Cavs willing to pay Tomm Izzo $6 million a year?!?!?!?!

[nickagneta]

Reports are out that Michigan State men's basketball coach, Tom Izzo, is thinking about moving on and taking the Cleveland Cavaliers' head coaching position. He would reportedly be paid $6 million a year to coach the Cavs.

And this is where I have to wonder, what are the Cavs thinking?

If the Cavs hire him they would tie Tom Izzo with Don Nelson, Greg Popovich and Mike D'Antoni as the third highest paid NBA coach without ever winning a single NBA game. Here are the salaries of the highest paid NBA coaches. What they all have in common is they are proven winners in this league having won most of the NBA championships over the last 20 years:

Phil Jackson - $10.4 million per year
Larry Brown - $7 million per year
Mike D'Antoni - $6 million per year
Don Nelson - $6 million per year
Greg Popovich - $6 million per year
Doc Rivers - $5.5 million per year

The Cavs would make Tom Izzo higher paid than Doc Rivers(possible 2-time NBA championship winning coach), Jerry Sloan(winner of over 2000 NBA games), George Karl(winner of over 1700 NBA games) and Rick Adelman(winner of over 1500 NBA games) and pay him as much as Greg Popovich(a 4-time NBA championship winning coach), Don Nelson(a 3-time Coach of the Year and winner of over 2400 NBA games) and Mike D'Antoni.

I think this type of fiscal irresponsibility is what makes it so hard for me to feel bad for the owners when they decide to lock out players to get major concessions during negotiations for new collective bargaining agreements. They are their own worse enemies in over paying players and over paying GM's and over paying coaches.

Tom Izzo is a great college coach but he has done exactly nothing in the NBA and could just follow in a long, long, long line of college coaches that failed in the NBA because they can't manage NBA players or change their coaching system and philosophy to adapt to the pro game. he doesn't deserve anywhere near $6 million a year to coach in the NBA and if he becomes a colossal failure, it will make me happy because it is happening to the Cavs, a franchise I hate.

[fairweatherfan]

Can you blame them, after the overwhelming NBA success seen by college coaches like Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Leonard Hamilton, and Mike Montgomery?  What could possibly go wrong?   

Although I still think he'd deserve that salary more than Don Nelson does at this point.

[twinbree]

I have no idea what's going on with Cavs. Even on the long shot that he ends up making a good transition to NBA coaching, why would they invest this much money in a new coach not yet knowing what their roster would look like next season? A coach can only do so much with a core of Mo/Varejao/Jamison.

[Andy Jick]

Wish I had more money than brains...  (Well, that's not a total fool-proof argument in my case, but you get my drift). 

It's the old adage: How much is someone worth?  It all depends on how much they're willing to pay...

[Moranis]

Most college coaches that have failed recently have done so because they went to awful teams and were either given too much power or had incompetant management that couldn't add talent. 

Take Montgomery, he essentially kept the status quo on the Warriors but did so when they kept adding younger players not in their prime.  Nelson took over they added a couple of solid veterans and the young guys started to enter their prime and he improved the team by 8 wins.  Montgomery was given a bum rap and deal.

Pitino was a pretty dang good coach in New York, but in Boston he just had too much power and was a p--- poor G.M.  He also came to a bad team and one that missed out on the few premier players available to be drafted until Pierce.  Despite all that he still was 21 games in his first year then Carr was the year before he got there and in his last full season he was 20 games better then when he got there and he ultimately left the team with two young all stars (pierce and walker) and some solid young role players (battie, williams, etc).

Even Calipari wasn't a bad coach.  They were 43-39 his second year, then promptly lost the its best player (cassell) and had its next few best players all decide to get hurt and miss time (kittles, williams) which contributed to the awful start and his firing in his third year.

Leonard Hamilton appears to have been a bad coach, but he only had one year with a young team with a lot of transition so who really knows.

Lon Kruger lasted 2.5 years with the Hawks and had a better record then Mike Woodson through 2.5 years, yet Kruger was fired and Woodson was allowed to continue.

College coaches by and large have been given an unfair rap as being unable to make the transition when quite frankly they by and large entered bad teams in transition and were not allowed to see it through.