The New Orleans Pelicans Should Pick From One Of The Ripest Coaching Trees in the NBA
The New Orleans Pelicans are officially beginning the search for the team’s next head coach. After finally getting rid of a coach who consistently underperformed in Alvin Gentry, the team is searching for a leader to make the jump into contention.
With this search in its early stages comes a lot of speculating, who will be the coach that gets to inherit the team with the most young talent in the NBA? Right now, most people believe it will be a big name coach coming to rescue.
Early reports are indicating that previous head coaches Tyronn Lue and Kenny Atkinson are frontrunners. Meanwhile, there’s been other sources putting out notions that coaches like Mike D’Antoni, Mark Jackson, and Jason Kidd will be in the running.
It’s understandable, many fans and even people in the NBA are drawn to big names. They believe that past successes in previous spots mean that a big-name coach will come in and do the same for their organization. Often though, it’s quite the opposite.
What about Gregg Popovich, Phil Jackson, or even Nick Nurse? Those three coaches are big names now but once upon a time, casual NBA fans said “WHO?” upon their hiring. That’s why the New Orleans Pelicans fans should give thought to the name Darvin Ham.
Darvin Ham is currently the lead assistant for the Milwaukee Bucks making him another fruit to the largest growing coaching tree in the NBA, the Mike Budenholzer tree.
Why The New Orleans Pelicans Should Be Looking at Ham
The reason Pelicans fans should grow familiar with Darvin Ham actually dates back to his start with Budenholzer on the Atlanta Hawks in 2014. Lead by Budenholzer, Ham was a starting assistant coach on a staff that also included Kenny Atkinson, Quinn Synder, and Taylor Jenkins.
See a pattern here? Along with Budenholzer, every one of those assistants has gone to head coaching with relative success. Everyone except for Ham that is. Now as Budenholzer’s last remaining assistant from that staff, it might be getting time for his shot at being a head coach too.
Ham’s candidacy goes beyond just opportunity though. There are some really valuable traits in his resume that make him a perfect candidate for the New Orleans Pelicans as well. It starts with player development.
Assistants under Mike Budenholzer have been tasked with playing vital roles in the growth of young players and that task seems to stick with them when they go one to head coaching as well. Right now, the biggest compliment to Atkinson, Synder, and Jenkins as head coaches is that they became great program builders when they took head coaching jobs.
Quinn built the Jazz into one of the toughest defensive teams in the NBA, Atkinson took one of the worst jobs in the NBA with the Nets and created innovative offenses that improved the team, and Jenkins in currently turning the young Memphis Grizzlies into a Western Conference threat too.
Imagine if Ham could bring his program to the New Orleans Pelicans? What if he could even mesh some of his former colleagues’ best schemes together to make the Pelicans a powerhouse? That could be just what the organization is looking for.
One last reason to consider Ham, he adds something to his coaching styles that none of his colleagues ever could. The experience of being an NBA player.
That’s right, Ham was an NBA player from 1996 to 2005 winning a championship with the Detriot Pistons in 2004. Darvin Ham knows what’s it like to have success in the NBA from both the coaching and playing side of the game, something that the New Orleans Pelicans need.
Remember Darvin Ham
I firmly believe that Darvin Ham is one of the best head coaching prospects available for the New Orleans Pelicans. His time coaching under some of the great minds in basketball on both offense and defense shows that he could come in and install a system that would benefit New Orleans’ youth.
His days as a player give him a powerful voice that the young Pelicans will listen to which will make them buy into Ham’s system, unlike Alvin Gentry. With Ham at the helm, all the qualities that the team says they want in a coach would be there.
New Orleans fans, you may not have known Darvin Ham before this but you do now and you should be begging the organization to hire him as the head coach of the future.