Deron Williams, NIL, and Whittingham

[Red Rhino]

In 2011, Legendary NBA Coach Jerry Sloan retired mid season from coaching the Utah Jazz. Although later downplayed, it was reported that he had an intense altercation with Deron Williams the night before. Deron Williams was known to ignore the play calls of Sloan, and to call his own plays, something not even the legendary John Stockton would do. It was clear to most Jazz fans then, that Sloans style of coaching no longer resonated with the new generation of players.

Phil Jackson said of Sloan:

“He was stubborn, you have to be as a coach. But, he had a system, and the system was effective. It’s not easy to have a team in Utah. It’s not the biggest draw in the country as far as free agents to go there, and they were able to have a really great home record, played the kind of basketball that was admirable. So, we all had admiration for him as coaches around the league. So, as a colleague, we’ll miss him.”

Fast forward 10 years to a similarly stubborn coach with a system that was admired by many. In a world where college students, were buying into systems rather than systems buying them, Whittinghams philosophy worked well. Now ten years after the retirement of Sloan, NIL is adopted by the NCAA. No longer was Whittingham’s system the main draw to Utah. Now, dollars have become the draw. Like Sloan, Whittingham is facing a new generation of players that do not respond to old school ways and hard-nose play. Just as Deron Williams did to Sloan, the players are now calling the shots.

Unfortunately, I believe Whittingham’s whole system is trying to function as a square peg in a round hole. Either he needs to adapt, which seems unlikely at his age, or a round peg needs to be hired to fill the round hole.

[Tony (admin)]

Nick Saban left…

[Red Rhino]

Exactly, Tony! I would love to see how NIL has affected Gundy. He has a similar methodology to Whittingham. Are some of their
problems this year due to NIL issues?

[SteelUte]

And sadly, D Will soon realized how good of a coach Jerry was and that Utah wasn’t that bad of a place to be after all.
Maybe it is possible for Whitt’s way and the NIL way to co-exist, but it is looking like a downward trend the past few years. Whitt has to adapt, and as most view it, he’s not adapting to it enough.
I also think it is possible that if Cam stayed healthy a lot of the weaknesses of this team aren’t as exposed, we have a lot more wins and the Boot Whitt train is a lot less crowded.

[SteelUte]

You could also look at the flip side- Lincoln Riley.
He seems to be the poster child for this generation of coaches and the NIL future. He may be good at that side of it, but he sure seems pretty clueless as a coach. You’re at USC with a Heisman qb and you can’t win a conference championship?
He seems to lack the ability to build a team with toughness, defense, team work, team first mentality, etc.
I hope that Morgan is the man for the future of this program.

[Red Rhino]

Such a good point SteelUte! Does college football and bball each need a general manager to manage the financial side of the teams so that the head Coach can focus on football? The head Coach will still need to have the type of personality who can deal with jealousy in NIL discrepancies and team behavior brought about by the money being pumped into the game.

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