Bill Battle’s wheelbarrow full of money simply wasn’t enough to lure Gregg Marshall away from Wichita State. But the Alabama athletic director had a bold backup plan up his sleeve, as he recently handed Avery Johnson a six-year, $18 million contract to become the Crimson Tide’s next men’s basketball coach. Johnson doesn’t lack for coaching experience from his stints as the head coach for the Dallas Mavericks and New Jersey Nets, but he’ll be making the rare coaching transition from the NBA to college ranks. The only coaches who come to mind having recently done this are Isiah Thomas at Florida International and Eddie Jordan at Rutgers. Jordan, however, spent five years as a college assistant in the late 80s and early 90s before a long coaching career in the NBA.

Avery Johnson has already met with Tuscaloosa’s most prominent resident. (al.com)

Thomas was a disaster at FIU (26-65 over three seasons) and Jordan’s first two years rebuilding Rutgers have gone about as well as expected (22-43). But that tiny sample size certainly doesn’t mean much as it relates to the 50-year old former NBA Coach of the Year, who might actually be exactly what Alabama needs right now. It’s easy to rattle off multiple reasons to be concerned. Does Johnson have requisite AAU and high school connections to recruit? Can he rally boosters as an Alabama outsider (he’s originally from New Orleans and went to Southern University)? Will he be able to adjust to the realities of the student-athlete environment? On the flip side, Johnson has a number of things in his favor that most other college coaches cannot match. He’s a basketball authority and familiar face after a long stint at ESPN, and his NBA credibility — with a championship ring on his finger as a player with the 1999 Spurs and as a successful coach of the Mavericks — could go a long way toward attracting elite talent to Tuscaloosa.

That’s a reasonably nice arsenal to bring to the recruiting table, and it will be needed more than ever with Bruce Pearl already through his first full recruiting cycle just down the road at Auburn. Pearl’s long shadow forced Battle to find someone poised to inject immediate enthusiasm into the program, and in the charismatic Johnson, he may have actually found one of the few people who can go toe-to-toe with Pearl in that department. His built-in recruiting advantages could be more important than ever since there is a surplus of Alabama high school talent in the next few classes. The Class of 2016 features five-star wing Joshua Langford from Madison and the Class of 2017 boasts five-star forward Austin Wiley from Birmingham. To this point, one of the first things Johnson did at his introductory news conference was to say that he wants to put a virtual “fence” around the state. In other words, he is already saying the right things and knows that catching up to Pearl in players’ living rooms is his first priority. He also quickly name-dropped San Antonio Spurs head coach and mentor Gregg Popovich, which should be a winning line to those focused on reaching the NBA (i.e., everyone).

Johnson’s first order of business is putting together a cohesive staff and conventional wisdom seems to believe that he got an early win by retaining assistant coach Antoine Pettway. The former Crimson Tide player should be the key to holding on to a current class which includes guards Dazon Ingram and Brandon Austin, and forward Donta’ Hall. It’ll be fascinating to watch how he fills out the rest of the staff given his lack of immediate connections within the college game. In any event, Battle and the Tide have made something of an unprecedented move with high risk/high reward stakes on the line. You do not see a coach go from the NBA to a high-major college program with no previous collgiate experience very often, and especially one with as many highs and lows of Johnson at the NBA level. But after striking out with Wichita State’s Marshall, Alabama needed someone who would breathe some intrigue into the program, and the hire of Johnson does just that.

Greg Mitchell (@gregpmitchell) (231 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2015 at 12:41 pm by Greg Mitchell and is filed under microsites, sec. Tagged: alabama, auburn, avery johnson, bill battle, bruce pearl, coaching carousel, feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.