Apparently, despite getting the team into the playoffs and being able to spin a basketball on a toothbrush are not enough to impress Larry Bird.
Frank Vogel, the interim coach who did a good job with the Indiana Pacers this season, will have competition from Mike Brown and Rick Adelman for the head-coaching job, according to the Associated Press.
Bird, the team president, said Vogel would get the first and last interviews for the Pacers job. Vogel was 20-18 as an interim coach, enough to get the Pacers into the playoffs, where they played the Bulls close but fell in five games.
Brown is a former Pacers assistant coach who was the head coach in Cleveland for the last few years of the LeBron James era. He is a defense-first guy who led the team to more than 60 wins the last two seasons and was the 2009 NBA coach of the year. But he also comes with questions about the simplicity of his offensive sets and questions about how good he can be without LeBron.
Rick Adelman was not brought back by the Houston Rockets after last season but is a 20-year NBA veteran who has coached some very good teams in Portland and Sacramento.