As discussed above: in the NBA, nobody worries about whether LeBron is picking his next coach.  SportsCenter doesn't report breathlessly that Kevin Durant is trying to influence the selection of the next coach.  Columnists wouldn't suffer the vapors if LeBron, Dwayne and Chris brought in a coach.

And why wouldn't they pick the coach?  LeBron is worth 10x, maybe 100x what the coach is worth.  Who says that the tactician is The Man and the warrior ain't?

In your billion-dollar recruiting of LeBron James, if staff and personnel are part of the recruiting package, why wouldn't you pay pennies to get dollars?

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Well, admittedly, there is a good reason that the Ray Allens of the game should not pick the Bob Weisses of the game to coach them.  But it doesn't have anything to do with overstepping their bounds. 

It has to do with the fact that they tend to pick guys who are their pals.  (Let's not forget that Ichiro might as well have selected John McLaren, as far as the match to Ichiro's preferences went.)

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But!, sometimes the warrior on the field of battle does know who should be up on the hill, running tactics.  My favorite example:  in 1981, a second-year Magic Johnson tired of Paul Westhead's shtick.  Westhead, entranced by his aging HOF center and burgeoning HOF point guard, wanted to run a Stockton-Malone concept. 

Westhead installed a low-post game built around Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Magic was to run history's best half-court game. 

Magic sensed that this direction was fundamentally cracked.  Well, not "sensed."  He was aware of the fact that Westhead was a lousy coach for that roster.

Magic went to Lakers ownership and demanded a coach who would let them get out and run.  Ownership complied, fired Westhead 10 games into the season, and brought in Pat Riley.  Showtime was born and the Lakers, who had been flushed out of the playoffs first round in 1980, then won 4 championships in quick succession.

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In the NFL, nobody would much care whether Peyton Manning or John Elway influenced the next coach. 

But in MLB, a player doesn't dare insinuate that he has more value than the player next to him.  There is no inherent reason for this code.  They don't have it in the NBA, and shouldn't.

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By the way, when Ichiro did begin speaking out about Mike Hargrove, he was absolutely correct to do so.  There was an Entitled Veteran culture that led to >>> comfort zones that led to >>> lack of effort.  There was a cancer, and Ichiro was aware of the cure, and he said so.

Players speaking out about coaches?  Like fire, or guns, or Coca-Cola, that's not inherently a good or bad thing.  A player's opinion about what is going on, field level, is intel.  It counts as part of an intelligent decisionmaker's database.

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My $0.02,

Dr D