FanPost

Earl Watson as Head Coach

With all the talk about new head coaches, it surprises me no one has really brought up the possibility of Earl Watson.

We have heard it talked about when he was a player here. Gordon Monson even did a piece about it last season.

He already knows most of the core young players that are the future of the Jazz. He will be able to take what he knows about them as players from personal experience and be able to hit the ground running. From Monson's article we can see that he already thinks like a coach and helped the young guys while he was here:

"You have to learn personalities," Watson says. "Every guy is different. For instance, I can be more direct, more vulgar in my language when I’m talking to Derrick Favors. Enes Kanter, I have to nurture him. Gordon Hayward, I have to intellectually stimulate. Jeremy Evans, you teach and nurture.

I’m not a big fan of joking around with my teammates. I’m more serious. I keep it positive. Basketball is like life. The more you make guys feel positive, the more secure they feel about themselves, the better players they can become. I try to bring something out of younger players that they never knew existed. I try to inspire and motivate. Whatever you talk about reflects in everybody."

That to me sounds like ideal coaching material.

Terry Stotts has credited Watson as being a mentor to all the young players in Portland.

He turned down an assistant-coaching offer from a western conference team just last season. Could that team been the Jazz? Who knows. In this same article it talks about him making the transition to coaching as early as this summer. He has spent the season practically as an assistant coach in Portland learning all he can from the coaches there. He also plans on bringing Hall-of-Fame Coach Hubie Brown onto the coaching staff should he be offered a head coaching gig to help him in his first year of transition.

If I were DL, I would definitely have Earl at the top of the list of people to call this summer.

All comments are the opinion of the commenter and not necessarily that of SLC Dunk or SB Nation.