An open letter to Vinny Del Negro, former Coach of the Clippers
You were never supposed to be coaching a 50-win team like you did in 2013. When you were first hired by the Clippers, you were a bargain for the team's owner, Donald Sterling, as you were still being paid by your previous contract with the Chicago Bulls. You inherited a young team that needed to develop and learn, and you allowed it to do just that, playing rookies Blake Griffin and Eric Bledsoe substantial minutes along with other youngsters like Eric Gordon, DeAndre Jordan, and Al-Farouq Aminu. Blake Griffin earned Rookie of the Year honors for his season, and for the first time since 2006, the Clippers were exciting to watch. You let the youngsters make mistakes and grow from them, and all of them are better players now because of your patience. Even though this was your least successful season in terms of wins and losses, it can be argued that you did your best coaching ever with this team.
Your second season brought with it your first serious expectations for success, as Chris Paul joined the Clippers via trade. While most coaches would love to have Chris Paul on your team, I would not blame you if you felt a little nervous when the organization pulled the trigger on this deal. In 2011, your only job was to oversee the development of a bunch of young and talented players. WIth Chris Paul, however? There was pressure! You had to produce results and make all of the pieces fit. To make matters worse, you were in what could have been the last year of your contract. All things considered, you did pretty well for yourself in 2012. The Clippers made the playoffs, and in the playoffs your team upset a Grizzlies squad that many analysts had picked as a dark-horse in the Western Conference. Your greatest moment came in Game 1 against the Grizzlies, when you decided to leave Chris Paul in the game with the bench unit at the beginning of the fourth quarter, leading to a 26-1 run and one of the five greatest comebacks in playoff history. You generally out-coached Lionel Hollins throughout the series, and your trust in physical veterans like Kenyon Martin and Reggie Evans allowed the Clippers to match the Grizzlies' style of play. After the Clippers advanced to the second round, your team was swept by Gregg Popovich's heavily-favored Spurs team, but nobody in their right mind truly expected you to out-coach Popovich. You had done your job by getting the Clippers out of the playoff's first round, and for this success you were rewarded with another year to coach this team.
Still, the cracks were beginning to show, and there were many Clipper fans out there who wanted you gone. The team's offense looked simple and one-dimensional at times, as if you called timeouts just to say: "Chris, work your magic... and Blake, maybe you should set a screen in there too." The defense was a trainwreck, as Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan looked either confused by the system or confused as to whether there was any system at all. You also had some puzzling substitution patterns, as you refused to play Eric Bledsoe as much as you did during the athletic point guard's rookie season even though Bledsoe was clearly the team's best perimeter defender and most dynamic guard off the bench. You also tended to rely too heavily on veterans solely because they were veterans, probably because you felt that they posed less of a risk on the floor. That patience that you had displayed with the youngsters in your first season with the Clippers disappeared when Chris Paul and his lofty expectations came to town, and while you were brought back for the 2013 season, you were clearly going to be on the hot seat unless the team continued to improve.
Your final season as the Clippers head coach began as well as anybody could have hoped. December was a perfect month, as your team went 16-0 and ended up winning 17 straight games on its way to becoming a legitimate contender in the Western Conference. The defense improved drastically, as Blake Griffin looked more comfortable individually as well as in the concept of the team's defense, and DeAndre Jordan evolved into a more complete rim-protector. The team's offense looked just as predictable as it had the year before (as it still employed the late-game strategy of "GIVE CHRIS PAUL THE BALL"), but still ranked in the league's top five in offensive rating. The Clippers finished with a record of 56-26 and the franchise's first Pacific Division title, but once again, cracks started showing.
After the club's perfect December, the Clippers began to look far less invincible. With a pedestrian record of 24-19 between January and March, the Clippers went from a potential 2-seed in the West to a team fighting for home-court advantage in the first round. The rotations were once again questionable, as Eric Bledsoe emerged as the team's third or fourth best player while seeing the seventh-most minutes per game on the roster. DeAndre Jordan lost all offensive confidence as the year went on, as his free throw percentage fell to a terrible 24.5% over the season's final two months. Reports also surfaced before the trade deadline that you were openly clamoring within the organization for a trade that would send Eric Bledsoe and DeAndre Jordan to Boston for Kevin Garnett, showing that you had no confidence or interest in playing these promising young athletes down the stretch of the season. It became increasingly clear that you were coaching for your job rather than for the organization's future. This is a fact that shouldn't be held against you, as you were in the final year of your contract and winning now was the only way to ensure yourself an extension, but this growing gap between your wishes and the wishes of the Clippers' front office made it clear how small the margin for error was for you in the playoffs.
We all know what happened to your Clippers in the postseason. After winning the first two games against the Grizzlies at home, your team dropped four straight. You did not make any noticeable adjustments until your team's back was completely up against the wall in the series' sixth game, when you finally decided to double-team Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol (who were absolutely dominating the Clippers in the paint), and you made some absolutely perplexing decisions in this final game, like leaving Jamal Crawford on the bench for the entire second half and refusing to stick Eric Bledsoe on Mike Conley for extended periods of time even though Bledsoe has had considerable success against Conley in the past. These decisions are hard to justify, and when asked about them after the game, you really had no answer. One can only assume you thought that these moves gave you the best chance to keep your job, and nobody can blame you for that. Unfortunately, things did not work out like you had hoped.
Maybe, once all is said and done and we get a chance to see what the next Clippers coach can do, we will grow to appreciate you. Maybe the offense will be exactly the same, and we will find out that it was Chris Paul demanding all of those isolations that reflected so poorly on your coaching ability. Maybe DeAndre Jordan won't improve, and people will look back on that potential Kevin Garnett trade and wonder "what if." Maybe you will get hired by the Brooklyn Nets and take them deep into the playoffs next year. We don't know what the future has in store for you, Vinny, but what we do know is that the Clippers job suddenly became one that you were under-qualified for when Chris Paul came to town. Ken Berger of CBS Sports reported earlier today that Paul did not back you to Clippers management after the season ended, and this is as big of a reason as any as to why you will not be brought back next year. The Clippers' most important player lost faith in you, and truth be told, his faith lasted a lot longer than the faith of most Clippers fans. The Clippers need to win now, and the organization did not have anymore time to learn from your mistakes. You will have another coaching opportunity in the future, maybe even next season, and your success and failure in Los Angeles will make you stronger than you were these past few years.
Thanks for the memories, Vinny, and best of luck with your next job.
by Jack Kuhlenschmidt