Pacers ‘Probably Will Look at Spurs Assistant Ettore Messina’ for Head Coach Opening
By Jared Wade
A report assessing the Indiana Pacers motives for losing faith in Frank Vogel also says Bird will look at Ettore Messina to fill coaching vacancy.
The Indiana Pacers now need a new head coach after Larry Bird reveled that the team had lost faith in Frank Vogel.
On top of the many candidates already listed so far for the vacancy, Mitch Lawrence of Sporting News reported that the team is likely to consider San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Ettore Messina.
"Bird probably will look at Spurs assistant Ettore Messina, who was reported to be high on the Lakers’ list if Luke Walton had turned down their head coaching job. Messina has been a highly successful head coach overseas and has been mentioned for NBA head coaching positions in recent seasons. According to one Western Conference GM, “He’s got some hard-ass in him and he can teach an up-tempo offense. The only concern is how he’d relate to stars as a head coach.’’"
It is hard to say exactly how much of this is speculation vs. reporting an actual fact. Line-blurring media members do exactly make it ideal to determine what is news. But the rest of Lawrence’s article takes a news-based approach, using direct quotes from “one NBA insider with knowledge of the team’s locker room dynamics.”
It’s fair to assume Lawrence’s “probably” here is based more upon reporting than guesswork. (Though it’s also fair to wonder what how reality-based his source’s opinion is … more on that below.)
Who Is Ettore Messina?
Ettore Messina of the San Antonio Spurs has been gaining traction on the now-common “assistant-to-head coach” scene. The Lakers were reportedly looking at him strongly after firing Byron Scott and only canceled a pre-scheduled interview with him after Luke Walton agreed to take the job.
The Lakers were familiar with the coach’s work because he served as a consultant to Mike Brown for a stretch in Los Angeles. But Messina has made much of his name in the international game, winning four Euroleague titles and twice being named Euroleague Coach of the Year.
Matt Moore of CBS Sports has had nice things to say about the now-in-demand Messina.
"Someone who’s available now is Messina, who comes in with a wealth of international experience and what is considered a brilliant basketball mind. Think of him like David Blatt, only with a better resume and none of the attitude.Messina would be a home run choice for the Lakers, someone who can remake the internal culture and help make youngsters better. His name brand value may not be high enough, however."
Between his Spurs pedigree and international success, it is no surprise that he has become so sought after.
As with all coaches, there is no guarantee that it would work out if he took over the Pacers. But there is little doubt that the move would be seen positively by the NBA media if Bird were to give Messina the reins.
For many fans on “Team No Retread,” Ettore Messina sit at #1 on the candidate power rankings.
Larry Bird Thought Frank Vogel Was Too Nice
As for the rest of Lawrence’s piece, he gets into some specifics about why Larry Bird decided it was time for Frank Vogel to go.
The short version is that The Legend always thought Frank Vogel was too nice and this increasingly become a problem. Here is more on that:
"Vogel’s downfall, according to one NBA insider with knowledge of the team’s locker room dynamics, was that he always bent over backwards to be nice to his players and never demanded accountability when they messed up.“Frank never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings,’’ the person said. “But Larry knows, and some of the players also know, that there should be consequences to your actions when you do something wrong. When you take a bad shot or don’t do what’s expected of you, then there has to be a consequence. Like getting pulled out of the game. But with Frank there were never any consequences when you did something wrong. He never had those because he felt it would hurt guys’ confidence. He always was looking to keep guys happy.’’Vogel got away with that style of coaching when he had David West controlling the locker room and the Pacers went to the Eastern Conference finals. But once West left for San Antonio and the Pacers revamped their roster, the lack of accountability was telling."
Frank Vogel and Monta Ellis
There are also some odd claims in this report regarding Monta Ellis.
The general line on Ellis throughout the year was that he had been a great locker room presence and seemed to sacrifice touches and shots while blending into a new team that clearly already had a main scorer and star.
While that attitude assessment is inherently subjective, the numbers on this are not really in dispute.
Despite this, the NBA insider in question was blunt in his or her assessment of the Ellis/Vogel dynamic.
"[Bird] talked about finding a new coach who can “keep ‘em mentally focused. I’ll be looking at someone who motivates and leads and gets the respect of the players.’’Bird’s next coach needs to be able to get Monta Ellis to change, or he will have to reinstate George Hill as the primary playmaker after the veteran spent most of the season playing off the ball. Too many times in the regular season Vogel put up with Ellis controlling the ball deep into the shot clock, then passing off only because he couldn’t get his shot. That rubbed some the wrong way.“Frank allowed Monta to walk all over him,’’ the NBA insider said."
If Monta was walking all over anybody and being a major distraction to the team, on or off the court, this is the first we’ve heard of it.
Ellis is, and always has been, a mid-range jump shooter who is not among the most efficient scorers in the league. At times this year, he certainly displayed his tendency to hijack a possession or two. Such on-court decisions and shot-selections choices are in line with the reputation throughout his whole career.
There certainly may have been a lot more frustration over this — from players, executives or coaches — than we heard about publicly. But to the degree that this was a problem, the numbers are abundantly clear that Monta was using fewer possessions and taking fewer shots in his first year with the Pacers than, really, he ever has.
Usage rate measure the amount of offensive possessions a player, for lack of a better work, “uses.” These are the plays that end with the player taking a shot, getting to the line or turning the ball over.
In an equally distributed unit, in which each player uses the same number of possessions, all five guys would have a usage rate of 20%. That’s 100% of the possessions divided by five.
In his first year with Indiana, Monta’s usage rate was 21.2%, the lowest he has had since his rookie year and an enormous drop off from the 27.9% he posted under Rick Carlisle last year in Dallas. Paul George led the Pacers this year with a usage rate of 30.4%.
Monta also took just 12.9 shots per game under Vogel, way below his career 16.0 FGA-per-game average. He also took fewer shots, per-36 minutes, than not just Paul George, but C.J. Miles and Myles Turner. He barely took more than Jordan Hill and Rodney Stuckey.
So if Monta was flagrantly disobeying Vogel’s instructions, he was doing it in a pretty strange way. Ellis “walked all over” Vogel by being more deferential on court to his teammate’s than he has ever been? Seems weird.
Given that we don’t know who this “insider” is nor what their motivations are for making claims about Vogel getting walked all over, I’ll go ahead and take this with a grain of salt.
There is no doubt that Vogel is a nice guy — maybe too nice — and that this character trait was a large part of Bird’s inability to ever really relate to his coach’s approach to player management.
I have jokingly called Vogel “Dudley Do Right” on multiple occasions and often cite his catch phrase to the press, “Good luck with your deadlines,” as being emblematic of his mental makeup. His seemingly unflappable positivity, at times helpful when dealing with the Eeyore-like Roy Hibbert, for example, has not always been a good thing. It is intwined with an optimism that gave Vogel too much faith in Hibbert during the first-round series against the Hawks in 2014 and in his underperforming bench players against the Raptors in this year’s postseason.
But there’s a bit chasm between being a bit too nice and getting walked over. Whether the comment is just hyperbole or someone with an agenda trying to make both Vogel and Monta look bad publicly, I do not know.
Even it if there is merit to the sentiment, however, it seems a stretch to characterize the relationship between the player and coach so strongly.