if you can't coach, you'll get [expletive] torn up. But in college, it's overrated."
That said, some coaches do feel more confident going against a first-time head coach than a seasoned veteran.
"I think the adjustment for those NBA guys is that it's a completely different game," one college assistant coach said. "There's no similarity between the spacing and talent of players. So the isolations and simple ball screens that work very effectively in the NBA because of the 3-point line and the spacing, the same plays don't work in college. NBA guys tell college guys that go to the NBA -- Billy Donovan, John Beilein -- that it's a completely different game. It's almost not even the same sport. So the reverse has gotta be true, right?"
Surprise! Not everyone's rooting for this to work.
Jealousy and envy among college coaches isn't rare, and it's not specific to this trend. But when coaches without experience on college sidelines are getting high-major jobs, it's sure to generate some animosity from guys who have been grinding in college as an assistant coach for 20-plus years.
"I saw it and heard it daily, both internally and externally," one coach said. "Experience is experience, and it comes from different standpoints. I look at Steve Kerr, never coached a day in his life, and he's one of the best managers of people I've ever seen in my life. ... When an NBA coach gets hired, they think it's bad for [his assistant coaches]. Even other head coaches assumed we weren't working as hard, because we had an NBA guy as our head coach."
"I've heard guys on our own staff mumble about it," another one said. "Those assistants can complain or say they've been working on their craft, but on the flip side, they never played or never got substantial minutes. You know what? That's great you were in the Big Sky for 12 years, but Juwan Howard played for Pat Riley and [Jeff] Van Gundy. He's probably learned a lot of basketball."
One college assistant coach who never spent time in the NBA said he understands some of the animosity that his colleagues have, but the focus on NBA guys failing in college sometimes doesn't add up.
"It's not like every assistant coach that gets hired has success," he said. "Their failure or success rate might be the same, it's just not as high-profile. Not every lifelong assistant that paid their dues works out, either."