Ant Wright: "Juwan Howard is another Patrick Ewing situation"
Ewing was an NBA assistant for 14 years before taking the Georgetown job (his alma mater) and he hasn't done well there. Wright thinks Shaka would do well here with the right assistants around him. Thoughts?
Juwan continuing to make Michigan a national power and is the right guy for the job
— ᗩᑎT ᗯᖇIGᕼT (@ItsAntWright) May 16, 2019
All I see is a Patrick Ewing situation
If I’m wrong I’ll gladly eat crow.. but if I’m right (per usual), Twitter will be more entertaining than ever https://t.co/nCLL9QlUfI
I hope they bring in Juwan so you guys have a chance to make me eat crow..
— ᗩᑎT ᗯᖇIGᕼT (@ItsAntWright) May 16, 2019
FOR ONCE
At this point.. promote from within
— ᗩᑎT ᗯᖇIGᕼT (@ItsAntWright) May 16, 2019
Saddi/Yaklich > Howard
I’m not tweeting again til there’s a head basketball coach at Michigan pic.twitter.com/BE5tv4D47M
Can the Timberwolves hurry up and give Juwan Howard the job
— ᗩᑎT ᗯᖇIGᕼT (@ItsAntWright) May 15, 2019
I farted.............there, now we've both contributed to the board
It doesn’t matter who the coach is. Need MOAR FIVE STARRRRS. Rabble rabble.
This but unironically
I thought he said he wasn't tweeting again til there's a head basketball coach at Michigan?
99% sure that was a joke. No way in hell Ant stops tweeting ever.
Which is good, because I enjoy his takes... even the bad ones :D
Most of his takes are bad, but he can be entertaining.
Ant is entertaining as hell.
I agree with Ant Wright on most subjects, including many subjects within this coaching search, but I think he's being too stubborn on Howard. He even compared Juwan to Patrick Beilein.
Those comparisons are valid though. The only reason anyone would talk about Patrick Beilein for this job is that he's John's son. The only reason we'd consider Juwan is that he went to Michigan.
But those things don't at all indicate anything about their ability to successfully lead a top tier college program.
As for meaningful qualifications, they're both way behind Yaklich, who has shown an ability to at least successfully coach and recruit at a top tier program. The only question is whether he's able to lead one, and it's as good a time as any to find out.
I think you’re pretty far off base here. If you’re a college in need of a coach, and a guy, any guy, that is getting interviewed by multiple NBA teams will even consider interviewing at your college, you interview him and give him consideration. Not to do so would be foolish on a major scale. You don’t have to hire him, but not to interview him would be criminally incompetent. If he happened to go to your college, that would make for some nice press, but it would not be the reason that you interview him. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s pretty well the minimum standard of due diligence.
That's because any other NBA assistant who's interviewing for multiple NBA head coaching jobs each year would not give 2 shits about the Michigan job. If Michigan doesn't hire Howard, he will be an NBA head coach, if not this year then within 2 years. What other candidate would be attracted to Michigan in this scenario?
As far as his actual aptitude to the job, he has the potential to be an elite recruiter (best in the Big Ten IMO), an excellent developer of big men, and an above average Xs and Os guy. To me, this is a no-brainer, given the top Stevens/Beard/Donovan tier has already said no.
Yak is also behind Saddi who has more experience and had more success as an assistant coach. Saddi probably should be the #1 candidate for internal promotion more than Yak since he has run everything as an assistant coach plus he's from Michigan area. He has coached Romulus with Nate Oats, coached at Oakland and now Michigan. He has had success in every stop. Why isn't he being discussed more by Michigan fans?
That’s just like, his opinion, man
Ewing was an assistant for 14 years for a reason. Howard has been on every interview list for open NBA jobs and I get the feeling he'd recruit a lot better here than Ewing has/will at Georgetown.
Ewing went into Georgetown when the program was in a bad place and they clearly just don't have the resources to recruit well. Michigan is in a much better spot and Juwan also just seems like a much more upbeat person who would be a better recruiter
Uhhh, seriously? It's Georgetown. John Thompson recruited much better than Ewing did. John Thompson's teams were much better than Ewing's. If it was program related, and not coach related, that doesn't explain how Ewing's two seasons were worse than any season under JT3 and FAR worse than the average season under JT3.
All evidence points to Ewing not being a good coach. He could turn it around. But the results so far don't look good and that's the data we have.
Ewing has only been there for 2 seasons. They were in the basement of the Big East for a couple years before that. While he hasn't done anything great there yet, at least they haven't finished under .500 while he's been there. Not where Georgetown is capable of being, but it is a pretty small sample size, and in my opinion too early to label him as a failure.
See my comment below about why his record is meaningless without context.
I have't labeled him a failure...yet. I did say the early returns are not good. It would be a very rare, unexpected turnaround if he rights the ship.
Ewing's two seasons were worse than any season under JT3
That might be true in terms of Kenpom but not in terms of actual record. JT3's last two teams went 15-18 and 14-18.
I remember reading something on SBNation or The Ringer or something that said Georgetown's big problem with KenPom is they did what Beilein used to do, which was play a bunch of tomato cans in the out-of-conference slate and even though they won most of those games it cratered their ratings. If you look at the games they played, they largely looked like a 9-9 Big East team. Like, Crieghton went 9-9 but played a tougher OOC schedule and so are about 50 spots higher per KenPom.
I think Ewing is going to turn out to be a mediocre HC at Georgetown, but the Hoyas haven't been "Georgetown" in a long time. And Howard is a much younger coach who, by various accounts, acquitted himself better as an assistant. I don't think that the comparison is particularly apt, but Ant also wants to make the point that expecting an alum to come in and be magical isn't realistic.
