FanPost

Does Anthony Grant Deserve ONE More Year?


To begin with interest in Alabama Basketball is currently pretty much non-existent so I suspect few will read this, or care. But here goes.

We must at the outset admit that our basketball team is not very good. In fact they are bad. Furthermore, barring a dramatic and almost miracle like turn around we will not be making a post season appearance of any kind this year.

Now there is a reason this team is not very good. It is because our players are not great players. Only Releford has any hope at all of making the NBA and even that is not a sure thing. That doesn’t mean they aren’t trying, they are doing their best. They are just not quite as good as a lot of the other teams

However, none of this should come as any surprise. Most of our guys were with us last year and they were not great last year. Add to this the fact that some of our players left the team after last year for various reasons and this season, to date, was very predictable. I’m not sure why we scheduled so many hard out of conference games but that schedule was predictably too hard for this team to handle.

All this brings me to the question, should Coach Grant be fired? Now, truth be told, I was in favor of firing him last year. But, we did not. Now I’m on the other side. I’m actually in favor of giving Coach Grant one more year. And here is why.

To begin with this years poor record is not really Grant’s fault. I don’t know any coach that could coach this team to an NCAA birth. The talent is just not there, especially in shooting the ball. I mean the coach can’t shoot the ball for them. And, I’m sure Coach Grant is trying to teach them how to shoot the ball. But, if the guys can’t shoot well how is that the coaches fault? As has been pointed out many times on here he does get them to play good defense. Defense is something that can be coached up. Shooting the ball is much harder to improve upon.

Secondly, as poor as we are this year, we will be better next year. Only1 guy leaves and we have 5 top players coming in. In a word next year’s team will be stacked. I think Coach Grant has earned the right to have one last shot with his five new guys next year. To fire him on the verge of this big turnaround just is not fair.

Finally, firing Grant will result in some bad press for UA. As you may remember we had the whole "Greeks are racists" publicity this past fall. On top of that we recently had an SGA election where a minority student lost and that got some people upset as well. And even a few years back we had the scandal of the frat boys dressing in Confederate uniforms and parading all over campus. If we fire Grant right now the publicity for Alabama will be bad, very bad. Since apparently no one cares that much about Basketball anyway, maybe we ought to wait until things cool down, like after next season, before we decide to fire Coach Grant. Even then it would help if we didn’t really fire him, but just did not renew his contract. Not sure when that comes up but maybe we ought to wait.

Anyway, this is not meant as sarcasm. I really think having started this season with Grant we really need to give him at least 1 more year. It really is only fair. And, who knows maybe he will turn it around and we make the final four in 2 years and then everyone will say... "See, old 5026 was right once."

Does Anthony Grant Deserve ONE More Year? I'd say yes.

FanPosts are just that; posts created by the fans. They are in no way indicative of the opinions of SBN and the authors of Roll Bama Roll.