UCLA Basketball: Responding to Dan Guerrero’s Presser
Dan Guerrero’s press conference today was revealing, both about the fundamental disconnect between him and the fans on the state of the UCLA Basketball program, and about where his priorities lie as an athletic director.
My colleague, Michael Hanna, has provided a great ‘translation guide‘ from Guerrero-speak to straight-talk, which I definitely recommend you read. I was planning to load this essay up with quips and put-downs, breaking down Guerrero’s remarks FireJoeMorgan.com style, but I’ve opted instead to leave that on Twitter – you can check out my real-time reactions to the press conference if you follow me: @sideoutpar.
No, here what I’m going to do is first respond to some of Guerrero’s statements about Steve Alford and the UCLA Basketball program; then we’ll look what some of his comments reveal about his mindset and focus as an athletic director to better understand who is ultimately in charge of our beloved Bruin teams.
Q: What would you say to the fans that are still calling for Steve Alford to be fired?
In response to this question, Guerrero hoped that UCLA fans would ‘understand what UCLA’s all about.’
"We’re not all about a coaching carousel every two or three years. We’re about building a program and doing our best to build our program the right way."
This is something I’ve believed for a long time about Guerrero – and I’ll elaborate on this a little below – but he’s terrified of being trigger-happy with personnel. He correctly assesses that it’s unseemly for an organization to ruthlessly fire people left and right and to constantly undergo turnover.
However, in hoping to avoid two- or three-year coaching carousels, he just commits the program to four- or five-year cycles that drive the fans crazy and result in even uglier dead-man-walking final seasons for his coaches, where everyone knows that they will be fired, and the play suffers and the culture become toxic.
Karl Dorrell in 2007, Rick Neuheisel in 2011, Ben Howland in 2013, and now (inevitably) Steve Alford in 2017. These spectacles are just as unseemly – if not moreso – and they bring embarrassment to the university.
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Look, I get it. In my day job, I’m very good at analysis, writing, and briefing my findings to policy customers. I’m not at all good at helping clients navigate the bureaucratic requirements of my line of work, even though that’s a part of my job. As a result, I try to minimize the occasions that I have to do that and tend to procrastinate when it becomes unavoidable.
Dan Guerrero clearly struggles with hiring and firing coaches. I don’t think his tendency to delay firings until the need becomes painfully obvious stems primarily from an aversion to admitting his own mistakes. No, I think it comes from trying to minimize and procrastinate on what he knows is an acute weakness of his: hiring a replacement.
But ultimately, real leadership requires identifying and rectifying mistakes quickly and decisively. And the lack of this kind of leadership is partly what gives Bruin fans heartburn about how UCLA athletics are run.
Guerrero then proceeds to stump for Alford and his accomplishments at UCLA:
"There are very few coaches around the country that, in their first two years, at any place, will go to two Sweet 16s."
As Alford’s detractors are fond of pointing out, UCLA’s list of victims in the 2014 and 2015 tournaments consists of Tulsa, Stephen F. Austin, Southern Methodist, and Alabama-Birmingham. That’s a 13-seed, a 12-seed, a 6-seed, and a 14-seed. Calling that ‘going to the Sweet 16’ is accurate as far as it goes, but it purposely leaves out enough context as to be effectively dishonest.
Thing is, even Guerrero knows this. Later, in response to a question about his threshold for a successful 2017, he mentions competing for a Pac-12 championship and getting a ‘pretty darn good’ seed in the NCAA tournament. But then he backtracks to avoid painting himself into a corner a year from now by accidentally setting the bar higher than he wants:
"…a pretty darn good seed in the NCAA tournament…gives you a better opportunity to advance. Now, there’s no guarantees of that. Look at this tournament. I mean gosh, high seeds are being knocked off. A lot of it has to do with matchups and how you play on one particular day. A single-elimination tournament, anything can happen."
Yep. Anything can happen. Even a poorly coached team or one that most experts agree did not merit inclusion into the field can catch a lucky break – either in officiating or in facing lower-seeded opponents in the second round. Dan Guerrero knows that tournament success is not a reliable indicator of team quality. Yet he’s willing to point to it to defend the coach he’s stuck with.
Lastly, Guerrero pointed to the influx of talent expected next year, highlighted by Lonzo Ball and TJ Leaf.
