David Fizdale says LeBron James would not make a great basketball coach
Fizdale, who coached James in Miami, said that the superstar 'would kill somebody'
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2 min read
David Fizdale does not see LeBron James as a future coach. The Memphis Grizzlies coach, who was an assistant under Erik Spoelstra with the Miami Heat for the past eight years, told reporters on Tuesday that James has a brilliant basketball mind but would get fed up with his players failing to do things perfectly. When told about Fizdale's take, James did not disagree.
"No," Fizdale said when asked about a potential future in coaching for James. "He would kill somebody. Perfection is like [his standard]. He wants perfection. I could see him actually owning his own team and doing something like that, but I think [as a coach], he would end up killing a player at some point because they wouldn't live up to the expectations that he would set forth."
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"Yeah, he's a little right," James said as he smacked his lips and made a knowing face when informed of Fizdale's comments following Cleveland's 103-86 win. "I don't have, my patience is not -- you've got to be very patient as a coach. I don't think I have that much patience. Not that much."
Even so, Fizdale believes that "as a mentor or a guy that is just going to groom players, I don't know if you'll ever find anyone better than [James] and [Dwyane Wade] and Chris Bosh and those guys I was with down there [in Miami]. They were incredible leaders and basketball geniuses, so I was very lucky to be a part of that."
There's a difference between knowing how to do something and knowing how to teach someone to do it. There's a difference between being a "coach on the floor" and a coach. James might be the smartest player in the entire league, but it sounds like he's smart enough to know that coaching might not be his favorite kind of challenge, especially when he could instead be an owner or in a front office if he wants to be.
Hypothetically, it would be interesting to see James give it a try. Maybe it would be like Magic Johnson's short-lived stint as coach of the Los Angeles Lakers -- that's the example most often cited when arguing that former star players have trouble relating to the guys who aren't as talented as they were. Larry Bird, however, won 68.7 percent of his games in his three years coaching the Indiana Pacers and made it to the NBA Finals in 2000, so it's not as if there's no recent precedent for this.
The odds are against James ever getting into coaching, but there's probably nothing in basketball he couldn't do if he really wanted to. Let's be clear: If he never coaches, it will be because he chooses not to, not because he is incapable of learning how to do it.
