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After 145 days and a presumably exhaustive search, the Trail Blazers have hired somebody who has a 115-168 record as an NBA head coach. At that wins-to-wait ratio, it would have taken 21/2 years to hire Phil Jackson.
All of which brings up the overriding question about the hiring of Terry Stotts: Does it matter?
NBA coaching is a brutally difficult profession, but the fact is that only a handful of coaches truly make a difference. Phil Jackson? Sure. Gregg Popovich? Absolutely. Yet the vast majority of NBA coaches make their teams no better or no worse than any several dozen other coaches would.
Stotts might prove to be one of the difference makers and turn the Blazers into title contenders.
But the guess is that he will be plagued by the same problem that doomed him in Atlanta and Milwaukee — a lack of championship-caliber players.
