COLORADO SPRINGS– It is just two years from now. But the 2016 Olympiic sumemr games in Rio will almost certainly be be Mike Krzyzewski’s swan song as head coach of the men’s Senior Olympic team. If his team wins a third consecutive gold medal, he will become the best known coach in the history of basketball in this country, moving ahead of the late Red Auerbach, Phil Jackson and the John Wooden in the eyes of the world.
Krzyzewski, who will be 69 then, and senior Olympic officials like Jerry Colangelo and Jim Tooley will probably all move on, leaving Team USA with a reconstruction job at the senior level.
They have all done their duty and it will be time for the next generation to take over.
With that in mind, let me make a huge pitch for Billy Donovan of Florida to become the next Olympic coach for the 2020 Summer Games in Toyko.
Donovan is 49 now and has been highly successful both as a college coach– winning consecutive championships at Floirda in 2006 and 2007 and advancing to the Final Four on two other occasions in 2000 and 2014 and tken the Gators to six Elite Eight appearances in the lat nine years. He has posted 16 consecutive 20-win seasons, 16 consecutive NCAA appearances. And he had totally brought into the USA model since being convinced to become a court coach in 2011 for the U19 World championship team by Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim of Syracuse.
Ordinarily, it might seem like a natural to select Greg Popavich of the San Antonio Spurs, who has won five NBA titles since 1999 and is the best professional coach in any sport in this country. He attended the Air Force Academy and has a disciplined, organized military background that is similar to Krzyzewski. He is a Larry Brown disciple who took a year off from his head coaching job at Pomona-Pitzer in 1986 to study under Brown and eventually coach with him as an NBA assistant with the Spurs. Popovich took the head coaching duties with the Spurs in 1996 and has taken the team the playoffs every year since 1998.
But who knows how much longer Popavich, who is 65, has been coaching since 1978 and has been the head coach of the Spurs since 1996, will want to do this, especially if it means constant summers away from home after a long NBA season?
Donovan is a players’ coach who has bullt strong relationships with USA Basketball officials and has been highly successful as a head coach at the Grass Roots level.
Donovan won a gold medal in the 2012 FIBA Americas U18 tournament and another gold at the U18 World championships. He has yet to lose in international competition.
More importantly, he has figured out how win by (a) selecting players who buy into his philosophy and (b) are willing to pllay hard at both ends of the court.
Until the better international teams, which have the luxury of practicing for extended periods of time, Donovan has made up for his lack of prep time — usually 10 days at the most– with a system that takes advantage his players’ superior athleticism in the open floor by allowing them to pressure full court for the entire game and concenrate on getting his players into transition where they can constantly attack the glass.
“We don’t have the luxury of time,” Donovan said. “You are not going to out execute those teams. So I think what you have to do is be destructive, force turnovers, force tempo and try to take teams out of what they do,” Donovan said. “I think you have to get into transition, run hard. I think the second thing you’ve got attack int the paint. And whatever shot goes up, you to do offensive rebound.”
He also has one advantage most international teams– with the possible exception of Serbia– don’t have at the grass roots level. The talent pool in this country is so deep, he can go 12 deep with any noticeable drop off.
Life could be different at the senior level because the NBA has become more globalized since 1992 when the Dream Team set the gold standard. The NBA has gone global with more international stars seeking big pay days here or playing against more sophisicated competition overseas.
But Team USA will never been at a loss for talent the way it was in 2004, again now that Colangelo and Krzyzewski and influentail officials at Nike, like the godfather George Raveling, convinced NBA stars to resotre the pride and bring back the respect for USA basketall on the world stage
It’s nice to have iconic figures like LeBron, Melo and Kobe, who were the core of Team USA’s two gold medal teams in 2008 and 2012 Summer games, but team USA qualfied for the London games by winning the World championships in 2010 in Turkey with a young group of stars, headed by 21-year old Kevin Durant, who wound up becoming the leading scorer for the American team in London; Kevin Love and Jalen Rose, who wanted to follow in their footsteps.
“I think it starts with the NBA players and once the NBA stars bought into USA basketball, it trinkles down,” Donovan said.
USA Basketball is constantly evolving and Donovan, who has always been a players’ coach, will have the advantage of knowing many of the players on the roster because he coached them at at the junior level. They will also have the advantage of knowing what he wants.
Donovan will undoubtedly face questions NBA officials, who may want one of the own to run the team. But look what happened with George Karl in the 2002 World championships in indianapolis when an undermanned undermotiviated group of American professioinals finishexth in Indianapolis;’ and again in 2004 when Larry Brown, one of the great teachers in the history of the sport, could only squeeze out a third place finish in Athens when several key players pulled out with injuries or for personal reasons, leaving him to face a well coached, expierinced Spanish team in a medal round loss.
Mike Krzyzewski showed college coaches can succeeed at the highest level if they know the international game and understand what takes NBA players tick. Donovan, who was offered one NBA job and was romanced by two other pro franchises, shouldn ‘t have any trouble following in his footsteps.
