An interview from Baron Davis about playing for Kim Hughes, how he feels about Dunleavy not being coach, and if he wants Hughes to be the permanent coach.

Great interview by Baron Davis.. I really enjoyed watching this one. Baron made a lot of sense. He did everything… From defending Dunleavy the most that he could, all the way to talking about the sacrifices the team made. (Keep reading for my full opinion on this interview)

If you’re an immature NBA player who hated Dunleavy and his style, now would be the perfect time to comment on it (if you were Baron Davis). However, Davis did the better thing and defended Dunleavy, talking about how he’s a fighter and how he made the whole team competitors and gave them a certain fire. (How that certain fire didn’t translate to wins, I don’t understand) But I’m glad that he did- and hopefully under a better decision-making coach and a more free flowing offense, that competitiveness can come in handy to win ball games.

I also liked the fact that he said with Hughes’ free flowing offense, he knows that it’s up to him to find his teammates and it’s up to him to run the offense, and he said he’s really looking forward to the challenge. That was the one positive I got out of this interview from Baron- meaning that was the one thing he really liked about this coaching change. I think Baron is still in shock from all of it though, like he said early in the interview. I think he needs to warm up to the idea of Hughes becoming coach, and warm up to the idea that he was JUST getting the hang of this half-court style offense and now Dunleavy isn’t coach anymore.

Aside from that, there were two things that Baron said that made me realize he doesn’t really care too much about Hughes coaching the team (just my own observations, nothing guaranteed).

First thing was that when they asked him if he’s happy with this coaching change, he said “I’m always happy,” and that the team has made sacrifices before. This might also be him avoiding any hints that the media can pick up that he hated Dunleavy. I think more than anything, Baron wants to avoid the media thinking that he hated Dunleavy.

The second thing was that when they asked if he wants Hughes to be coach permanently, he responded by saying “I want to play for him first. Let’s play for him and everything else will unfold.” This does make sense, it could be that he’s not excited to play for Hughes, but it could also mean that he’s taking a realistic approach to things. In my opinion Baron is saying if Hughes does bad, it won’t matter because he’s just an interim coach playing for a (probably) wasted season, and if Hughes does well, he’ll probably get coaching offers. So he’s probably saying that it doesn’t matter if he himself wants Hughes as the permanent coach- and it all depends on how the results will be in the end.

Overall not as much of a positive, happy-happy interview as Kaman’s, but a very eye opening one and a solid interview for sure.