While Alvin Gentry is the 14th head coach of the Phoenix Suns, he is one of the few with NBA head coach experience prior to getting that job with the Suns. Terry Porter, his immediate predecessor, had a brief, and disastrous tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks. Mike D’Antoni was briefly the head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Prior to that, you have to go all the way back to the expansion era before you find someone who was not a rookie head coach for the Suns.
If you discount Cotton Fitzsimmons, who by his second tour on the Suns’ bench had 11 seasons with other teams, Gentry, with 7 previous seasons as an NBA head coach, is the most experienced coach the Suns have ever hired. Let’s look, then, at how all that experience has shaped Coach Gentry.
Humble origins:
Not in terms of poverty. Gentry’s childhood in Shelby, North Carolina was by all accounts within a large, loving and solidly middle-class family. He told Azcentral.com, “I’m not one of these sad stories out of the ghetto. We had food every night. We sat down as a family. When Christmas came, we had presents under the tree. On Easter, everybody had a new outfit. My parents were married 63 years before my mom passed away (in 2005; his father died in June). I came from a loving, very disciplined home. When my mom said, ‘Be home at 11,’ I was home at 10:59.”
It was still the 1950’s in rural North Carolina: Gentry was potty-trained in an outhouse, and went to a segregated school until the 7th grade. Yet, he became a two-sport star and a class officer in a newly integrated, 80% white high school. And while he went to Appalachian State on a basketball scholarship, there is little doubt he would have found a way to college regardless.
In college, he sat on the middle of the bench until he graduated with a business degree, and quickly found a job as a graduate assistant for the University of Colorado basketball program. He has since been in coaching for most of his adult life.
His cousin, NBA star David Thompson, arranged for him try out for the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets coach, Larry Brown, was under-whelmed by Gentry as a player, but took note of his basketball IQ, and hired him as an assistant when Brown migrated to the University of Kansas. Gentry would then follow Brown to a spot on the bench with the San Antonio Spurs.
Miami – First Casualty of the Evil Empire
After two seasons under Brown, and one with the Clippers under [], Gentry came to the Miami Heat under Kevin Loughery, who was brought on to instill some defense and discipline to the struggling expansion franchise. With Rony Seikaly and sharp-shooter Glen Rice, the Heat become respectable, earning two short trips to the playoffs.
However, in February of 1994, team ownership changed hands, and Loughery was dismissed within hours. Gentry inherited the same injury-riddled squad that had under-performed for Loughery. They did no better for Gentry, who was, at the time, one of the few African-American coaches in the league.
Heat forward Keith Askins whined to Sports Illustrated, “All we’ve been saying in this league is that there aren’t enough black coaches. The majority of this team is black guys, and they can’t even play for a black coach?”
It didn’t matter. Gentry was jettisoned at the end of the season to make room for Sith Lord Pat Riley and the beginning of his Evil Empire.
Detroit – The Stabilizer
The next season found him in Detroit, as an assistant to Doug Collins, who presided over the transition from the Bad Boy era to the Grant Hill era. As the squad grew younger, they also grew less consistent, and Doug Collins was fired in Feburary of 1998, and replaced by assistant Alvin Gentry. Despite presiding over a still lackluster season (and at one point an 8 game losing streak), Gentry is offered the job for real at the end of the season.
Then they locked the players out. So Gentry’s first season as a full head coach was only 50 games, but it was his first taste of winning while holding the clipboard. It didn’t come easy. Stars Grant Hill and Jerry Stackhouse would exchange barbs in media interviews. Center Bison Dele had trouble motivating himself. Yet Gentry, in contrast to his fiery predecessor, remained calm and positive, earning the nickname The Stabilizer. The Pistons limped into the playoffs anyway – where the Hawks promptly bounced them.
The promise of a full season did not improve anything. Gentry tried a more up-tempo offense, but to no avail, “One of the things I never worry about, from my standpoint, is my job,” he told the Detroit News. “I really don’t. I have to do whatever I feel is best for this team and the rest is out of my hands.” He was fired – and replaced by his assistant – mid season.
The Clippers – One more float in the parade of doom
The good news: Alvin Gentry wins his first full job as a head coach. The bad news: It’s the Clippers. Turns out there’s a bit of a difference between a team built around a young Grant Hill, and a team built around a young Lamar Odom. Gentry inherited a team that had finished 15-67 the previous year. Gentry doubled that win total in his debut season, and despite Odom’s problems with his knee and his bong, got them to 39-43 the year after.
The next year, though, most of his young roster had expiring contracts, and were hogging the ball hoping to pad their stats for better money on better teams. As that ship predictably sank, Gentry was shoved off the plank after 58 games (of which the Clips won only 19).
(If you’re new to the NBA, the Clippers have had only two winning seasons since leaving Buffalo in 1976. Two. Deuce.)
We’re all fairly familiar with his next assignment. He was brought in to help new Suns head coach Mike D’Antoni, who had been a bench coach for the departed Scott Skiles. (Skiles had been a bench coach for Frank Johnson, who was a bench coach for Danny Ainge.) When D’Antoni snuck off to the knicks for New York money (how’s that working out, Mike?) Steve Kerr passed over Gentry, among many other quality names, to hire Terry Porter – whose lone NBA head coaching experience was a disastrous season with the Bucks.
Porter managed to stall the offense while only marginally improving the defense. Pace crawled, attendance dwindled (which likely sealed his fate as much as any other metric), and the veteran players organized a coup that ultimately installed Alvin Gentry as the 14th head coach of the Phoenix Suns.
Gentry’s record as a head coach from Basketball Reference:
Sun’s Head Coach statistics from their web site: http://www.nba.com/suns/history/coach_records.html
Here then is the Alvin Gentry Index:
BORN: 11/5/54
YEARS AS COLLEGE COACH:
YEARS AS NBA COACH: [] (Both Head Coach and assistant]
SEASONS AS NBA HEAD COACH: 8 (including partial seasons – but nit the current one).
WINNING % AS HEAD COACH: .459%
SAME STAT W/O LAST SEASON: .442%
BEST SEASON AS HEAD COACH: .581% (Last season. Although he went .58% in the lock-out shortened 98-99 season with Detroit).
WORST SEASON AS HEAD COACH: .328% (LA Clippers 02-03 – they fired him 58 games into the season).
NUMBER OF SEASONS COACHING GRANT HILL: 4
WINNING % W/ HILL: .519%
WINNING % W/0 HILL: .399%
RANK AMONG SUNS COACHES – WINING %: 5th (Assuming you only count Cotton Fitzsimmons once).
SUNS HEAD COACHES W/O NBA PLAYING EXPERIENCE: 3 (Fitzsimmons, Colangelo, Gentry).
SUNS HEAD COACHES WITH PRIOR NBA HEAD COACH EXPERIENCE: 5 (Kerr, Van Brenda Koff, D’Antoni, Porter, Gentry) (The 70-71 Suns season was Fitzsimmons’ debut as an NBA head coach).
NUMBER OF ABOVE WITH WINNING SEASONS PRIOR TO SUNS: 3 (Kerr, Van Brenda Koff, Gentry)
(It is also worth noting that Kerr coached the expansion season, and VBK lasted only seven games.)
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