Sonics need fast decision on coach

TACOMA – With the NBA draft racing at the Sonics, they’re practically forced to hire a coach this week.

Unless the new general manager is some kind of prestidigitator and can pull an unexpectedly appealing hire out of his hat, none from among the cluster of logical candidates will cause fans to race to the ticket windows.

But that’s not a real issue in this hire, and it’s not a criticism.

This is a players’ league and, aside from the box office lure of a small handful of coaches, fans don’t pony up to watch the guy wearing the suit and tie.

We may then assume that the prime criterion in a coaching hire by GM Sam Presti and owner Clay Bennett is the likelihood of winning games … not selling tickets, not wooing the Seattle fan base, not filling some public-relations need.

Although little information will leak from the Presti-Bennett cabal, it’s presumed that the front-runner for the Sonics’ job is San Antonio assistant P.J. Carlesimo.

The connection to Carlesimo is obvious: Presti was a former Spurs assistant general manager, and Bennett used to own a piece of the Spurs and is awed by their success.

All have downplayed the notion of turning this franchise into Spurs Lite, Spurs Northwest, or the Seattle SuperSpurs, but it’s only fair for these guys to view the San Antonio paradigm as a franchise blueprint worth emulating.

The Spurs’ four NBA titles validate that.

Of course, Tim Duncan and Tony Parker have a lot more to do with the acquisition of championship jewelry than does the coaching of Carlesimo.

Carlesimo’s resume from his days as head coach in Portland and Golden State will not inspire widespread fan celebration. That doesn’t mean he can’t get the job done.

The natural tendency for any fan will be to link Carlesimo to the lamentable 1997 incident when one of his players, Latrell Sprewell, tried to choke the living breath out of him.

Although Sprewell was widely criticized, many came away with the impression that Carlesimo was too demanding a coach, perhaps to the point of demeaning some players.

It’s a league, after all, in which the management of ego and temperament is more critical to a coach’s success than knowing how many timeouts are left and which opponent has the worst free-throw shooting percentage.

But the attack was 10 years ago, and Carlesimo was the victim. He’s spent the last five seasons sitting next to – and presumably learning from – Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich (who is also demanding and frequently dyspeptic, but at least successful with it).

I don’t know if Carlesimo can make a winner of the Sonics. I don’t know that he’ll be better dealing with players as a head coach now that he’s been an assistant for a while. I just know it’s unfair to think he hasn’t been able to grow and change and learn in the decade since he made his biggest headline.

If the Spurs connection is as critical as we suspect, then Don Newman, another assistant, can get at least a sniff.

Newman is more intriguing in some ways, as he hasn’t already been fired as an NBA head coach and he, as far as we know, has never been strangled by a player.

Newman has regional ties as an Idaho player who also has assisted at Washington State and Oregon. Although he was drafted by the Celtics, he ended up playing football in the CFL, and spent some time in a training camp with the Seahawks.

Former Sonics assistant Dwane Casey, who was fired by Minnesota after going 53-69 in a season and a half, would have the best fan appeal. He was an assistant with the Sonics for 11 seasons.

Before I tell you that Casey would be a good choice, I have to recuse myself from such an assessment until readers forget that I believed that the momentum gained in winning the Eastern Conference was going to be the springboard for Cleveland to upset the heavily favored Spurs in the NBA Finals.

Another factor here is that Casey’s good name in Seattle means nothing to a team that might soon be billeted in Oklahoma City.

As for Rick Carlisle … he’s supposedly close to Presti. But the varied responses to his candidacy by those who watch these things for a living range from Carlisle being too expensive, to not interested, to being a bad fit for Sonics personnel.

Whichever way Presti goes on this hire, it will be our first tangible evidence of how he intends to run this franchise.

The only certainty at this point, though, is that he’s going to have to do it soon.