Dan Majerle should be the Suns’ next Head Coach

Whether or not the Suns truly love Earl Watson as their head coach does not matter: the (professional) lifespan of a coach is shorter than that of a goldfish. Watson will be gone soon, and with this in mind, General Manager Ryan McDonough should already be researching for who will replace him.

Unless something dramatic happens this season, it is highly unlikely that Earl Watson will be the Suns’ Head Coach when the team finally makes it back to the playoffs. It appears that he is nothing more than a placeholder for the franchise right now, and love him or not, based on average, he is already closing in on the end of his tenure in Phoenix.

Presuming that he lasts this season (and don’t get me wrong, the team could lose 70 games and I believe that he will still be the Head Coach come game 82), he will have coached a total of 197 games. That number will place him just 16 games fewer than Jeff Hornacek, but with a winning percentage (likely) near .200 points below the (for now) current New York Knicks Head Coach.

It will also be 64 fewer than Alvin Gentry, and Gentry took the franchise on a surprising Western Conference Finals run in 2010.

Heck, at the end of 2017-18 he will have also coached only 82 games fewer than Paul Westphal did, and Westy oversaw the first three wildly-successful Charles Barkley years.

Needless to say, the ticking clock of inevitability is beginning to raise in volume.

Now, many fans can rightly say that Watson is also the first Head Coach in franchise history to ever be in the position of overseeing a complete tank and rebuild, which is true. No other HC has ever been saddled with the intentional benching of solid, veterans, and the drafting of so many players in a short period of time who cannot yet drink. There is no doubt that Watson is in a lose-lose situation when it comes to regular season record, but there is still more that can be judged of him to force a move.

For starters, if you are regularly pay attention to the Suns and have even a decent knowledge of the game, the team’s offense under Watson has been extremely difficult to watch. The lack of movement in the half court, the amount of isolation, and the horrible shooting all fall on the shoulders of the coaching staff. The team runs an extremely bland and motion-less offense that seems to be entirely ill-fitted for not only the makeup of the roster, but the modern NBA as well.

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This season, even if the Suns lose at a clip similar to what they have experienced over the past two seasons, the young players MUST  show improvement on the court and the offense must become more fluid, otherwise what is Watson there for?

It will be noticeable early on as well. If they can’t shoot, if Bender is still constantly relegated to a corner and told to plant his feet, if the offense is overall stagnant (oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the defense which allowed the fourth most points per game in franchise history last season),  then it would behoove Ryan McDonough to move on, although not look too far at all to find Watson’s replacement.

Don’t get me wrong, Dan Majerle is in a great  place right now as Head Coach of Grand Canyon University. He is overseeing the basketball team’s transition to D-1, doing so with great local fan fare. The stadium is small, but it makes the viewing experience that much more exciting to watch. If you have yet to see a game live, make a point this season to check one out. You are practically on the court, and the volume from the fans will remind you of the old days at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Should the team make the NCAA tournament this season, Dan Majerle will have taken them from the depths of second-class basketball, all the way to the promised land of college hoops in only five years.

But we all know that his first love is the Phoenix Suns, and his professional goal upon his player retirement was to be the franchise’s Head Coach at some point.

Of course he was screwed  in 2013 by an inept General Manager when Lindsey Hunter was inexplicably selected over Majerle, which burned  Thunder Dan’s soul to what may be a completely irreparable level.

Yet at the same time, he is not foolish.

Grand Canyon will likely never be a National Championship contender, and even if they were to make the Big Dance, it would be extremely  difficult to repeat the feat with any regularity. As exciting a program as he has built, it has limitations, and expectations will never be too high.

At the same time, the Phoenix Suns’ roster will be closer to finally becoming the contending team that we all forsee this young core to develop into. What’s better is that Phoenix’s next Head Coach will not have had to sit through the awful growing pains of tanking and inexperience, and will instead oversee a roster that, while young, will have the skills necessary to make a long-term push for a title, while potentially centered around a true and undeniable superstar in Devin Booker.

For Ryan McDonough, Majerle’s resume will also speak for itself as he will have a second level of experience that will best suit the Young Suns and their run at the playoffs in a way that he did not have in 2013.

Not only does Majerle have NBA Assistant Coaching experience with his four-and-a-half years in Phoenix, but he too now has Head Coaching experience at the exact level needed to better round out his coaching skill-set – college. Whereas Watson is supposedly (and in all honestly could very well be) the kind of coach necessary to develop young players, he had never done it before. He and the Suns tout that he was a disciple of both John Wooden and Greg Popovich, but let’s face it: Watson never played under Wooden, nor did he actually coach with Pop. In fact, he had never even been an Assistant in the NBA before the Suns hired him to run their team.

Dan Majerle has worked to develop players at Grand Canyon for several years now, and while none have moved on the the NBA as of yet, the team has  improved every season, even playing tough against serious D-1 opponents.

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If the Suns take themselves seriously, they will move on from Earl Watson at some point and will offer Dan Majerle more money than he can refuse. They will bring the fire from Thunder back to downtown Phoenix, and as the franchise finally begins it’s playoff, and hopefully at some point in the next few years Championship, push, let him be at the helm.

He may be loyal to Jerry Colangelo, but it’s hard to imagine that given that the Suns’ situation could be too ripe for Dan Majerle to not pick, even The Godfather  will give Majerle his blessing.

Let’s hope that Ryan McDonough is already thinking ahead, and even though Earl Watson is safe for now, that McDonough has Dan Majerle in his sights when the time comes for a new Head Coach.