PBA Controversy: Coach Tim Cone, coach Norman Black or coach Tab Baldwin, who is right?

Today, we will continue to muse around the exposition of coach Tab Baldwin as we react to the comments of the two winningest active coaches in the country, coach Tim Cone and coach Norman Black.

Coach Tim Cone and coach Norman Black has 22 and 11 championships, respectively. Knowing that they are foreign coaches, they are easily the best exhibits for coach Tab Baldwin's coaching-immaturity point about Filipino coaches. Even in the top league in our country, foreign coaches are the ones who are dominating.

Coach Norman Black:

One thing I’ve learned over the course of my career in the Philippines is no matter how successful you are, it’s always good to remain humble. More so when you are the guest in a country.
My experience has been that Filipinos will always recognize and respect you if you are good at your job, but they will not tolerate or appreciate it if you are throwing your talent in their faces in a demeaning way.

It is good that coach Norman Black brings out the issue of humbleness because I think this is also the issue for other coaches. The fact is, if you have watched the podcast where coach Tab said those things instead of getting it through the articles who quoted him, you will take it much better because he did say it in the most humble way possible.

I have worked with Coach Tab and I know he is a very good basketball coach, but my personal feeling is that some of his recent comments were definitely out of line. While everyone's opinion should be respected, it’s also important that the persons expressing their opinion should be respectful how they relay their message. What’s the sense of having sound ideas if they fall on deaf ears because your delivery is flawed. I say this because Coach Tab is employed by people who have a say on how the PBA, FIBA and SBP are run. He has an avenue to talk to the decision makers directly and that probably would have and should have been a better venue for him to express his sentiments.

This one is on point from coach Norman Black. It is true that the delivery of the message is important so that the right people listen to it and actually respond to it. Unfortunately for coach Tab Baldwin, those people are now fighting against it. But for the PBA, SBP and BCAP, I hope they also recognized that the majority of Filipino fans agree with coach Tab. If they continue to ignore the message and focus on the messenger, they are also continuing to ignore the fans.

I know for a fact ( because I was one) that the majority of imports who arrive to play in the PBA all have had some success playing in other countries around the world (starting in the USA). If the imports numbers are bigger here, it’s because they play almost the entire game, something they don’t do in other places. So why demean their talent, it doesn’t make sense. 

This one shows that coach Norman Black did not get the right message in regards to the part about the imports. It is not really about the performance of the imports but the way the coaches utilized them.

As for the local coaches which I am one, we are always looking to improve our craft and become better coaches. We are no different from NBA and European coaches in that we want to learn and improve our skills at all times. I’m not sure if Coach Tab would accept any advise from me, especially since we are of the same age, but it’s important that we uplift the coaching community here in our country. Even if one may have a tactical advantage in knowledge over others, we should be humble in how we spread our message so others will remain open minded to what we have to say.

It is not about the skills, coach Norman. It was about maturity, there is a big difference. A good example is Calvin Abueva. Calvin is very skilled as a basketball player. He can score, pass, rebound, defend, make plays for others and etc. But he is not mature.

Coach Tim Cone:

I just don’t think coaches should criticize other coaches. We are and should be a fraternity and help each other out.
I was a little offended by the statements.

Coach Tim Cone deserves to be offended because it undermines the success that he has in his entire career. Although, coach Tim Cone's experience with the triangle is a good exhibit to the foremost message of coach Tab about coaching philosophy. The triangle offense was not accepted easily because of how complicated it was and how distributed the ball is. The foremost message of coach Tab is for the country to finally leave our love of hero-ball basketball. It is time to embrace a team-oriented system, just like the triangle.

Criticizing helps. The listeners just need to be mature enough to accept it.

And that’s mostly because of the format of three different conferences – no import (All-Filipino), which China, Korea, and Japan don’t have, one big import, and one small import.
That totally changes in the way you have to coach in each conference.You’re constantly making adjustments and trying to figure out how best to use your personnel through the year. But of course, I am biased since I am a PBA coach as well.

The last part is crucial. Coach Tim was honest enough that his comments are bounded by being a PBA coach. It is not an objective one.

Regarding the imports, only a few changed the way they utilized imports. Just look at coach Leo Austria who had the best local line-up for almost a decade now. He still went for ball-dominant, scoring type imports.

Overall, I was hoping that coach Tim Cone at least recognized the main point of coach Tab. That could have made a difference.