It is extremely rare for a coach to be fired by a franchise before returning to it a few seasons later. Yet this is what has just happened to Steve Clifford, pushed out by the Hornets in 2018 … and recalled this summer.
Charlotte initially wanted Kenny Atkinson to take over from James Borrego, who had taken over from Steve Clifford, but Steve Kerr’s assistant preferred to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area, so Michael Jordan chose to give him a second chance. his former coach, to finally pass the obstacle of the “play-in”.
With the first challenge being the establishment of a defensive identity…
“I think we will find out”, he responds to The Athletic when asked if the LaMelo Ball Hornets feel like defending. “I’m not ducking the question. It’s just that after (a few) days of training it’s hard to know, you know what I mean? All the coaches are happy right now. It’s hard to have three or four bad days in training camp. Come back to me in five weeks, six weeks, and we’ll have a better idea of our situation. »
For Steve Clifford, Charlotte has above all ” Lack of luck “ last season, especially with the injury of Gordon Hayward, the winger being undoubtedly the key to stabilizing this workforce.
Even if he feels “blessed with opportunity” to train the Hornets again, we could answer Steve Clifford that he does not arrive in the best conditions. The legal problems of Miles Bridges have completely blocked the club this summer, which will have to find internal solutions to progress.
But for the coach, it’s an opportunity to erase the frustration of his last stint in North Carolina.
“I can say that I was at my worst (in his coaching career) in my last year here (in 2017/18, finished with 36 wins for 46 losses). It was a group that I did a bad job with, because we were always good defensively, and I thought that if we could improve in attack, we would really have a chance to be good. We spent training camp doing a ton of work offensively, and we were never good defensively. And what I’ve learned is that you have to start over every year and don’t take one side of the game for granted. »
