Orlando's head coach 2nd best new head coach

In reference to the Fire Ty threads. Here's a coach that I think is the 2nd best new coach in the NBA this year: Jacque Vaughn. It's hard to argue that Jackson for GS isn't THE BEST new coach in the NBA (was it on this site or back on the TribTalk where I said he would be an excellent head coach?). Both of those coaches have Jazz ties (pardon the pun).

Jacque is doing a great job with rebuilding the Magic. This team has given up three really good Centers recently, and nobody expected the Magic to do anything other than rebuild this year. They're basically rebuilding around Jammyjam Nelson at PG-- who will retire by the time the Magic expect to be contenders. Our guy, Jacque, though not winning, is actually developing a potentially good team while dealing with a more than fair share of injuries. Orlando brought in a promising but un-tested new coach, and put him in charge of re-building.

If the Jazz had gone the way the Magic FO went, we wouldn't have Al Jefferson, and we would be in line for a top three lottery pick. We would have seen a lot of Heyhay, Kanter, Evans, and DC, and probably have made some other trades. We probably would be cutting Ty a lot more slack. We'd probably still be Jazz fans (I know I would still be a Jazz fan, even with the worst W/L record in the past 30 years).

On the other hand, the Jazz FO could have gone the way GS went. They brought in a very promising but un-tested former PG head coach. They went out and got Jarret Jack and Bogut to make their team one of the best in the NBA (and, if Bogut would have healed quicker and more successfully, they WOULD be one of the best in the NBA). The Jazz went somewhere between the two-- they didn't rebuild, and they didn't bring in big free agents (well, they actually went for three medium-sized free agents).

If you go back and look at last year's teams (GS, ORL, and Utah), Orlando had the best team, Utah had the 2nd best team, and GS had the worst team. If you look at where they are right now, the tables have completely flipped. Utah is still in the middle.