The View from OKC: Donovan "Hardly Has Any" Job Security
If you're curious about what they're thinking in OKC, this was written by a sport radio host in Oklahoma City - speculating on what it means that Billy Donovan is at the top of the Michigan rumor mill.
LINK.
This guy admits he has no intel that Donovan has been contacted about the job. It's just his speculation as an OKC beat guy.
I thought this was the most telling paragraph:
"So if Michigan, who has been to two Final Fours in the past six years and five Sweet Sixteen’s over that same period, offered Donovan a multi-year deal that a two-time National Champion coach would command, it would be hard for me to believe that Billy wouldn’t seriously consider taking the job."
Our defensive backs are known for being a bit "handsy" - that's the way they are coached.
Is this a moral problem for you? After all, the rules don't allow for this?
How about hard counts on offense? Should Warrinner be teaching offensive lineman how to hold and get away with it?
And our DBs are doing it because other programs like MSU were doing it and not getting called.
Same reason people drive 70 (or more) in a 55 zone, if the police aren't enforcing it, people will do it. I guess not to many people have integrity these days.
Is this a moral problem for you?
Yes, it bothers me, and I wish they would stop.
Well now you're just fucking with us.
Good lord you are obscenely self-righteous. Everyone I have ever met who is as self-righteous as you are is a total hypocrite.
You NEVER speed while driving? NEVER jaywalked? NEVER had a Sharpie pen in public? NEVER bet anyone and followed through? NEVER logged on to an unsecured WIFI? In Kalamazoo it's technically illegal to serenade your girlfriend. You're in favor of jailing dudes just for being sweet to their gals just because it's the "rules"? I guess it depends on how good the dudes voice is but ....
Everyone, including, knows you have, and will, break rules.
The rules are no longer enforced by the people who made them. So they're not even rules at this point, it's just us handcuffing ourselves for no reason at all.
Talking about the bag friend, not covering up multiple rapes. Pretty big difference there. Also, you can continue to pretend the high road exists if you want. Kind of telling though that the guy who was the best at it finally threw in the towel as well!
Well, I am willing to sacrifice your integrity if it means we can win multiple titles.
These are nice sentiments. But it's sports, it is really not that serious. You don't get awards as J the fan for having some super moral high ground while the rest of us are scum.
I guarantee you, if Donovan is the coach and Michigan is in the championship, you will be cheering just as hard as you always did.
If Donovan isn't a candidate, then Manuel is already a failure as AD. I'm not saying he has to be the #1 candidate, but dammit, he should be on the list.
That's a dumb take. Evaluate Warde by the hire he makes, not the list he draws from.
Most of us don't think Donovan is remarkably dirty. But perhaps we don't have the whole story? Sam Webb's willingness to raise this as a reservation suggests that it's a real thing to the athletic department.
The argument can be made that it shouldn't be. Well, maybe. But nobody here wants Sean Miller or Will Wade, guys we know are as dirty as it gets. If People Who Know are familiar with Donovan and know that he's Miller/Wade level dirty, I'm fine with him not being on the list if that's the reasoning. People scoff that Roy Williams at Kansas griped... but, he DID gripe. There's probably fire under that smoke. So what if there's corruption by Roy as well?
I think Donovan should be the first candidate. But I'll wait to evaluate the actual hire, and then wait for the actual hire to post results.
While I do agree that the fanbase is jumping ahead of itself already writing Warde’s obituary on this coaching search, I do think it is important to point out that our fanbase is often on the wrong side of the good vs dirty question by false equivalence.
”Dirty” in my mind should be university and coaching practices that produce actual victims. Like the horrors that went on at Baylor, PSU and MSU. That’s dirty and despicable.
There is a next level of “dirty” which undermines your entire institution and educational mission. Syracuse, Minnesota, Missouri among others. North Carolina declaring themselves a fake university to escape punishment from the NCAA. That’s dirty.
With this backdrop of real, documented and impactful wrongdoing producing long term damages to victims, fanbases and administrations like ours need to be ashamed of ourselves for creating and enthusiastically supporting an environment where we have put hundred dollar handshakes on the level of institutional rapes.
We do this. Michigan provides the cover for these deeply disgusting wrongdoers by our Puritanical approach to this whole topic. At the end of the day, if we consider everything and everyone dirty, then literally no one is. A guy like Izzo is considered a paragon of virtue because he was mentioned in the recent college basketball trial as a guy that doesn't pay for players. Our stand on this means that the other things Izzo has overlooked are "ok" because he doesn't write checks to players.
Lets endeavor to save our moral preening for actual wrongdoing and not care so much if a poor kid gets a nice car or a new suit for the first time in his life.
