Posted on Tue, May. 06, 2008

Mavs may be on verge of hiring another Avery

By JIM REEVES

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File

Former Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle has emerged as the leading candidate to coach the Dallas Mavericks, but negotiations are ongoing.

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There's a story going around the NBA about a coach who was such a micro-manager, he once jumped off the bench as his team raced downcourt on a clean fastbreak and screamed "Slow it up!"

He wanted them to run one of his set plays, you see.

Avery Johnson?

Nope, Rick Carlisle.

Two different coaches. Same coaching world.

Now ask yourself, is this the guy who can get the most out of the Dallas Mavericks next season?

This is what scares me. Is Carlisle, reportedly in deep negotiations with the Mavs to become Johnson's replacement, simply another helping from the same pot of gumbo?

Because we need to get serious about this: Next season is what matters here.

That window of opportunity everyone seems so sure has already slammed shut is actually still open, but just a sliver. One season, Jason Kidd's last under contract, is what the Mavs have left before it's start-over time.

We'll worry about the future after that. But the Mavs should have one more run at this thing -- with the way the roster is set up, it's about all they can hope for -- and they'd better hire a coach who has the same type of urgency. Maybe Carlisle is that guy. His NBA coaching pedigree certainly isn't shabby.

He did, after all, take the Pacers to 61 victories and the Eastern Conference Finals in his first year there. Before that, he'd turned around a losing culture in Detroit and produced back-to-back 50-win seasons and another trip to the conference finals with a less-than-impressive roster.

His quick success at both stops earned him the reputation as a quick-fix artist, though his playoff record (30-32) is still two games under .500.

But the same things that wore thin with the Mavs players about Avery are also Carlisle's calling cards: control freak; eventually gets on players' last nerve; an absolute tyrant with point guards.

The only thing Carlisle seems to lack is Avery's massive ego. That's a plus.

There are others, too.

He's an extremely intellectual coach, which can sometimes make it seem like he's on another planet than the rest of us. He's an X's and O's genius (but so, we were told, was Avery).

He has been accused of having an unimaginative offense.

Sound vaguely familiar?

Seriously, Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson have to be convinced that this guy is ready to do what Avery wouldn't. He has to loose the reins on the offense and rely on Kidd's instincts as a potential Hall of Fame point guard.

That means Carlisle can't do what he did in both Indy and Detroit, and that's call every offensive play. And he has to turn the Mavs loose to run when they have the chance, something he didn't do even with good athletes at Indianapolis.

Frankly, the anti-Avery here probably would have been the guy who sat next to him on the bench this season, Paul Westphal. Except that Westphal took himself out of the running at the very beginning. Whether that was because he was told he had no shot at the job or that he, as he insisted, didn't come here to be a head coach, I couldn't say.

Certainly it didn't help offensive-minded coaches like Westphal or the now available Mike D'Antoni in Phoenix when Dirk Nowitzki said that the Mavs don't want to go back to Nellie-ball, all offense and no defense.

The easy-going Westphal earned the players' confidence this season and might have been an antidote to all the jangled nerve endings left in the locker room, but perhaps Cuban doesn't care about that right now.

Maybe there was some concern that Westphal wouldn't be enough of a disciplinarian, but no one ever said that about Avery and we can see where that got the Mavs.

I tend to discount criticism that Westphal's offensive philosophies didn't do much to help the Mavs this past season. Who knows how much input he actually had?

The other question dangling provocatively out there is whether or not Carlisle may be playing hard to get, biding his time in negotiations while he waits to see if the Phoenix job opens up, as it appears it probably will.

As an ESPN analyst, Carlisle espoused a two-pronged formula for a team to have a chance to win an NBA title. One was to have three All-Stars. The second was to have two potential MVPs.

Nowitzki and Kidd are All-Stars and once upon a time Josh Howard was ballyhooed as a future perennial All-Star. But to join in all the bad puns going around, that dream has probably gone up in a puff of smoke.

Two potential MVPs? Nowitzki is one, but it would be a huge stretch to find another on this roster.

In a lot of ways, Carlisle looks too good to be true, which means he probably is.

He was successful in Detroit and was NBA Coach of the Year in 2002, but was still fired, reportedly because Pistons' ownership thought he was too rigid.

He won at Indiana, a 181-147 regular-season record, but when he went 35-47 in 2006-2007 and the Pacers failed to make the playoffs, he lost his job again.

In other words, he wins everywhere he goes... and loses his job anyway.

Sounds eerily like another NBA coach we know, one we called "The Little General."