| Losing Elie Would Be Big Mistake Authored by Payam Jahromi - May 29, 2006 - 6:18 pm

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The possibility of Mario Elie becoming the Kings’ new coach is very disturbing. If you haven’t heard, Elie interviewed with Sacramento last week and is one of the candidates to replace Rick Adelman.
After two seasons, I feel like Mike Montgomery has been given every chance to succeed, and all the Warriors have done is underachieve.
To recap what happened over the past year: The expectations were at an all-time high before the season. The season couldn’t have gone worse than it did. Mullin announces that Monty will be back.
Something just doesn’t seem right. And then you have a young assistant coach who wants to be a head coach, who the players respect and who is one of those guys that you just get a feeling will be a good coach.
Elie wasn’t the most talented player, yet he was the kind of guy you wanted on your team. Sort of like Avery Johnson, or Scott Skiles, or Jerry Sloan. I think you get where I’m going here.
Elie wants to be a head coach. He would probably love being the head coach for the Warriors. The team has nothing to lose by making the move. He’d be relatively cheap (which would help relieve all the money you’re losing by firing Monty). In other words, it makes perfect sense to make Mario Elie the next Warriors coach.
And that’s why it won’t happen.
Around the League:
- I know it’s been a couple weeks, but I want to talk real quick about game seven of the Lakers/Suns series, the game where Kobe refused to shoot in the second half of a Phoenix blowout.
There are many reasons why Kobe will never be MJ, but that game proves it more than anything else. Whatever reason Kobe had for deciding not to shoot, you have to ask yourself one question: Would a young MJ have done that in the same situation?
My point is, by deciding to be “unselfish” at a time when his team needed him to score 70 points more than ever, he was more selfish than he’s ever been.
- Game four of the Mavs/Spurs series was the worst-refereed game I can ever remember (in favor of Dallas). Before that, the worst game I’d ever seen was game six of the Kings/Lakers series in 2002 (in favor of L.A.). By the way, Dick Bavetta was the head ref in both games.
- If the playoffs are any indication, the MVP should have gone to either Lebron or Dirk.
- The Clippers were a nice story. Their fans have been deprived for so long (sound familiar). They had a breakout season. They won a series and almost made it to the conference finals.
(Boy I’m so glad they lost.)
- The Warriors will have the ninth pick in the draft. My initial reaction? Who cares. I’m sure I’ll get more excited as draft day gets closer, but nobody they draft will make a huge impact on next year’s team. If you want to get excited about anybody, get excited about the guys from the last couple of drafts.
If you have any questions or comments, you can reach me at pjahromi@sbcglobal.net |