Dude, no one is saying my of those things are remotely the same. They’re just saying, “we don’t want to cheat, and don’t want to hire a person we think may cheat.” I don’t see what’s so controversial about that.
Maybe the rules are dumb. Ignoring them is not the solution to that. Try to change the rules, leave the NCAA, whatever. Don’t cheat. It’s not that complicated.
Actually, when you use a broad term like "dirty" and apply it from everything from on campus brothels, covering up rapes and free pizzas, we are saying all those things are the same.
Thank you for this articulate response. My thoughts exactly
An interesting argument. I think WRT Warde there’s value in differentiating between the execution of the search and the presuppositions held going into the search.
If Warde refuses to hire someone who he suspects is dirty, and he thinks Donovan is dirty, that’s not a failure.
But perhaps the criteria is wrong.
It may well be that we have a legacy Bo issue here. This board is not representative of the entire fanbase or the administration or the regents. Most of us believe that the big two sports are so hopelessly dirty that there’s no point looking for a saint. But if the regents and the president and a majority of the fanbase believe that you can and should win while being clean, Warde has to look for someone who gives the impression that he can do that. He simply can’t hire a guy that has visible dirt on his hands.
So I understand where you are coming from, can you define "visible dirt on his hands?"
And after having done so, can you then go into brief detail about which candidates whose names have been bandied about qualify as having that visible dirt?
So let's assume that a lot of programs have stuff going on. Let's further assume that the shenanigans look different at different places. A financial advisor dropping some cash on a player that they hope will be a customer in later years, with no knowledge of anyone in the program, is different than Sean Miller paying players out of his own bank account.
Now the athletic department is connected. There are "people that know." Not just act like they know, but actually know. Former players who actually heard right from the source about stuff that went on. People connected to the same high schools as other players. People who heard straight from family or representatives of the players what they were being offered. There are people that know. So things invisible to us may be visible to them.
People hand-wave the Al Horford thing; I'm inclined to do so as well. But if, hypothetically, people here knew (not: "believed," "had suspicions of," "saw signs of," but KNEW) that Horford went to Florida because of shenanigans that Billy Donovan was aware of or involved in, that's "visible dirt." Knowingly hiring a guy that you know has cheated and will cheat again is different from hiring a guy who may or may not look the other way in a big program. Certainly it's a different thing in our department, if not at other places.
The list of names that have "visible dirt" is smaller to us than it is to the administration. Obvious ones include Sean Miller, Will Wade, and Rick Pitino. Pitino is a coach who has won multiple championships and is excellent at coaching basketball and nobody dreams of listing him as a candidate because there is "visible dirt."
Other guys being speculated on? I have no idea. I'm not a Person that Knows. But there are probably a few. It's interesting that Brian sort of references this in relation to Greg Marshall in today's searchbits. I like the idea of Marshall, but Brian's thesis is that there is Something keeping other schools away. The schools Know, in that scenario.
I want to preface what I'm going to say that I don't want to advocate hiring someone who is now or has ever had a NCAA Show Cause sanction against them, but I do want to propose for you a scenario you may not have thought of.
You seem to be taking particular exception to a guy like Sean Miller supposedly paying players from his own bank accounts. Fine, let's use him in a hypothetical vs say our own Steve Fisher.
Your response seemed to indicate that you are not as concerned about a coach (Like Fisher) who didn't "know" players were being paid by outside forces, and that having a coach who either through blindness or willfull neglect ends up with a roster of paid players vs a coach who actively pays the players himself.
This is what I expect what 90% or more of fans think, but I ask you this.
If you have a case like what happened here with Fisher vs what has been happening at Arizona, which of the two hypotheticals do you think is more likely to be hit with something completely devastating - like say a point shaving scandal?
I would say your Sgt. Schultz coach who "knows nothing" carries the vastly greater risk or such a scandal, or perhaps not as outwardly devastating but horrific for the team on the floor, a player who is paid by professional interests (agents etc.) who will whisper in the player's ear that if he wants to declare and be a lottery pick, he needs too look for his own shot more, etc.
I think in the case where the coach actively knows - or even manages - the payouts to the players, that there is a much greater chance that the needs of the university, the team and the player will be aligned than if outside forces are paying the players.
While I know many here do cut Steve Fisher a pass for what happened, the facts are that Ed Martin was a bookmaker, and we don't know if that ever affected what happened on the court, the reality is we have to not hide our heads in the sand and pretend nothing could have happened under Fisher's benign neglect style.
The thing is: what is "Michigan culture?" Is Michigan culture finding an exact replacement for Beilein who is clean as a whistle, a good person, and good coach? Well, guess what, that's not gonna happen because there's only like 2 of those coaches out there in Tony Bennett and Jay Wright, who both aren't coming to Michigan. Culture is developed. But lets not sacrifice performance for getting some squeaky clean nice guy like Porter Moser. Donovan seems like the best bet
Jay Wright makes just under 4 million at Nova. So we should make him say not to 5 million, then 6 million, then 7 million, then 8 million.
