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In the early days of the 1992 Dream Team, the mega-stars of the US men’s basketball team were asked a question.
If you’re in a tight game and you need one shot to win it, who gets the ball?
Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and a few other players with them, this supernova of talent, all said in unison: I do. They all laughed and high-fived and walked away, knowing that it would never come to that. They cruised to a gold medal and won by an average of almost 44 points per game.
That highlight moment popped into my head on Thursday, when the BC Lions introduced their new GM, Ed Hervey. The ranks of order in the Lions office now stand with Buono as VP, football ops, head coach and alternate governor with the CFL. Hervey is, on paper at least, listed underneath the legendary Buono. That created some confusion at the presser, and Buono wanted to alleviate it.
“This is not going to work if you want to continually cast my shadow. I’m doing this because I want to coach,” said Buono, who will make the 2018 season his last with the Lions.
“I want to coach a football team that I still believe in. I want to coach players that I believe in. That’s what I’m here for. I’m not here for any other reason.
“I don’t believe this works if Ed doesn’t have carte blanche in football operations.”
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Later, he tried to make it abundantly clear: “If I’m not doing a good job, Ed can fire me,” he said.
The peak moment of the press conference came when a reporter asked, “The big question is, though, who gets the big office?”
Buono grinned, shrugged with palms upward and said, “I do.”
Seeing the two of them at the podium — the league’s winningest coach and a fixture in the league for the last 23 years, paired with who many would consider the best young GM in the league — there is a dream team feel to this pairing. Maybe the titles are murky on paper and maybe there’ll be an adjustment period, but hiring Ed Hervey is the smartest move that the Lions have made in a long time. From a football standpoint, the Lions needed him.
BC’s 20-year playoff streak came to an end this year and the Lions limped to a 7-11 record, leaving them last in the West Division. Buono admitted on Thursday that he thinks it’s too difficult to have one person be a head coach and GM anymore. Hervey, who has never had an interest in coaching, obviously felt the same way and his record in Edmonton spoke for itself. He traded for Mike Reilly’s rights (in a trade with Buono) a month into the job in Edmonton and took his lumps in a four-win season in 2013.
He gave the team’s scouting department strong, long-reaching tentacles and that quickly started to pay off. The Esks had back-to-back rookie of the year winners in Dexter McCoil (2014) and Derel Walker (2015). They added quarterback depth behind Reilly, and found a player worthy of MOP consideration (Reilly bumped him out) in Brandon Zylstra. Hervey has hired wisely with coaches, in bringing Chris Jones and his staff in for 2014, then worked on the fly in 2015, when his staff migrated to Saskatchewan, and pulled in Jason Maas.
Ed Hervey will be the BC Lions’ GM after 18 seasons with the Eskimos (The Canadian Press)
Give him some time and Hervey will get his team results on the field. He’s always known what he was doing in that regard.
On the other end, what makes this fusion so interesting is that Hervey could learn a lot from Buono this season. There’s always been a mutual respect between the two. Buono said on Thursday that Edmonton screwed him five years ago, because he’d thought about hiring Hervey then to join the Lions.
Through his many years in the league, Buono has come to be known as an approachable, media-friendly personality. Hervey, as he called himself at Thursday’s press conference, is more of an introvert. He was almost always at Esks practises, watching from his office or on the sidelines, but as he said, liked to lay low and focus on his job. A lack of media and partner access played a part in Hervey’s dismissal from Edmonton earlier this year, though he said that those suggestions were misleading.
We’re all permeable to our environments. Spending this next year around Buono, someone that he’s long respected and seen success in this league, could help polish what some have seen as a rough edge, really the only critiqueable aspect of what’s otherwise been a brilliant start to an executive career in football.
On paper, even if the titles seem muddled to some, this is a good pairing. We’ll see in 2018 if it’s a dream team or not.
