NBA Sunday: All Eyes on Alvin Gentry

To this point, Anthony Davis’ points had come in most impressive fashion. He had dropped-stepped, posted and smoothly shot his way to an efficient 38 points on 14-of-22 shooting from the field against the Oklahoma City Thunder on this February night.

Rarely is an NBA season ever made or broken in the 50th game of the campaign, but one could certainly argue that the game-winning shot Davis would make that evening helped persuade the world that the New Orleans Pelicans were for real.

With 1.2 seconds remaining in the 113-113 ballgame, Davis set up on the left box with Steven Adams on his hip. Tyreke Evans, the inbound passer, saw Ryan Anderson create some separation from Russell Westbrook as Westbrook and Kevin Durant switched, but Evans turned down his first release point and waited for Davis—the second option—to pop out.

Davis did and when he received that pass from Evans, he drilled one of the most memorable shots of this past NBA season, having to double-pump the basketball just to evade to outstretched arms of Durant.

Months later, the Pelicans would go on to get swept in the first round of the 2015 NBA playoffs, but collectively, the team from New Orleans has seemingly begun to take flight. Best of all, they are built around a 22-year-old who finished this past season fifth in the voting for Most Valuable Player.

With their potential busting out and the Pelicans having made the playoffs for the first time since 2011, the attention will now turn to Alvin Gentry and whether or not he is the right person to lead the Pelicans to higher heights.

His past experiences are vast and his offensive genius well-established, but it is his excellence on the other side of the ball that may ultimately determine where the Pelicans land.

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Doc Rivers began his head coaching career back in 1999. The Orlando Magic did the almost unthinkable at that time, having hired Rivers just three years after his playing career had ended. At that point, Rivers had never sat at the end of a bench on any level, much less been a head coach of an NBA team.

Amazingly, Rivers would win the NBA’s Coach of the Year Award after his first season, despite missing the playoffs. Somehow, with Darrell Armstrong and Ron Mercer, he had managed to help the Magic to a 41-41 record—a feat that seemed improbable after the franchise lost Penny Hardaway, Horace Grant and Nick Anderson the preceding offseason.

Rivers narrowly edged out Phil Jackson as the Coach of the Year, and the ensuing success he enjoyed in Orlando and later in Boston seems to have proven something to NBA front offices: prior head coaching experience is not a requisite for success on this level. As David Blatt and Steve Kerr do battle in the 2015 NBA Finals as first-time NBA head coaches, that has proven true.

Between the hiring of Rivers and these 2015 NBA Finals, though, we have seen Mark Jackson, Jason Kidd and, to a lesser degree, Brad Stevens enjoy the same sort of success.

The NBA’s reigning Coach of the Year, however, Mike Budenholzer, cuts against the grain. Budenholzer spent 19 years with the San Antonio Spurs before getting his first head coaching job in Atlanta, and—recent playoff sweep aside—it is difficult to argue with the results.

In hiring Gentry, the Pelicans have opted for experience. The 60-year-old Gentry began his coaching career way back in 1980 at the collegiate level before breaking into the NBA back in 1989. Since then, he has served as an assistant coach under the likes of Larry Brown, Doug Collins, Gregg Popovich, Mike D’Antoni and Doc Rivers.

The Pelicans job will be the fifth time Gentry will lead an NBA team as its head coach, but just the second time he will do so having not been a holdover from a prior regime.

In his most recent head coaching job, Gentry took over the helm of the Phoenix Suns after Terry Porter was just 51 games into his tenure. After the acquiring of Shaquille O’Neal, Porter sought to slow the game down for the Suns and have them play a more traditional inside-out style, somewhat diminishing the role and productivity of Steve Nash in the process. Before long, Steve Kerr (the general manager of the Suns at the time) realized hiring Porter was a mistake.

After releasing him, Kerr personally paid Gentry a visit in his home to deliver him the news. Gentry would assume the reins in Phoenix and Kerr was entrusting him to re-implement the high-octane offense that had such great success in Phoenix.

Gentry finished out the 2009 season having gone 18-13 and, the following season, led the Suns to a 54-28 record. In the 2010 playoffs, it was Gentry who helped the Nash-led Suns topple Popovich and his Spurs, although the Suns would eventually lose to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals in six games.

Eventually parting ways with the Suns, it came as no surprise to anyone that Gentry would eventually be hired by Kerr to serve as his associate head coach and offensive coordinator in Oakland. Kerr had never led a team before, so having an experienced hand and voice beside him would be invaluable.

Now, on the cusp of winning an NBA championship and having almost 40 years worth of total coaching experience, Gentry will have the opportunity to grow with a Pelicans team that may be well-served by being led by a coach who has seen everything there is to see in the NBA, including the fact that it takes defense to win big.

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In some ways, the flight of these Pelicans was as similarly improbable as the Houston Rockets thriving in the Western Conference.

If Kevin Durant had been healthy all season long, perhaps the Pelicans—a team that many believe is still missing one or two pieces—would have been in the lottery as opposed to a tough first round series against the Warriors.

This summer, the franchise will have to make a decision on Omer Asik, who is poised to become an unrestricted free agent, but will still have its core of Davis, Evans, Anderson, Jrue Holiday and Eric Gordon under contract for next season.

If there is one thing that Gentry has proven over the latter stages of his coaching career in the NBA, it is that he can implement highly potent and effective offensive systems. In theory, the combination of Holiday and Evans (serving primarily as ball handlers) should be able to work seamlessly with the combination of Gordon and Anderson (shooters) and Davis (a big man with the ability to pop out for jumpers or finish at the rim).

This past season, the Pelicans ranked 10th in the league in field goal percentage and 16th in the league in points per game. There is room for improvement in each category. But the bigger challenge for Gentry will be to harness whatever it is that the Warriors did en route to them winning the Western Conference.

Because of their reliance on mid-range and three-point shooting, the greatness of the Warriors, as a team, goes overlooked.

In the past, we have seen teams with potent and efficient offenses accrue wins during the regular season only to walk away shocked and awed after an early exit in the playoffs. What makes the Warriors different is the fact that they are just as capable a scoring machine in a half court game as they are in an all-out sprint.

Surprisingly, they are just as dominant on the defensive end.

This past season, the Warriors led the league in field goal percentage allowed, yielding just 42.8 percent to their opponents. There are advanced statistics that support the notion that the Warriors were the top defensive team in the league, as well.

The best news for the Pelicans is that Gentry was not only there for the journey, he was a navigator. Gentry was there in Oakland the season that the culture and expectations thrust upon a young group were not only met, but exceeded.

Now, as the Warriors attempt to put the bow on their season and become one of the more improbable champions in recent memory, Gentry will attempt to lead the Pelicans to similar heights.

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Big markets and flashing lights will always have appeal, but at the end of the day, most NBA players want to win as much as they want to get paid. At just 22 years old, Davis is a draw for the franchise. Other players will want to play with him and it is now up to Gentry and general manager Dell Demps to maximize the window the Pelicans will have with Davis still under his rookie contract.

Though occurring in just the 50th game of the season, Davis’ double-pump and improbable heave over the outstretched arms of Durant helped to catapult the Pelicans into rare territory. Now, with an experienced hand on the bench and the experience of playoff basketball under their belt, it is squarely on Gentry to help the franchise spread its collective wings and continue its ascension.

The only issue: there is no “D” in “New Orleans.”

But having a first row seat to what it takes to rise to the level of champion in this league, Gentry is not only a wise hire, but, all things considered, the correct one, especially if the Pelicans can experience anywhere near the sort of success the Warriors have had this season.