Alvin Gentry is a good man but wasn’t a good enough coach for ambitious Pelicans

The irony of the timing was inescapable.

The New Orleans Pelicans fired head coach Alvin Gentry on Saturday morning. Just a few hours later, the man Gentry replaced five years ago – Monty Williams – was named the top head coach during the NBA seeding games after leading the Phoenix Suns to an 8-0 record.

Neither the Pelicans nor the Suns made the playoffs, but the juxtaposition of the two happenings Saturday was a reminder that dismissing a coach who is no longer or never was the right person for the job is a lot easier than hiring the right coach for the job.

Williams coached the Pelicans for five seasons and led them to the playoffs twice without winning a series. The organization fired him after a four-game sweep against Golden State in 2015.

The Warriors went on to win the NBA title and New Orleans plucked Gentry off of Steve Kerr’s championship staff.

Gentry’s association with the Warriors was attention-getting, but his track record as a head coach was not.

He had been a head coach with four organizations for a total of 12 seasons. Two of those teams had winning seasons, thought he did guide Phoenix to the 2010 Western Conference finals.

His time in New Orleans was consistent with his time in Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles and Phoenix. Four of his Pelicans teams had a losing record and overall his teams won 175 games and lost 225.

This season had many of the same features that Gentry’s previous seasons mostly had – an inordinate number of injuries, a notable ability to withstand adversity well enough to inspire hope but ultimately an unsatisfying end.

The one exception came two years ago when the Pelicans reached the playoffs as the sixth seed and swept third-seeded Portland before losing in five games to Golden State.

Then last season Gentry had to lead the organization through Anthony Davis’ disruptive trade demand and did so adroitly.

It was a difficult balancing act.

The organization wanted to limit, if not eliminate, Davis’ playing time in order to avoid an injury that could diminish the All-Star forward’s trade value and to provide additional playing time for younger players in a season that was a lost cause. The NBA promised significant monetary penalties if New Orleans refused to play a healthy star.

Gentry did well with a nearly impossible situation. He crafted lineups and rotations to conform to the competing interests of the organization and the league while still trying to give his players the best opportunity to win games.

He answered the uncomfortable questions, day after day for months, refusing to acknowledge the obvious – that he was being forced to coach with one hand tied behind his back – because he was too smart to say anything that would make his and his players’ jobs any more difficult than they already were.

Gentry earned respect even as his team had a disappointing season, and after David Griffin was hired to run the basketball operation he rewarded the coach by adding a year to the one remaining on Gentry’s contract.

The Pelicans hit the NBA Lottery and landed a potential generational talent in Zion Williamson before Griffin took the sack of lemons that Davis had become and made a large pool of lemonade with a blockbuster trade with the Lakers.

The mostly young roster has a very bright, long-term future but had a fairly low ceiling for this season.

Then on the eve of the season opener, Williamson had knee surgery and didn’t play until mid-January. New Orleans endured a 13-game losing streak before getting healthy.

The Pelicans had won eight of 13 games and were close enough to the eighth spot in the West to regain playoff hope with about five weeks left in the regular season.

Then came the COVID-19 shutdown.

When the season resumed near Orlando last month, New Orleans had a realistic shot at reaching the play-in. But the Pelicans couldn’t regain the form they had in March, losing six of their eight games, including the last two after they were mathematically eliminated.

Griffin said in a Saturday afternoon news conference that the decision to fire Gentry was more broad-based than just consideration of the team’s uninspired performance during the restart.

He declined to list specific characteristics he’ll be looking for in a successor. He spoke generally about finding “the right fit” and someone with “a shared vision” for “an ambitious group going forward.”

Griffin’s stated goal for the Pelicans has been “sustainable success” ever since owner Gayle Benson hired him, demonstrating a commitment to upgrading her basketball team to the high standard of her football team.

It was time – perhaps past time – to acknowledge that Gentry wasn’t the right person to achieve that lofty goal.

Alvin Gentry is a good man.

He wasn’t a great coach for the Pelicans, but neither was he a bad one.

He was just insufficiently good for a franchise that has raised its standard for acceptable performance.