The primary drawback I have heard from Knicks fans against the idea of Jay Wright coming to the Knicks, is that pushing for Wright as a candidate is foolishly buying into the very outlandish notion that winning on the college level would automatically translate to NBA success.

That notion is completely inaccurate, obviously. If it was even close to accurate then NBA teams would constantly be scurrying to outbid each other on the top college coaches every summer, which they aren't. NCAA basketball would become a breeding ground for NBA coaches just like it has been for NBA players, which it hasn't.

I have been obsessive about basketball for close to 20 years now, trust me when I tell you that I would not be pushing for a head coach based entirely on a naive narrative that I fully understand is incorrect.

I'm not pushing for the Knicks to pursue Coach K or Calipari or any of the other college coaching icons. I might be an idiot about A LOT of things, but following and knowing the game of basketball and any sort of facts/trends related to basketball is not one of them. Take my word on that one.

There has obviously been far more prominent examples of college coaches flaming out in the NBA than the legitimate success stories. That is why diving into the collegiate ranks to find an NBA head coach has become less and less common. The 2 Leagues have become separated almost as if they were 2 different sports. And for legitimate reason.

There are many, MANY notable differences between the NCAA and NBA game. In terms of of both style and structure. The NBA is a player's League featuring grown ass men who make a fuck load of money and don't take shit from coaches they don't respect.

This does not bode well for most NCAA coaches, who are used to the authoritarian power they have at the programs they run. In addition, with better athletes with more developed games who play at a faster pace, the style of play seen in the NBA and NCAA are vastly different brands of basketball.

College successes like John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Tim Floyd, PJ Carlisemo, even college football icon Nick Saban if you want to go the football route (I know the naysayers do), have all experienced their fair share of professional failure.

HOWEVA...

In the summer of 2013, the Celtics (who have basically been 2 steps ahead of us ever since they drafted Larry Bird 2 picks after we drafted Michael Ray Richardson in 1978), who had already lost Ray Allen to the Heat the summer before, decided to trade the rest of their aging "Big 3" (along with Jason Terry) to Billy "The" King (FOP) and the Brooklyn Nets for a stockpile of draft picks; and essentially went straight into rebuild mode.

Their current head coach at the time, Doc Rivers, was not suitable for a rebuilding situation and they quickly let go of him as well to the Clippers. In search of a new young coach to lead their rebuilding charge, the Celtics decided to go an unorthodox route by plucking Butler's Brad Stevens from the collegiate ranks to the surprise of most people.

But Stevens was young, smart, savvy, forward thinking, and had experience running a very successful developmental basketball program. 2 years later Stevens incredibly guided the rebuilding Celtics back to the playoffs. 5 years later and Brad Stevens is commonly referred to in NBA circles as "Boy Genius," "Wiz Kid," or "Baby Faced Wonder," and an unquestionable top 5 NBA coach by any standard.

I bring up the example of Brad Stevens not to compare him to Jay Wright, but rather to emphasize that like with any other coach, some college coaches work out in the NBA and some don't. It's not a matter of collegiate success as much as it is identifying the right collegiate candidates. No, not every successful college coach is Brad Stevens; but they aren't all Calipari or Rick Pitino either.

This rant isn't about successful college coaches becoming successful NBA coaches. This rant is not a personal plea for NBA teams to start taking more of a look at NCAA coaches for vacant positions like some twisted form of The Rooney Rule. This is also not me trying to configure the most successful general background I think the Knicks should search from.

This rant is about me explaining who I believe is the SINGLE best coach for the Knicks. I am identifying ONE college basketball coach who possesses the necessary qualities and material to be that coach. Not blindly equating college success to NBA success. So let's make that clear. That college coach is Jay Wright, and his Knicks qualifications go well beyond the naive "college success = NBA success" notion. I don't need all these words to make that dumb of an argument.

Contrary to ignorant belief that successful college coaches are destined to achieve similar success in the NBA, or just as ignorant folk who will tell you that college success isn't translatable whatsoever to NBA success, it is actually impossible to determine if a college coach will have success in the NBA. I state that as a fact because I can say it with 100% certainty.

The only predictable thing about sports is the unpredictable nature. That's also the great thing about sports. UMBC might lose to Virginia 99x out of 100, but all they needed to do was beat them once and they did that. I would say that something close to 99.9% of Junior College students bagging groceries in Tulsa, Oklahoma do not ever go on to make it to the NBA, let alone become NYC hearthrobs, but there is always that one John Starks to defy the odds.

Similarly, but less extremely, just because many or most college basketball coaches have not or will not become successful NBA coaches (and that perception is greatly exaggerated), that doesn't mean Jay Wright can't be our John Starks, so to speak. Let me get back on track. It's impossible to determine if any college coach will have success in the NBA because it's impossible to determine if any coach will have success in the NBA regardless of background.

