The Pistons gold-plated their new coach and Vassilis Skoundis opens up the NBA’s bank accounts!
I don’t know if inflation in the United States is under control or galloping…
Also, I don’t know if Monty Williams was one of the Pistons’ options for their widower’s bench…
But I know that the so-called coach is a very good coach and after a few conversations with him I realized that he also has a very special culture.
Yesterday I found out that this culture is expensive, $13,000,000 a year to be exact.
“money is there“, as a soul said to us!
There’s money (apparently) in Motown too, congratulations to the car companies!
In the meantime, now that I think about it better, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Pistons wronged the former Pelicans and Suns coach!
Malkovich’s a dime
Yes, they wronged him, because normally, and following the logic of Bozidar Malković, who proclaimed for thirty years that “The coach should earn at least a penny more than the highest-paid player on the team.Normally they would have to give Williams a yearly contract for $19,550,001.
Why so many?
But surpassing Bojan Bogdanovic’s 19,550,000 by a dime!
At least Williams will raise more money than Marvin Bagley (12,500,000) and Cade Cunningham (10,552,800), so he has some comfort.
There is money, and in fact there is a lot of it, as Spyros Kalogirou replied to Nikos Kourkoulos in the classic scene from the film “Lola”!
Of course almost half of this money is taken by the IRS, after all the Americans say (and here in Greece I heard this saying from the mouth of Nikos Galis: “The only certainty in life is that you will pay taxes and die»!
He also surpassed Szyzewski
Monty Williams has signed a six-year contract that will bring him $78,500,000 before taxes, making history as the highest-paid manager of all time!
In terms of annual earnings, he is trailed by Gregg Popovich (11,500,000), Steve Kerr (9,500,000), Erik Spoelstra (8,500,000) and Rick Carlisle (7,200,000), but he had them all, Mike Szyzewski last year eaten cabbage!
In his penultimate season on the Duke bench (2020–21), the five-time NCAA champion had an annual salary of $12,500,000, followed by Kansas’ Bill Self with $10,200,000.
Jordan is three and 30
I’m sorting this all out and bringing up the issue of inflation again if I could only find a comparison to what happened some thirty years ago…
Of course, the facts were different then and that’s only proven by the fact that Michael Jordan’s annual contract with the Bulls in 1996 was only three…two million dollars, but he made another thirty or so!
“Midas” Rick Pitino
A year later, Rick Pitino seemed to blow the bank!
I mean it because when the future Panathinaikos and national team coach took over as technical director of the Celtics on May 7, 1997, he became Midas on the bench!
Pitino then left Kentucky to sign a ten-year, $70,000,000 contract that made him the highest paid coach of any sport of all time and the world!!!
The Celtics’ offer far outstripped that of the Nets, who offered him $28,000,000 over five years, and of course he didn’t take the Bostonians’ gauntlet to succeed Em El-Karr, after one disappointing season they ended up in a terrible 15-67 year record!
Of course, everything that starts well ends in pain!
The broken heart and the damaged psyche
The calendar pointed to Saturday January 6, 2001 as the Celtics They suffered a heavy loss (22nd in 34 games this season) 112-86 to the Heat in Miami and when the game was over they made their way back to Boston…
Rick gave up emotionally and with tears in his eyes in the locker room. “You know my heart breaks but I have no choicehe said and walked in an unknown direction.
He later revealed that he had locked himself away in his Miami home to pursue a solitary “soul quest”: an introspection to mend his damaged psyche…
Then the reactions were different: Paul Pierce cried, Antoine Walker celebrated, Celtics stock rose 11.3% and Pitino gave up the mythical ten-year $70,000,000 contract the Celtics had laid at his feet to leave Kentucky…
The wounds that won’t heal
Four years ago, when we started a conversation about this painful story, I had the feeling that his wounds from this villain had not yet healed…
“You will never healHe said bluntly to me one night in a restaurant. “Then everything went wrong… I didn’t get the championship I gave to Bill Russell before he died. I realized that you can’t be manager and president at the same time, and I threw a ton of money on the street»!
Here are the consequences in this case …
Russell happily accepted the championship Pitino promised him from Doc Rivers in 2008.
In 2021, Brad Sevens left the bank to become president in Danny Ainge’s place, realizing that no two watermelons fit in the same armpit, so neither daddy-daddy nor couple-couple.
The money Pitino threw away he found in Louisville, which also gilded him by offering him, a product of the time, a contract similar to that of the Celtics!
Nowadays there is either inflation or money is… possessive, all paper is collected by Monty Williams…
Well done coaches!
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