You don’t need to be a Rocket scientist to know that the Houston’s coaching search will begin near the Rice University campus, where Jeff Van Gundy lives and can be seen at times taking in Owls baseball games.
The coach-turned-broadcaster is a natural fit for the team that once fired him and is coming off a hugely disappointing season spent mostly in disarray, leading up to its inevitable first-round exit against the Warriors on Wednesday night under interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff. In the Rockets’ first order of business for the offseason, Bickerstaff is expected to be relieved of his duties as the team pursues a big-name coach to come in and restore order.
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All roads from the Toyota Center will lead 15 minutes away, right to the Van Gundy household.
“Jeff is the best coach on the market, and (Rockets owner) Leslie Alexander really likes him,” one Western Conference executive with knowledge of the Rockets’ plans told Sporting News.
Van Gundy just needs to convince himself that at this stage of his life, he needs to get back into the coaching grind. It’s not that the 54-year-old doesn’t think he can get through to James Harden, who went off the reservation on Kevin McHale during a 4-7 start and is widely seen as the NBA’s most difficult star. Knowing Van Gundy, he is one of the last remaining people who honestly thinks he could salvage a Harden-Dwight Howard marriage, as much as that one is bound for Splits-ville, with Howard probably electing to go elsewhere as a free agent.
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As for getting Harden to re-focus and make a commitment to return to his MVP runner-up status when he led the Rockets to the 2015 Western Conference finals, Van Gundy will not be scared off by that challenge. In 11 years as a head coach, he’s handled more than a few stars and difficult personalities, some of whom have made deeper playoff runs than Harden. Van Gundy is not McHale, who continues to feel the adverse effects of trying to get his best player to play defense.
McHale is on the Kings’ extensive list of coaching candidates, but as much as he likes and respects GM Vlade Divac, he recently told a coaching friend about the Sacramento job, “I’ve already been fired by once by a player. I don’t want to go through that again.” Yes, he meant DeMarcus Cousins, in case there was one iota of doubt.
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As for Van Gundy, he readily admits that he misses the coaching, competition and camaraderie he enjoyed with his teams in New York and Houston, where he posted a 430-318 record, including taking the Knicks on their most recent NBA Finals trip in the lockout-shortened 1999 season. But as he’s told me more than once, since assuming the No. 1 analyst chair for ABC/ESPN telecasts, “Now when I’m walking out of an arena after a game, I’m not already starting to worry about the next game. That stress, I don’t miss.”
So he could talk to the Rockets and decide to stay on with ABC, and he’ll be very content working alongside Mike Breen and Mark Jackson.
But first, he’ll take a long, hard look at returning to the game. He’s been doing it already. The Rockets have the inside track on Van Gundy, who is also being mentioned as one of several top candidates for the Lakers’ coaching job. Golden State assistant Luke Walton has been given permission by the Warriors to talk to his old team, where he won two rings as a player and is considered the heavy favorite to succeed Byron Scott, but the Rockets also were given permission to talk to Walton.
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Van Gundy also was up for the Minnesota coaching job, but the T-wolves had put his former assistant, Tom Thibodeau, atop their list when they started their search. League sources told me that even if Thibodeau didn’t take the president-coaching positions, their next choice was a coach they previously tried to hire — Minnesota native Dave Joerger of the Memphis Grizzlies.
So Van Gundy never really had a chance to work with Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. But he could end up coaching one of the NBA’s elite scorers in Harden, who isn’t going anywhere. He hasn’t coached since he was let go by the Rockets after the 2006-07 season, which ended with his third bitter loss in the first round of the playoffs, and after the Rockets had taken a 3-2 series lead over the Utah Jazz.
According to some people, the almost decade off from coaching has made Van Gundy wonder if he is a dinosaur. The game has changed a lot since Van Gundy was fired, but general manager Daryl Morey is still in charge in Houston.
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Since Van Gundy last coached in the league, Morey’s analytics have taken on a more pronounced role around the league, with Van Gundy among those who think the stats craze and reliance on big data has gotten entirely out of hand. What gives Van Gundy more reason for pause isn’t his relationship with Morey; he thinks he can work for him again. But since he last coached, the game’s shift to the offensive end, with the reliance on 3-point shooting and playing at a race-horse pace, run counter to Van Gundy’s principles.
But there’s no doubt that the Rockets will come calling. After all, it’s only a short trip over the Rice to see the coach their franchise needs.
