Billy Donovan going to Magic

Yeah, they are great friends.

Packer is a prick with a good head for the game. Vitale just makes you want to watch it. I know, he finds nothing wrong with anyone, but 95 percent of the players he comments on when at a game won't be crap in the pros or be even drafted. So I can cut him a little slack there.

 

I wonder if the Gators will try to lure Virginia Commonwealth University coach Antony Grant. He did a great job as a first-year coach. He's young and has the reputation of being an outstanding recruiter. Plus, he's from Florida and cut his teeth under Donovan.

 

If you had ever spent a significant amount of time around any of these big-time college basketball coaches, you'd get it.

The modern-day college basketball coaches are all cut from the same cloth. A Dean Smith-type legacy doesn't interest them. Why? Because it's not possible to attain, certainly not in this era. In Dean Smith's day, how many programs could legitimately win a national championship? Seven, maybe? Ten at the absolute most. Now, you've got literally three dozen programs that have the resources and desire to win it all. It's not realistic anymore for a program to stay in the top 10 year after year. Michigan State was the best program going for about five years straight, but for the last two Izzo has struggled a bit. Duke hasn't been good for a couple years. And on and on and on.

Two summers ago, Billy Donovan was regarded by his peers as the biggest cheater in the sport and a guy who was more likely to choke in the first round than win it all. Then, he gets lucky with a group of kids who, frankly, weren't that highly rated as high school players. The Noah/Horford/Brewer/Green class was a nice recruiting class when they came to Florida, but by no means a blockbuster. They played well together, developed quickly, and it snowballed into back-to-back titles. It would be impossible to duplicate what that group did, because the reality is, so many things had to go right for it to happen.

Does Calipari or Floyd or Kruger think it was a mistake to go to the NBA? Hardly. Just look at their bank accounts. Their families are taken care of for generations.

If Billy wins in the NBA, great. If he loses, he'll have almost $30 million to show for it. Then he can come back to college and have his pick of jobs. Not bad.

The fact that college coaches have failed makes it more likely -- and not less likely -- the next hot-shot coach (in this case Donovan) will make the jump to the NBA. Their egos demand it.

Furthermore, I think people who cover basketball do a very poor and unfair job when talking about the NBA stints of Kruger, Floyd and Calipari. While it is absolutely true that NBA coaching and scouting is far more advanced than college, those three did not fail in the NBA because they couldn't coach. Kruger can X and O with anybody, but he was in Atlanta for goodness sakes. Tim Floyd had no shot at all with the Bulls in the post-Jordan and Pippen era. Phil Jackson would have lost just as many games as Floyd did. And Calipari did get to the playoffs in his second year before getting swallowed up in a messy ownership change.

 

Anthony Grant, there's a Jeremy Foley on line 1. This is Grant's job. Who else are they going to get this late?

 

Not too mention the fact that Calipari had a bunch of idiotic veterans like Chris Gatling, Jason Williams and Kendall Gill on that team and they all thought he was an ass and didn't want to listen to him.

I'll say this -- I'd have far more concern about Florida if they do hire Anthony Grant then I would have concern about the Magic. Donovan will do fine.

I think Grant will be in over his head, I just don't think he's ready for that kind of spotlight yet.

 

Fixed

 

Kentucky just beat him in one of the country's biggest recruiting wars of the year. Granted, that wasn't a Florida kid, but it's been a good while since UK had a Floridian on their roster. It's not a huge area of recruitment for UK, mainly because A) Smith didn't seem to do much recruiting anywhere and B) Gillispie is targeting Texas more than anywhere. And, FWIW, Gillispie is going to win his fair share of recruiting battles based on his work ethic alone, no matter who he's recruiting and what school he's representing. JMO from talking to/being around him and the way he approaches his job.

I don't see it as being that bad of a decision. He had nothing really left to accomplish in G-ville and, like has been posted, if he shits the bed in the NBA people will be on his nuts to come back to college.

Plus, he could have done much worse than Orlando, who already has the most important piece of any NBA puzzle in place--a potentially great big man.

I'm going to miss Billy in the SEC though. With the hiring of Gillispie at UK, four of the country's hottest coaches were going to go at it in the same division--the two Billys, Bruce Pearl and Dennis Felton.

Anthony Grant will be the next head coach at UF.

 

Extremely well-said. And I can totally picture idiotsnetwork starting up one of those sites, if he could only figure out why his computer wasn't giving him a Tab.

That said, I'm going to have fun watching donovan flop. Is anyone going to take Eddie Munster seriously in the NBA? Really? C'mon. Good for Billy and his bank account. He'll get shit-canned after 2 1/2 years, take a year-and-a-half off and then take over at Kentucky. Book it.

 

Three words.

You. Dumb. Shit.

And no, I'm not a Florida fan (although I flirted with one in a Cheesecake Factory...)

 

Nice.

I'm sure Lucas is about shit little green apples right now. He and the other recruits, but especially him since he took so long to make a decision and settled on Florida.

Not totally surprised, just surprised he did it now, after recruiting.

I think it's too late to get a name coach now. Maybe let a top assistant have it for a year, then go after a bigger name.

 

Apparently, I wasn't the only one skeptical about the rumors. Then again, I didn't look down at the readers and tell them there was no way in hell Donovan was leaving like a this guy:

http://www.gatorsports.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070531/GATORS24/705310335/Rarely_is_the_truth_sexier_than_rumors

A couple of excerpts from his column yesterday:

Why can't anybody just accept that Donovan's contract extension has been worked out, he has agreed to it and there is a process that must be followed - including approval by the compensation committee next month - before it becomes official?

Because it makes too much sense?

This is no different than the extensions that have been awarded to other Florida coaches except that in this case there have been publicized overtures from NBA teams that make Florida fans nervous and columnists salivating at the chance to criticize Donovan for supposedly leaving Florida twisting in the wind.

It's just not true.


What's funny is, today he didn't mention a word about how off the mark he was, which to me can start to chink away at his credibility.
His column kinda reminds me of Frank Drebin in Naked Gun "there's nothing to see here" as the building blows up.