I wanted to see this as well, Georgetown was a mess when he got there, next year we will know more about his abilities to recruit and coach.
Georgetown’s record 2 seasons prior to Ewing: 14-18 and 15-18
with Ewing: 15-15 and 19-14
Looks like upward trajectory to me. And it’s been only 2 fucking years. You would’ve fired Beilein long ago if this is how impatient people are.
Agreed. Ewing as the comp seems fine to me. Clear upward trajectory after 2 years. If Juwan did the same thing, starting at a better spot than Ewing did, we'd all be very happy.
That's what I was thinking. Whenever I see this I think "is Ewing really that bad?" Beilein wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire here in year 2.
Well, Beilein did increase his win total from 10 to 21 in year two, and made our first tournament in a decade.
Now year three of Beilein, that one was a downer.
This has been irking me. Ewing has been the HC all of 2 seasons and already he’s a bust? And as far as I can tell his team is improving.
Beilein was 31-26 after his first 2 seasons at Michigan with a losing record in his 3rd year. He should have been fired on the spot. Yes?
The record is highly misleading. They played a much easier schedule in a very weak Big East this year (plus non-conf was a joke - 292nd in country) AND they got quite lucky this year - like Hoke year 1 lucky.
Their kenpom was 100th (Torvik was 104th) this year. That's quite a bit worse than last year and both years were the worst for Georgetown in the kenpom era. The trajectory is actually bad. And they're not recruiting well.
John Beilein showed massive improvement from year 1 to year 2 and made the tournament for the first time at Michigan in forever. There is no comparison.
Ewing could turn it around but the early results are not at all promising.
Is Ewing doing a bad job at Georgetown? They were pretty vastly improved in the second year and is recruiting fine.
Is there a chance that even though Patrick Ewing and Juwan Howard are tall, former NBA basketball players that they are, in fact, not the same person?
Big if true
It's just as ridiculous as saying "the last time Warde was in charge of replacing a legendary basketball coach, he hired an assistant to take over and the program burned to the ground. So if Yaklich takes over, all I see is Kevin Ollie 2.0"
It's just a dumb leap
Hey if Warde hires someone who wins a natty next year, then tanks the program, I think I'd take that to be honest.
Ollie did win a national championship with UConn in between the taking over and burning to the ground portion of his time coaching there.
Yes, but overall, I don't think that was worth it
National titles are extremely rare, unless you had John Wooden coach your team. That was UConn's fourth in 75 years of the tournament. It would be Michigan's second in 80 years if we won one next year.
If your program is set back by 4+ years (assuming scandal free), I would almost always say that's worth it.
Uhhh they've been sanctioned and the program very well could revel in mediocrity forever
It wasn't just his coaching. The feeling around the UConn fan base is that recruiting gradually deteriorated after they left the Big East. It will be interesting to see if Hurley can change that
I love Ant, but there is no way for anyone to know this one way or another
I thought I liked him too, but this is. . . impolitic. He can count on starting out on the far outside of any Juwan Howard coachship if he's talking dookey like this now. I mean, make a Ewing comparison but then back it the hell up. Otherwise, you're just another hysterical poster on a message board.
I'm sorry, but why are we taking so much credence into the opinions of former bench players at Michigan?
I've seen a lot of Howard and Donovan trashing because of Wright and Horford this week. Can we get some other people's opinions too?
IDK, from what I've seen and heard, Patrick Ewing is a helluva coach.
I truly believe there's a turnoff because he's like 7 foot and played in an older era, that he can't adapt etc... which is part of the reason he never became a head coach in the NBA.
Seems like it's a battle between (1) guys who seem to be able to coach but might be poor recruiters (2) guys who seem to fit the profile of good recruiters but are unknown or subpar as coaches (3) guys with ties to Michigan and/or Beilein.
The only guy who checks multiple boxes and is actually a (long shot) candidate is Donovan. If we miss on him, you might as well go with a recruiter. Even Beilein couldn't win it all with his under the radar recruits. I doubt we find a better coach than Beilein. So we might as well get someone who can get the players and hope they improve or develop as coaches (Smart, Howard).
Anthony Wright sure loves himself some Anthony Wright. Good grief.
Tough to recruit DC because kids have seen UMD and UVA have more recent success than Georgetown. I am surprised anyone is calling Ewing a failure after 2 seasons. The Big East isn't a world beating conference, but it's not terrible either.
Maybe? Personally, I think he would be better because:
1. Michigan is a better job than Georgetown. This isn't 1990.
2. Howard comes from a very successful NBA organization. Ewing came from Washington, Charlotte, Houston and Orlando. None are paragons of a successful organization (Could make argument Houston is now, but not when Ewing was there).
3. Howard became a target of NBA HC positions much quicker in his coaching career than Ewing did. Could mean little. Teams might just be more inclined to hire players fresh off retirement than they were 10-15 years ago. Or it could mean that Howard is considered a better HC candidate.
Also, Ant hasn't liked a single candidate as coach from what I can tell. Not sure who he'd endorse.
He'd probably endorse himself
He likes Donovan, Marshall, and Smart
On #3 - Ewing was an NBA for 14 years and I remember hearing the reason he took the Georgetown job was because it was clear he just wasn't going to get an NBA head coaching opportunity. Juwan has been coaching for 6 years and interviewed for openings last year and this year in the NBA.
While Ewing may do well at Georgetown and Howard may not here (if he is hired), its pretty clear the NBA does NOT view them as being on the same level as coaches.
To make this comparison true you would have to know how many times Ewing interviewed for a head job(he interviewed for many head jobs over the years)in his first 6 years as an NBA assistant compared to Howard.
Fuck!
I should have known who the OP was.