Is there something where he wouldn't just get another job in the NBA? He seems like he'd be a good candidate for other teams to poach.
This was exactly my thought. If he is let go by OKC, I would guess another NBA team would try and pick him up.
Most of those jobs are filled now. Only Memphis and Minnesota are without coaches
I don't think Donovan being fired this season is really on the table. I think most people figure that next season is make or break for him, at which point he could potentially be let go and then be a top candidate for any other NBA coaching vacancies.
He's made the playoffs every season as a head coach.
At a minimum, he would be offered another head coaching job
I don't think his stock is all that high in the NBA. Had KD his first year and lost in the conference Finals. Lost in the first round every year since. Winning % slightly improved each year, but he's had Paul George to go with Westbrook the last two. I think he could get one if teams are interested, but I don't think he'd be successful. He hasn't won much with two franchise players in 3 of his 4 seasons.
Exactly. If he has a strong preference to stay in the NBA, then he will likely have that opportunity for a while. However, he would certainly have more job security and (likely) higher pay coming to Michigan. Donovan will probably be able to get an NBA HC gig a year from now if he's fired, but teams won't be throwing money at him because he's not noticeably better than whoever else they're considering. He has far more leverage for Michigan.
The smart play for Donovan would be to try leverage a strong Michigan offer into an extension from OKC, and if they don't offer one (which in itself should be telling about their future plans for him), then make the jump. Jobs like Michigan don't open up every year.
There basically aren't any NBA job openings left except for one or two.
So basically he's the Valenti of OKC radio - no intel and makes baseless claims about local hoops coach. Cool, Hook 'Em...
"He has no info that Donovan has been contacted by Michigan."
Only Warde Manuel could find a way to bungle this and justify a reason not to go after him, which by every indication he hasn't thus far. This is the basketball version of Brandon not hiring Harbaugh because he said mean things about UM's academics and had "character concerns." The self sabotage at Michigan is truly embarrassing.
Jesus maizen, you’re hard to take seriously.
Why is he hard to take seriously? This is more or less what insiders (including Sam Webb) are saying at 247 and Rivals.
If we really do make a hire without asking Donovan, then Warde should go. There's if, ands, or buts. Like others have said, it'd be like hiring Hoke without asking Harbaugh who's sitting there waiting for the call.
This is just a bad take. To pretend that Brandon did not call Harbaugh before we ended up with Hoke is just wrong. Any day you have to remotely defend Dave Brandon is a bad day, you are making me have a bad day
I mean this is based on nothing. Basically nothing, except for the fact that Warde had a short list already, because he assumed Beilein would take the next NBA job that came calling, has been made public about the process.
How can you question a process that you know essentially nothing about?
Warde "assumed Beilein would take the next NBA job that came calling" but "was surprised he left." Yeah, good luck trying to make sense of that.
And if you've been following Sam Webb's tidbits this isn't "based on nothing." But hey how dare people have opinions.
"Assum(ing) Beilein would take the next NBA job" and yet being "surprised he left" for the Cavs and Dan Gilbert jibes with me.
That's not true. Dave Brandon could bungle it.
Bill Martin could have fucked it up also. He’s the one that gave us RichRod.
He also gave us John Beilein.
I'd rather have Bill Martin looking for another bball coach than Brandon...
Yes he did, but his handling of the football coach search was a galactic fuck up, which I will never forgive him for.
Martin made two men's basketball hires - Amaker and Beilein. One worked out, the other not so much. He also made some pretty shaky women's basketball hires. And yeah, RichRod.
I'd rather have Bill Martin looking for another bball coach than Warde Manual.
Welp, that is just dumb.
They say opinions are like assholes...
This is an unbelievably bad take. The hiring of RichRod was universally praised as an absolute coup after a seemingly botched search. People were ecstatic that he was hired. It's the management of the program - largely under Dave Brandon - and the whole culture garbage with Lloyd Carr that resulted in the train wreck that was his tenure.
Recall Brian's take at the time:
After flailing about for a solid month, they locked down an A-list candidate. There are no complaints from this sector. There is an apology pending...
Rodriguez is everything a Michigan fan could want in a hire; to get him after the month-long disappointment train that was the coaching search is manna from heaven.
This fan base fucking sucks sometimes. Good lord this is a horrible take.
Only Warde Manuel could find a way to bungle this
You really think every other AD in the country could convince an established NBA coach to come to college? Take a step back off the ledge.
Well Hackett got a top tier NFL coach to come here, so it is possible.