Pacers sign Frank Vogel to contract extension
Last year, Indiana Pacers head coach Frank Vogel was rumored to be coaching for his job in the early stages of the playoffs. The team survived a seven-game series against the bottom-seeded Atlanta Hawks, got occasionally embarrassed in the Conference Semi-Finals against a Washington Wizards team that was eventually dispatched after six games, and took the Miami Heat to six games in the Conference Finals before being sent home again. All that after a notorious slump nearly negated the club’s 33-8 record at the midway point and the chase for the top playoff seed in the Eastern Conference.
I thought that, despite all the turmoil from the that nerve-racking tumble, Vogel rallied the troops fairly well given all the inconsistency and perceived internal issues. Just imagine what the team could have done had it held together! We could very well be looking ahead to a banner-hanging ceremony before the Pacers’ opening night contest a couple weeks from now. However, the past is the past, which yours truly thought still might come back to haunt Vogel’s job security as he entered into the final year of his contract.
He can breathe easily now.
The team announced today that it has signed Frank Vogel to a multi-year contract extension, which will kick in during the 2015 offseason. Per team policy, contract details are still under wraps.
To be totally honest, I’m a little surprised, but not in a bad way. I still think Vogel is a fine young coach in this league, especially on the defensive side of the floor, who can still greatly improve on offense. Plus, his personality and style clearly gets through to his players and has brought out some of their best qualities. (I’m not sure Roy Hibbert would be a max contract guy on many other teams. Same for Lance Stephenson’s near-double-digit yearly salary in Charlotte.)
The reason I’m a little surprised is that considering front office head honcho Larry Bird didn’t exactly eagerly toss a contract Vogel’s way after replacing his predecessor Jim O’Brien in 2011, I didn’t think an extension would come so early. Not that I thought Vogel was exactly in “lame duck” territory, but I figured this season would be a test to see how he coached given all the adjustments – both self-imposed and necessary given the roster shakeup – he must make. As I mentioned in my “Storylines to Watch” series, I predicted that if the frustration of this coming season caused him to lose the locker room and caused the players to tune him out, he’d be shown the door.
What this move also implies in my eyes is this: Vogel was not the problem last year. His inability to completely corral the tailspin obviously was an issue, but as I mentioned above, the fact that he got the team within 96 minutes of the NBA Finals given everything going on is pretty remarkable. I don’t know what Bird’s process was in coming to the decision to keep Vogel steering the ship, but I wouldn’t think he would proceed without knowing that the core members of the roster such as Paul George, Roy Hibbert, and David West have bought in and are still on board with Vogel’s vision. Does this prove that the tension in the locker room last year solely falls on Lance Stephenson’s shoulders? This contract seems to imply that a little bit more, but that’s another conversation for another day.
Clearly, Bird and Vogel are on the same page, and enough has been proven already between training camp and the beginning of preseason that Bird deemed Vogel his guy for the next few years.