There's a thread on the board asking who should be the next assistant at Duke
if David Henderson takes the Delaware job.
Let's preface this by underscoring the IF. Everyone at Duke has an enormous
respect and affection for Henderson. He was wonderful as a player and he's
been wonderful on the bench. So while we hope he takes the job if offered,
and he wants it, we would love to see him in Durham a bit longer.
Having said that, if he does leave, there is this idea floating around that
Duke needs to hire a big man to coach big men. We don't necessarily agree - Bill
Guthridge and Pete Gaudet were both normal sized coaches, and they were very
highly regarded for their work with big men. But while we don't
necessarily buy the argument, if you are going to go after a big man to coach
big men there's no point in fooling around with pretenders. Bill Russell is
looking to get back into coaching, and given his immense knowledge and
experience, our guess is that he would turn Carlos Boozer and Casey Sanders into
monsters in short order.
On a secondary but no less important note, we remember him telling Dr. J that
he should spend a lot of time in the library. Russell could also advise,
better than anyone, whether someone is ready for the NBA.
Obviously it's not our decision, and David Henderson still has the job, but if he takes it, but if it were up to us we'd call Russell and ask him if he was interested, and then we'd start thinking about Casey and Carlos grabbing rebounds and making outlet
passes before there feet hit the floor....
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