"But that was one year. We have experience coming back. We have a really good recruiting class coming in that this coaching staff recruited. Those student-athletes want to come to UCLA, and they want to play for this coaching staff. We have another class that is shaping up to be a very good class in the subsequent year. These individuals want to play for this coaching staff."
I’ve said this so much that even I’m getting sick of hearing it, but the problems with this year’s team – which were problems latent in Alford’s previous teams as well – were not chiefly talent-related. They refused to play defense, they played out of position, and they mentally quit on their coach and on each other after conference play started. These are distinctly coaching-related failures.
No, this team did not have the talent to compete with Kansas or Oklahoma or Michigan State (or apparently, Middle Tennessee, for that matter). Mike Krzyzewski could not have coached this team to an ACC title. But they certainly had the talent to finish higher than tenth in a weak-to-mediocre Pac-12.
Alford is not feeling heat from the fans because his team was undertalented. He is feeling heat because they were unmotivated, misused, and poorly coached. Citing next year’s freshman class simply does not address the claim that Steve Alford is unfit to coach UCLA Basketball.
Q: What you said at the time with the contract and the buyout is you want a strong commitment on both sides. Do you have any regrets about that deal?
"No I don’t."
Look, I get it. There’s no way that Guerrero could have answered that question in anything but the negative. Disgruntled fans would love to hear the AD say, ‘Yeah, that didn’t turn out as I hoped. Without that penalty, I would have been free to make what looks like a necessary coaching change. But that’s not the world we live in. I made that mistake, and for better or worse that gives Steve another shot to turn things around.’
But that’s simply not realistic. A statement like that would have consequences for recruiting, for ticket sales, for donations, for the players’ willingness to take Alford seriously next year. Publicly throwing a sitting coach under the bus like that would make it nearly impossible to attract a self-respecting, capable coach to replace Alford.
But Guerrero’s answer is nonetheless unsatisfying and tone deaf. It carries the same cluelessness as when he famously didn’t see anything wrong with UCLA Football only having an 80-yard practice field. He’s blinded by the egg on his face.
He could have said something along the lines of, ‘Given the competitive nature of the coaching market and what Steve had accomplished at the time, I stand by that decision. Would I make it again now, seeing how this season has turned out? Of course not. But as Steve has indicated in his return of that extension, he and I are on the same page about this. We can’t remake that decision; we can only focus on working together to get this program to where I know Steve can take it.’
But instead, he doubled down and said, ‘…these kinds of contracts are the kinds of contracts that are being written in many other universities.’
Q: Is there another instance of that type of buyout? At the time, I think it was, if not unprecedented, then at least very rare to have that size of a buyout on both sides.
"I don’t know. I don’t know about other contracts."
Here’s why I hope he’s lying: not knowing the market conditions for major athletic contracts is gross negligence on the part of a major university athletic director. It is simply Guerrero’s job to ‘know about other contracts,’ both as comparables for UCLA’s own contracts and as research into future candidates for all positions, given the unpredictability of the coaching profession.
This actually touches on one of the reasons Guerrero is so bad at hiring. He hasn’t built relationships with or done research on potential candidates at other schools. Vacancies always seem to surprise Dan, who then springs into action relying on a combination of cash and UCLA’s aura to wow a Chris Petersen or a Brad Stevens.
Consequently, the two most successful hires Guerrero has made in the revenue programs (Jim Mora and Ben Howland) were guys who were interested in the job and either initiated contact or made their interest obvious.
I hope Guerrero is lying, but if not he’s answering our exasperated question of how he could be so bad at hiring and firing coaches.
Here’s why I know he’s lying: right before that question, he had just finished defending Alford’s buyout and extension by saying, ‘…these kinds of contracts are the kinds of contracts that are being written in many other universities.’
Dan Guerrero’s Job, As He Sees It
I used to be a flag-waving, badge-wearing member of the ‘Fire Guerrero’ Brigade. I’m not anymore, and despite everything I just outlined above, here’s why.
Dan Guerrero conceives of his job as primarily consisting of two elements at which he excels. The first is raising money and tending to donors. The second is keeping the athletic department clean and scandal-free.