A college coach is just a basketball coach at the end of the day, and just like with any other basketball coach, success in the NBA can never be guaranteed. Head coaching candidates are just like any other candidate in any other profession in that they all come with resumes. And all resumes come with backgrounds.

It's all about trying to pick out the best resume based on a variety of different factors (including, but not limited to background and experience) as well as team needs. Teams can just do the best they can based on the information they have on hand with the options they are given.

For instance, Jim Boeheim and Jay Wright each have "college coach" as their background on a NBA coaching resume. They each have a national championship on their resume. For their Knicks resume, Boeheim also has the decisive advantage of cementing himself as a legend in Central NY as well as more total wins and experience. However, other factors, primarily the style of play he runs, badly hurts Boeheim as a potential NBA head coaching candidate compared to Jay Wright (not that he has any intentions of coaching in the League, just an example).

There is no perfect answer to the equation. There is no discernible right or wrong background or amount of experience necessary to become a successful coach in the NBA. There are so many other qualities that define a basketball coach that are far more predicative/correlated to NBA success than a coach's background. So to generalize any candidate based on their background and blindly associate that background with "success" or "failure" would just be irresponsible.

There are times a candidate might have such strong other more intangible qualities that their background is almost disregarded completely. For instance, potential NYC coaching deity himself, Mark Jackson, was once selected to coach the Golden State Warriors with no prior coaching experience whatsoever, only experience as a basketball player and commentator.

That type of background is certainly much less predictive of NBA success than even a college coach, but the Warriors had a good feel for Jackson's credentials as a coach so they went with him over more "qualified" candidates who have committed much more man hours to the profession. According to some, Mark Jackson only "built" arguably the greatest team in NBA history (he didn't, but that's a wholeeeee other thing).

One might be tempted to call Stevens an "outlier" as far as college coaches go, and to that, I'd say that I agree. Stevens certainly is an outlier from most of the successful college basketball coaches who would never come close to replicating his success at the NBA level. But just because Stevens is an outlier, doesn't mean that he is the only outlier.

For all the differences between the NBA and NCAA and all the notable failures, occasionally you will find a Brad Stevens, who has been an absolute diamond in the rough and probably the hottest young coach in the League right now.

Billy Donovan hasn't been bad by any means with OKC either. Sure, he couldn't keep KD around, but OKC management also decided to replace the coach Durant spent his entire fucking career playing for the summer before he was set to hit UFA. That's not entirely on him. Still, Billy Donovan was a bad couple of breaks away from winning an NBA title in his first season and keeping KD (they're also going all the way this year so it doesn't matter #ThunderUp #StayMe7o).

Or even Larry Brown, who I personally fucking despise with the wrath of a thousand suns, but is also the only basketball coach to win a championship at both the NCAA and NBA level.

The underlying point is, it can definitely happen. No there isn't even anywhere close to a direct correlation of NCAA success leading to NBA success, but there isn't anything close to that kind of correlation with any other type of coach either. This narrative that successful college coaches can't make it in the NBA is just false. It's just a myth or a stereotype. That's all it is.

And just like with any other stereotype (similar to NBA Draft 2015 when most Knicks fans didn't want to draft Porzingis based entirely on ill-perceived stereotypes about Euro prospects, not-so-coincidentally one of those "fans" being Stephen A "WHO WAS ON CRACK!" Smith, who has also been one of the most outspoken Mark Jackson lobbyists), it can be extremely ignorant to use it as the basis of your decision making processes. It's what small minded people use to prevent them from looking at things individually and with an open mind.

The right coach can be found anywhere. While many aspects of the vastly-different NCAA system certainly do make it hard to find coaches who possess compelling qualities to make it work in the NBA, at the end of the day college basketball is still just basketball. A good basketball coach is a good basketball coach.

And just for the record, for the Mark Jackson fan club, who LOVE to use Rick Pitino as an example to discredit the notion that college coaches can be successful in the NBA. It was Rick Pitino himself who was essential in developing Mark Jackson during his formative years into becoming the player that Knicks fans love to reminisce about. Before Pitino took that Kentucky money and Mark Jackson regressed and was later traded by the Knicks.

Rick Pitino sure deserves his fair amount of criticism in Boston for his Celtics stint (and yet they still didn't let that experience turn them away from a college coach when a college coach happened to be the best guy for the job nearly 20 years later because they are smarter than us), but for the cult of Mark Jackson to be the ones pointing to Pitino as a college-to-NBA failure, is a little bit hypocritical.

Pitino was actually a pretty solid Knicks coach, all things considered. He had the young Patrick Ewing/Mark Jackson led "Bomb Squad" team well on its way towards big things before he left, was replaced by Stu Jackson, and the team (Mark Jackson in particular) badly regressed before Pat "The Rat" took over in 1991 and righted the ship (editor's note: the Mark Jackson fan club should and would also believe that Rick Pitino really "built" the 90s Knicks applying their same logic). Take that for data! (but seriously, fuck Fizdale)