Pitchin with Pritch: Former Husker to coach LA Clippers

The NBA Clippers parted ways with Doc Rivers after they lost in the semi-finals and continued their record of never getting to the NBA finals. 

Doc Rivers is a pretty good coach, but you better win the big ones on the schedule and in the playoffs if you want to stick around. 

Rivers’ replacement is a coach who actually has won a NBA championship as a head coach—former Husker player Tyrone Lue. 

Lue won a title with Cleveland in 2016 with the help of a fair player LeBron James. Lue also played 11 years in the NBA. 

When Rivers resigned, the Clippers decided on Lue who was an assistant under Coach Rivers. 

So the Clippers are getting a different head coach but not a new coach. 

Lue had a 128-83 coaching record at Cleveland. Lue’s championship resume and his familiarity with the Clippers players were major factors in the team’s decision to promote him to the head coaching position. 

It was also reported that he had the support of “prominent players” on the roster.  

His deal with the Clippers was reported to be for five years at a starting salary in the neighborhood of one million per year. Not a bad neighborhood to be in!

Speaking of salaries, I saw earlier in the year that college coaches were taking some pay cuts to help make ends meet due to the lack of income from games due to the covid-19. 

Nebraska coaches were in that group. In the USA Today database of college football coaches, it stated that Coach Frost took a $166,667 dollar pay cut from his annual $5 million salary. 

That is just a little under $14,000 per month cut. 

The reduction was 3.3% of Frost’s annual salary. It fell in line with the four-month, 10% reduction that all NU athletic department employees faced, assuming they weren’t among the more than 50 employees that were furloughed for those months. 

Frost makes $416,666.67 per month so I bet he can make it through a four-month reduction without too much trouble. 

According to the USA Today database, more than 50 college football coaches took salary reductions in this contract year, all due to the pandemic. 

The largest cut was Mike Norvell, Florida State coach. He lost $468,750 in pay. 

In the Big 10, Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst was in first place for reduction at $318,750. 

Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck was close behind at $318,320. In all, 10 coaches in the conference took pay cuts.

In another article I saw this week, it was stated the athletic departments might take a couple of years to get back where they were at the start of this year, financially speaking.

State qualifier

Locally, PCS had a cross-county runner make it to the state meet. Congratulations to Colton Poulk for finishing second in the district XC meet to qualify. 

The SPVA volleyball tournament was held at PCS this past Saturday and the PCS gals took fourth place. 

The football team traveled to Alma and lost 40-36, but they came from behind to actually take a lead in the fourth quarter before Alma pulled out the win late in the fourth.

As much as I would like to be at the games in person, I am doing what my doctors have told me to do. 

When your doctor almost always starts the conversation with “at your age,” you know what’s coming probably is something you won’t want to do. 

So, “at my age” I am staying away from crowds as well as I can, wearing a mask when necessary, and washing my hands a lot. 

Hopefully we will get through this pandemic sooner than later and we can get back to some kind of normal.