Betting on Rick Carlisle

Rick Carlisle lays down the law

The hiring of Rick Carlisle by the Dallas Mavericks guarantees one thing.

The Mavs are not rebuilding.

That and Donnie Nelson isn't leaving and the doors might start swinging in the locker room.

You do not hire Rick Carlisle with the expectations of playing for three years out. You do not narrow your coaching search to NBA coaches who have had success. Carlisle is a guy who takes little and squeezes a lot out of it.

Mark Cuban expects to compete this year with a bloated payroll, aging parts, half the team leaving and a small forward who's currently half baked.

But Carlisle's handled worse. He coached Jerry Stackhouse in Detroit and dealt with "Uncle Spliffie" Robinson. So he knows how to handle potheads. He helped establish Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups and Ben Wallace. A year after he left, Larry Brown won a championship with his Pistons team.

He took a young Indiana Pacers team (with Jermaine O'Neal and Ron Artest) and molded them into a 61-win team. A year later, he saw his young squad vanquish itself during the Piston-Pacer melee ... but he still won 44 games.

He could never recapture what he had with that team again. That fight changed everything.

The Pacer firing made sense. The team had fallen apart and thugs like Stephen Jackson and Ron Artest soiled everything. The Piston firing? Eh. Won the division twice, Coach of the Year and had 50 wins a season and he gets the ax.

He gets the ax for Larry Brown. And Brown is signing with Charlotte, so Carlisle should be safe in Dallas for at least a couple of years.

Many media types are calling this an "uninspired" and "boring" hire. This is ridiculous. Why should a good hire have to be a splashy hire? Splashy hires are for bad teams like the Bobcats who inked Brown. For teams like the Mavericks of a decade ago who hired Don Nelson. 

The Mavs aren't rebuilding so splashy hires need not apply.