SETTLING THE SCORE: BAD TRANSITIONS OR BAD ORGANIZATIONS?

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What was the deal with Tark in the pros?

Our latest question comes from Eric in Atlanta who writes, "Billy Donovan is heading to the Magic, and everyone is talking about how college coaches have failed in the NBA. Will he face the same fate?"

As we know now, Billy Donovan won't get the chance to answer that question after changing his mind and returning to the University of Florida. But the topic remains relevant.

Just two months ago, Donovan joined a club that includes the likes of John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski, thanks to Florida's back-to-back NCAA titles. One (reversible) decision later, and his peer group had suddenly morphed into Leonard Hamilton, Tim Floyd and Mike Montgomery.

How does that happen? How does a man at the top of his field suddenly get thrown into the same hopper as a trio that has reached one Final Four, combined? Perception, that's how. And the current perception, as Eric mentioned, is that college coaches can't cut it in the NBA.

Are we prepared to say that, though? Is it really fair to lump Donovan together with Hamilton, an in-state rival at Florida State with a robust career college record of 287-281? Of course not. So, what we need is a valid comparison, a group of coaches who experienced success similar to Donovan in college and then jumped to the pros. And that search revealed a staggering statistic: In the past 25 years, only seven coaches who reached the Final Four moved on to the NBA.

That's it. Seven. So, while we'll examine what happened to those guys shortly, the key point in this whole debate is the following: That's a ridiculously small sample size, and it makes it almost impossible to reach any conclusion about a trend.

The fact that so few college coaches have taken the pro leap means that most of the elite coached haven't bothered. Donovan's near-move might have been cast in quite a different light if Coach K, Dean Smith, Tom Izzo, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, John Thompson, Lute Olson and the rest of the best from the past quarter-century had ever been NBA-bound.

Instead, from that group of Final Four coaches of the past 25 years, only three—Rick Pitino, Larry Brown and Jerry Tarkanian—left college with resumés close to Donovan's. So, let's take a look at what they did in the NBA, along with the other Final Four vets (Montgomery, Lon Kruger, P.J. Carlesimo and John Calipari) to see if there's any truth behind the myth of failure.

Pitino: As Donovan's mentor, and the most successful college coach of the bunch, he was the natural model for critics to offer in comparison. But did they treat his NBA tenure fairly? Not really. Not only do Pitino-bashers rarely look past his 192-220 career record, they don't even bother to mention that Boston wasn't his first stop. Nope, he coached the Knicks from 1987-89, and did a masterful job. In his first season, he took a team that had gone 71-175 in three seasons to the playoffs, where they even won a game against Larry Bird and the Celtics. The next season, the Knicks went 52-30 and advanced to the second round. After that, he was off to Kentucky, and that was hardly a celebratory moment for Knicks fans. In 1997, Pitino took a second dip in the NBA pool, and led the Celtics to a 36-46 record in his first season—a 21-game improvement over the team's prior season. But Pitino never reached the playoffs, and after starting 12-22 in 2000-01, he walked away. The following season, Jim O'Brien took Boston to the Eastern Conference finals. Sure, that's a black mark on Pitino's NBA career. But because it's the most recent mark, it obscures the rest of his tenure, which was far from what his critics want you to believe was a colossal failure.

Brown: He's an odd case, because he left Kansas after winning the 1988 title, but already had ABA and NBA coaching experience. Still, with impressive stints at UCLA and Kansas, Brown was very much a college coach when he joined the Spurs. And we all know what he's done since then, turning around every franchise he touched (well, except the Knicks) and winning a title with the Pistons in 2004. The man has a 793-642 record since 1988. Somehow, his time spent worrying about study hall and sneaker camps didn't cramp his NBA style.

Tarkanian: We'll keep this short and sweet because Tark only coached 20 games. He was 9-11, got fired, and the Spurs went 40-22 over the rest of the 1992-93 season. He didn't exactly mesh with his players, and when David Robinson is one of those guys, that's as damning as it gets. But, again, he coached 20 games. Is that really enough time to judge anyone, even Tark?

Montgomery: In two seasons with the Warriors from 2004-06, he went 68-96. Then again, the franchise hadn't sniffed the .500 mark since 1993-94, so it's hard to call Montgomery the problem. Granted, Don Nelson took this year's squad to the second round of the playoffs, but before a late-season flurry fueled by the heist of Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington from Indiana and the emergence of second-year guard Monta Ellis, the Warriors were a Montgomery-like 26-35.

Kruger: He took over the Hawks in 2000 and posted a 69-122 record before being fired early in his third season. Just to repeat, though, he was coaching the Hawks, who haven't won more than 35 games since he left. Who's to blame for his failure, then?

Carlesimo: He's best known for his two-plus seasons in Golden State where he went 46-113 and grew close with Latrell Sprewell. But, we've already discussed Golden State's illustrious history, thanks to Montgomery. What people forget is that Carlesimo led the Blazers through a critical three-year transition -- the Clyde Drexler trade to the beginning of the Rasheed Wallace era -- and won at least 44 games every season. He got fired in 1997 despite going 49-33, but his 137-109 record with the Blazers was hardly scorn-worthy.

Calipari: By now we're used to this scenario: A college coach takes over a dilapidated franchise, turns the team around briefly, then gets canned at the first sign of failure. The Nets were coming off two straight losing seasons when Calipari arrived in 1996. After 26 wins in his first season, he guided them to a 43-39 record and a playoff berth the next. But everything collapsed in 1998-99, the infamous lockout-shortened season. Due, in no small part, to an injury to Sam Cassell, the Nets started off 3-17. On March 11, they traded for Stephon Marbury in a deal that sent Cassell to Milwaukee. But four days later, before Calipari even had the chance to reshape the team around his new point guard, he was canned.

So, feel free to draw your own conclusions. Sure, other than Brown, each member of that group has a losing NBA record. On the other hand, most of them didn't exactly walk into optimal situations, nor did they receive much time to prove themselves in a league that gives mediocre lifers like Terry Stotts multiple chances.

Most importantly, other than Pitino, Brown and maybe Tark, none of those guys compares to Billy Donovan. Maybe Donovan's actually the best coach of the bunch. Maybe his personality was better suited to the pro game. Maybe he could have succeeded where they supposedly failed. But since got cold feet, we'll never find out. So until more coaches of his ilk decide to test their skills at the next level, a myth based on a tiny, indiscriminate sample will live on.

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