Asked about what he wanted to accomplish between now and 2019, when his current contract is up, this was his response (in its entirety):
"Well, the reason why my contract expires at the end of 2019 is that it’s synonymous with the end of the $4.2 billion centennial campaign and I pledged to move this program forward such that we would accomplish the objective of raising the $265 or $270 million that is our charge towards that initiative. I believe we’re going to surpass that, which is something I would really like to do. Certainly there are a number of things we have planned that are important to me — completing the two facilities; the next project is the academic center that we would like to build. We haven’t hit the streets with that yet but that’s what we would like to do next. When you think about the things we’ve done from a facilities standpoint, that’s half a billion dollars that we have accomplished in the last several years, that would include Pauley and our relationship with the Rose Bowl project. The academic center is a missing piece and that’s next on the agenda."
Not one mention of national championships, conference titles, winning seasons, etc. The goal against which he rates his performance is raising money to improve facilities. That speaks volumes, both to his priorities and how successful he has been at what he has prioritized highest.
When asked about how challenging this year has been, Guerrero says,
"…Sometimes you make great decisions, and sometimes you make decisions that fall short of your expectation. But then you move on. That gets back to having core values and core philosophies that are consistent with the mission of the university. And that’s important. When you have core values based on integrity, balance between athletic excellence and academic achievement, when you’re committed to student-athlete welfare and diversity and equity and all those kinds of things, when you’re fiscally responsible. If you make decisions based on those factors, then you can live with the bad ones…"
Core values and philosophies. The mission of the university. Integrity. Academic achievement. Student-athlete welfare. Diversity. Equity. Fiscal responsibility.
These are all things he ranks above competitive success. I say that as a value-neutral statement, not as a condemnation. Guerrero values the ethical performance, as measured by those attributes, of his department first and foremost. Like with finances, you have to concede that he has been successful in this regard.
Despite the circus around Alford, UCLA is in another class entirely from the embarrassing clown show across town. Steve Sarkisian; Josh Shaw; Pat Haden; Lane Kiffin; Pete Carroll; Reggie Bush; Mike Garrett – largely thanks to Guerrero and the culture he’s established at UCLA, there are no equivalents in Westwood to USC‘s parade of embarrassments. The worst you can point to is P. Diddy, which – please.
Here’s Guerrero on the various constituencies which an athletic director has to balance:
"Because you do have a lot of stakeholders that you have to, not necessarily appease, but certainly there are a lot of stakeholders out there that either want something from you, expect something from you, and or the program. …You’re talking about your faculty. You’re talking about the staff on a college campus. You’re talking about your own staff. The coaches. The student-athletes. Their parents. The media. The Pac-12. The NCAA. Even the Regents of the University of California. They’re all stakeholders that expect or want something from this program. And then of course, you have your season-ticket holders, you have your alums, you have your fans, just in a general sense. Everyone really has a stake in what it is that you do at your university."
I don’t think that Guerrero’s priorities are idiosyncratic to him. I believe they reflect the collective will of the university administration and the UC Regents, who in turn want to do right by the NCAA, the Pac-12, the coaches, the athletes, the families, etc.
In other words, I don’t call for Guerrero to be fired both because he’s good at what he sets out to do and because he’s good at what he was hired to do. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is not going to fire Guerrero. Even if he did, his replacement would be charged with the same mission and the same priorities. This is what UCLA is; and it’s one of the reasons fans, students, and alumni are very proud of the university.
Clearly I have a problem with how Dan Guerrero makes personnel decisions. This isn’t to say that everything’s fine because Bruins don’t cheat. Yes, UCLA has a legacy of integrity, justice, and academic excellence. But UCLA also has the legacy of being the most competitively successful college athletic program of all time.
The solution to doing right by that legacy isn’t to fire the AD, though. It’s to encourage him to delegate responsibilities that are outside his skill-set and comfort zone. It’s to empower a subordinate (or multiple subordinates) to take the lead on hiring and firing coaches, with Guerrero retaining ultimate veto power.
Free him up to raise funds, to find more mega-donors like Casey Wasserman, to represent UCLA to the broader college athletic community, and to continue to set a tone of integrity and character. Let Dan Guerrero be the best little Dan Guerrero he can be – UCLA will be better off for it – and let someone else handle the dirty work.
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Go Bruins!