Let's talk about coaches

One who is very happy and one who is very mad.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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NBA coaches who have won championships in the past 20 years: Larry Brown, Gregg Popovich, Pat Riley, Doc Rivers, Phil Jackson, Rick Carlisle, Erik Spoelstra, Steve Kerr, Tyronn Lue, Nick Nurse, Frank Vogel, Mike Budenholzer, Michael Malone.

Brown (83 years old), Riley (78) and Jackson (78) are firmly retired from coaching at the NBA level; they are the age of presidents and senators, not coaches.

The other 10 on the list are still coaching or coached last season. Of those, only six have not been or did not get fired by the team they led to a title. Popovich, Spoelstra, Kerr and Malone are still with their teams; Rivers executed a rare coach trade to escape a rebuild, and Lue stepped away from the rebuilding Cavaliers.

Carlisle, Nurse and Vogel were all fired after winning a title and quickly found a new job. Budenholzer was fired just last spring and is taking this year off from the sidelines.

Meanwhile, Popovich (five titles) and Kerr (four) are increasingly under fire by fans and analysts over their performances this season, Popovich for playing around with experiment lineups despite having been gifted a transformational superstar and Kerr for contributing to a blown second timeline ordeal by not trusting his young players. I have a sense that Kerr is going to exit Golden State after this season, following Bob Myers. Popovich is not that much younger than Jackson and Riley (he’s 74). Malone is golden (for now).

That leaves us with Spoelstra, who just signed an 8-year, $120 million extension to stay with the Heat. This is a college football coach contract. This is a contract you see when some newspaper reports the highest-paid public employee in each state and it’s a dude named “Jimbo.” This is a lot of money and a long commitment in a business where no one gets a long commitment.

What’s interesting about Spoelstra in comparison to the other coaches mentioned is that Spo has near universal acclaim, similar to Popovich until the last couple of years. Success will do that. Miami is never down too bad, and never down for long. Spo has found ways to turn fringe NBA players into playoff stars; when those players get signed by some other team, they turn back into fringe NBA players. When we talk about Heat Culture, that’s never about just one person — not Pat Riley, not Udonis Haslem, not Dwyane Wade or Jimmy Butler. And it’s not just Spo. But a lot of is Spo, and the tone he sets and the infectious work ethic he presents.