HEADLINE: "BUCKS FIRE COACH TERRY STOTTS!"
It ranks right up there with "SUN RISES IN EAST!"
We saw this one coming for a while--I remember doing an entire segment on Stotts' future back around Thanksgiving when I co-hosted a sports show on Newsradio 620WTMJ. That was before the Bucks' December ascension toward respectability--a development undone by the rash of injuries that benched four of five starters.
The fire-Stotts mojo pretty much died down until the All-Star break, then went on the back burner after the coach kept his gig as the second half of the regular season began.
And, while the Journal/Sentinel pretty much left the issue die down, it was getting traction again out west--read this story, which pretty much called the shot this morning:
So, it would seem, Krystowiak's availability might've determined Stotts' expandability.
I admittedly didn't watch the Bucks closely enough to know if Stotts was the next incarnation of Red Auerbach or if he was a bust. Monday night's flame out that had Stotts ripping his team for a lack of effort was the death knell, as was Andrew Bogut's late-game hissy fit that saw him get tossed for a flagrant foul--punctuated with a finger-flippin' tirade in the Bradley Center tunnel.
The team lost games, the Coach lost the team--so it goes in the NBA. I DO know Stotts was one of the league's true nice guys. I remember him giving morning show co-host Amy Taylor a little on-air Hoop 101 right after he got hired, and was impressed with his self-depreciating wit and overall charm. Yeah, the NBA doesn't need guys like that. It's SOOOOOO chock full of high-character people as it is.
Good luck, Terry. No one will blame you if you aren't checking the Bucks' box scores in the paper every morning. A lot of us are already there with you on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment