Mario is currently an assistant on Golden State now and wants to be a head coach someday. He was also an assistant in San Antonio last year. Granted Chris Mullin is the worst GM in the league with $40 going to Derek Fisher. But I imagine Mario coach a Rockets team and getting on their butts if they ever play like they did in Atlanta. I see a great motivator and a coach that the players respect. A coach that Houston fans can cheer for.
Tim Thomas was a bad idea. Mario Elie might be a good idea, he will be a head coach somewhere in a few years but I doubt he'll start on a good team. Maybe once the Bulls fire Scott Skiles?
Whats wrong with Mario? Last time the Rockets had a favorite ex player, RUDY T , as coach, we won 2 championships. Doc Rivers and Byron Scott are coaches. Were they that much better than Mario? plus Mario will have 2 years of being an assistant under his belt.
Rudy T had over 10 years experience... including time as a scout and an assistant. So we will need to visit the Mario issue in 2012
Doc Rivers jumped from TNT to the Orlando Magic. 0 experience. What about Larry Bird? he was never an assistant. Isiah Thomas...
Good point about Larry Bird, but i wouldn't call Doc Rivers and Isiah Thomas great successes by any means.
in 8 years... we will be using tera-flop PCs with holographic memory, tera-bytes hard drives, 3-D bio-metric displays..... Clutchfans will have 300,000 users & Jeff will have two grand children running amok in the house. Scary
I would be in total support of hiring Mario as an assistant coach next year (have him replace Ewing) and then allow the powers-that-be evaluate his potential to be an eventual head coach. However, I would not hire him as head coach now - the coaches who are winning championships are the ones who have years of experience (Rudy T, Phil Jackson and Larry Brown - I don't know what kind of experience Popavitch had when he took over the Spurs).
Why not Kareem. He wants to be a coach in the NBA. And since he played center himself, he'll know how to develop/play Yao better than JVG.
I wouldn't mind Elie at all. Being a guy who had a successfull career in inside-out offensive teams with good defense, he might have the right mindset fot the Rockets.
They had that opportunity. Mario spoke with the organization about an assistant's position. Jeff Van Gundy flat out refused.
Mario might have burned too many bridges on his way out of town his last season here. I really liked the guy though, perfect bench player and a smart basketball player. He'll make a good coach, someday.
"I don't know what kind of experience Popavitch had when he took over the Spurs." posted by subatomic It was a long time ago, but I believe he had just finished leading a wagon train through the mountains into Utah....
Willis, Explain how Terry Porter is a coach with the Bucks, he didnt wait 10 yrs as an assistant. You can argue Mario was a better player than Terry.
