BGleas

Right, but Dakich stayed on even after the season ended until Crean was hired. They need to do this so the program can continue to run for the players.

I think it's pretty normal. Dakich stayed on to keep running things during the search for Crean, and I don't remember specifically but I'm pretty sure the same happened during the transition to Archie.

"Wide of the mark" means it didn't happen. He's saying the same thing as Rabjohns, that the Matta report was inaccurate.

I understand it was odd. But I've been through these things first hand, and with some of those exact people (obviously not Stevens), the weirdest thing in the world, even more weird than the comments themselves, would be if that was scripted.

If he was reading off something then he prepared it himself.

There was no teleprompter or script. You don't think the media would have reported, "we've done 1,000 of these pregame coaching media availabilities and never once have seen a teleprompter or a script, but tonight randomly there was a teleprompter that Stevens was reading off. That is very odd!"

I'm almost 43 and was a diehard NBA fan even as a young kid. My parents used to get me the NBA Media Guide for Christmas every year as a young kid. I have no recollection of Mike Woodson as a player and I believe he was in the NBA until 1991?

That doesn't exactly inspire me. Coaching in the NBA and college are different. Juwan Howard is working out because he oozed recruiting cache being a Fab 5 member and he took over a program on auto-pilot.

He's trolling. Golding is the Abeliene Christian coach.

I'm not advocating for Fife or Lewis. But in terms of Woodson, Lewis has 16 more years of college basketball coaching experience. It's actually 16-0.

I'd be annoyed with both. I'd be annoyed with Fife or Lewis too, but at least those guys are college basketball coaches.

At the end of the day, winning on the court is infinitely more important than winning the hiring sweepstakes or the press conference. But with that said, Woodson or Fife would be huge losses in terms of the hires themselves. It would mean Dolson either struck out on all of the proven, established hire major college coaches, or maybe worse that he didn't even try.

I'll say this if it's Woodson. I'm more concerned with winning on the court as that is the ultimate goal, but a Woodson hiring would be a huge, massive L in terms of winning the press conference.

Is Chris Mack lateral? Just trying to come up with someone that would be lateral, not terrible, but also a big disappointing.

Honestly, while that would be a big disappointment, I'll take that over something like Alford or some other coach outside of the Beard, Musselman, Oats, etc. group.

I don't really disagree, especially long term. The main difference I would see is that I think from day 1 Stevens would have recruits calling him to come aboard. I think Beard would take longer (compared to Stevens, not compared to other college coaches) to burn in on that front. But yes, from a coaching and personality perspective he would be a home run hire.

To me, Beard would be a home run amongst the current, somewhat realistic candidates. I'm not saying he's Stevens or Coach K, but I think given his track record and personality that he could be our Izzo or Bo Ryan, which I'll take.

I think Beard and potentially guys like Musselman, Drew or Oats could be great hires, but I think it would also work out best for the fans if that hire doesn't happen until at least next weekend or during that week after. It would give the fan base week to 10 days to sort of decompress after the disappointment of Stevens not happening. I'm not saying I love being in limbo for another week+, but I think the time period after yesterday could give the fans time to regroup mentally.

I guess if we want to assign fault. Who else's would it be?

Absolutely. But it's more bullet points to hit, what to not say, and general guidance of how the organization wants an issue handled. It wouldn't be a written script at this level, unless you're literally delivering a prepared statement on a legal issue. They're also not going to insert weird jokes into the messaging, I've never seen that at this level, which is why I think it was just awkwardness from Stevens. Something like Stevens asking the PR how to handle the IU rumors would be the PR rep giving him some general guidance.

I think he'll still coach for a long time, but could see him as the President/Coach like a Popovich. The Celtics have one of the brightest cap guru's in the league as their GM (i think that's his title now, we used to share a cubicle), so that part would be covered.

Yeah, Masshole is a pretty common phrase upcthat way. I hope he wins a bunch of titles too :)

To kind of set the stage. Those pregame coaches media availabilities are very informal and its the same media people every night. Every single game it's basically the same media guys. It's like groundhogs day. The coach and the media almost always make some awkward jokes/banter before the quick Q/A gets going. It's not like a formal press conference. My guess is Stevens knew he was talking to the Boston media, the same guys as always, it was routine, etc., and he tried to make it funny and it kind of fell flat.

Ummm, ok. I think my ten's of thousands of posts on IU message boards over the years would say otherwise. IU is my favorite college team. The Celtics are my favorite NBA team and used to issue my paychecks. I love both. I was on the side of hoping Stevens came to IU since the NBA is more player driven. But, im also not mad that Stevens coaches my favorite NBA team.

I think they have a pretty long leash. Wyc and Danny love Stevens, and they don't make decisions on fan pressure. With that said, 9 years is a long time for an NBA coach. Wyc and Danny know that this season isn't on Stevens, its more on Ainge. But, I think if Ainge leaves it will be a mutual agreement to retire, not a firing. But I think Wyc believes in him, and Danny can get this back on track quickly. I've actually always thought there was a greater chance that Danny would retire and Stevens would become President/Coach, than there was of Stevens coming back to college.