Seth Davis piece on Donovan

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/seth_davis/06/01/donovan.react/index.html

Great column. I always hate when people bash a coach or a player for running to the money. When you're talking this kind of money, the ones that bash are always the ones that have never been offered that kind of cash. (Davis says this in the column, I'm just re-stating it here as my opinion as well).

 

He makes a good point. We don't bash a fellow writer for taking a higher paying gig at a different paper, so why bash a coach for doing the same?

 

There's nothing wrong with taking a job for more money. There's nothing wrong with declining to tell the complete truth about your career plans.

But there is something wrong with flat-out lying -- absolute blatant unmitigated bullshit -- about what you're doing, and then blaming the media for questioning your truthfulness.

Compared to most others in this situation, Donovan actually handled this pretty well. Orlando made the offer on Wednesday, he took the job on Thursday. He didn't issue statement after statement about how he was staying at Florida forever. Of course, the job had been open for a month or so, and undoubtedly Donovan's agent had been talking to the Magic for most of that time, so most of the nuts and bolts were hammered out before the whole thing broke publicly.

So Donovan wasn't put in a situation of repeatedly denying interest in the job, swearing everloving eternal loyalty to Florida, etc etc blah blah. Of course, Donovan has only had one major job-flirtation episode in his past (with UK a month or so ago), as opposed to about 25 with Saban.

 

I don't understand the Saban comparisons or the people who said Donovan was lying...

He turned down Kentucky flat. He didn't even flirt with them or take a trip.

He interviewed in Memphis, so he was obviously interested in the NBA. He was just waiting for the right place and Orlando is in a much better position to win soon that Memphis is, and he only has to move two hours away in a state where he is a God...

It's a great move and I think he's going to be successful.

 

The column's a pretty standard re-hash of everything else that's been written about him. That being said, when you consider what Davis points out - the fact that he was at Florida for 11 years and there couldn't be a better time for him to move - you have to think that's it's an all-around good move. It's going to be hard to shake the Pitino comparisons, though. He might need two or three years to do that - which he'll hopefully get.

 

Hope this isn't a DB from the Billy D Goes to Orlando thread, but ...

Seth Davis touches on this in the column but he doesn't go into great detail.

When Pitino took over in Boston, he was both GM and coach.
And when Calipari went to the Nets, he was both coach and exec VP of operations.

Donovan is just the coach in Orlando. Seems to me that will work big time in his favor.

 

You know what will work even better for him? Having Dwight Howard.

 

Yes. And as someone pointed out on another thread, all the "Tim Floyd sucked in the NBA" takes seem to gloss over personnel too. Take a look at Chicago's roster before he took the job, and then look at it when he got the job and they had that first draft. I would have liked to have seen Phil Jackson try coaching that team and the teams that followed.