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06-06-2002, 08:05 AM
down below here, there is a thread started by Andy Fox, where he compares Red and Phil Jackson.


I love talking sports, and I know that old threads get buried, so I'm trying to recreate it here.


in the thread, people comment that if the Sacramento Kings were coached by Phil Jackson, they would have won. Of course, this is speculation, but does it have merit?


I seriously doubt it. See, for the Kings to have won, they needed to do one of 3 things differently:


1.) Have Peja Healthy.

2.) Make Free Throws.

3.) Play entirely different.


Well, Phil can't help w/ 1. And w/ 2....he's a lousy freethrow coach. How long has he coached Shaq? And, he's even brought in A SPECIAL COACH JUST TO HELP SHAQ W/ FREETHROWS.


Now, that means 3. I'm the type of guy who believes in innocent until proven guilty, and always gives the benefit of the doubt to people who know more than me. I find that I am ALWAYS giving the benefit of the doubt....


Why does anybody think that Phil Jackson knows the Kings better than Rick Adelman? Because as far as I can tell, when you say that the Kings would have won if Phil was coaching, you are saying that Phil woulda helped w/ #3 above, and thus you are saying that he knows the kings better than Rick.


maybe I'm missing something, but I seriously doubt it.


Personally, I think that Phil Jackson is the most overrated sports figure in a long time. He had the two best players of the time in Chicago (well, maybe not the two best, of two of the best), and won. He has the same thing in LA and wins. Sure, you can say that Del Harris couldn't win in LA. So yeah, I'll concede that Phil is better than Del, but that's about it. That's all we can say.


it's easy to make 21 year olds better by the time they reach 26. And that's all he's done. He (along w/ the presence of Kobe) has stunted the growth of Rick Fox (whom I detest), has coached a team that was satisfied with disappointment (don't make me go over who they lost to in the regular season), and lucked his way into the finals.


Of course, if he didn't win, he'd just say that the Kings run would have to be marked with an asterick.


Of course, I'm biased. I hate the Lakers. Well, that's not entirely true. I don't hate them. I dislike Shaq, and Kobe is a little too arrogant for my likings, and I dislike Phil...but I don't dislike the Lakers as a whole. I detest their 'fans'. Basketball, as with all sports, is played for the fans. The (hands down*) worse fans in the league don't deserve a championship.


Josh


* Now that Charlotte is moving

06-06-2002, 11:52 AM
I don’t think the speculation has much merit. It seemed like all the Kings had a bad day at the same time, except Bibby, and he didn’t have a very good one. Turkoglu didn’t know where he was the whole game. Jackson (Bobby) was good against the Mavs, but he mostly mucked things up playing the Lakers. Never the less, I agree with you that they could have won, still, if they’d hit some free throws.


If Stojakovic had been healthy, there wouldn’t have been a seventh game. He’s a scorer, 6’9”, and can take it inside, pop the threes, rebound, AND MAKE FOUL SHOTS. The Lakers would have been stretched thin trying to contain him. I almost cried when he got hurt. It’s a shame; the Kings were the better team.


I don’t like the King’s fans. I’m opposed to fans inserting themselves into the game. I know all team’s fans do the balloon thing (I don’t like it), but the cowbells are too much. It’s more than rude--it’s cruel. I'll take the Laker's fans even though they're all celebrities.


Tom D

06-06-2002, 11:58 AM
"Personally, I think that Phil Jackson is the most overrated sports figure in a long time. He had the two best players of the time in Chicago (well, maybe not the two best, of two of the best), and won. He has the same thing in LA and wins. "


i agree with you on every other point about the Lakers in general. but i do think that phil jackson has a unique coaching style that makes him one of hte better coaches in the league. when you refer to the Bulls' dynasty, i assume you mean Pippen and Jordan. When you refer to the Lakers, i assume you mean Shaq and Kobe. i have to contest that there are magnitudes of difference between P&J and S&K. Michael Jordan, hell Scotty Pippen even, had more talent and skill in the game than both Shaq and Kobe combined. this is mainly because - Kobe is way overrated, and Shaq has Zero Skill. I hardly think it is arrogant of me to say that if I PERSONALLY had Shaq's pure physical capabilities, I would be a better player than he is currently. it doesn't take talent to throw around a massive body and stand on your tip-toes and dunk. think about how even a 15-year old kid can whomp a bunch of 7-year-olds on a rim 7 feet tall. its the same thing. no skill.


The Bulls had way more talent than that back when they had Phil.


the NBA has changed since the Bulls' run. now everybody is an entertainer. everybody has tattoos and weird hair and wears way more sweatbands then ever before, and all the personalities in the NBA are being marketed more now than ever before. before it was about the team. but now its about selling t-shirts. now its about being a NAME so that people come to games to see you, so that your NAME is a huge bargaining chip when it comes to contract negotiations. everyone realized that their skill alone could always be replaced, but their NAME and LIKENESS could not. smart business, but the romance is lost somewhere, and i don't even care to watch any sports now, ever (ok except when the Bears were kicking a$$ last season).


I think that saying the Kings would have won had PJ been coaching them is misleading. probably not, if you switched coaches right before the game started. but if PJ had been their coach all along, it is perhaps possible. He DOES have a way of bringing a team together in a way that other coaches don't seem to be able to do.

06-06-2002, 12:12 PM
Point 1: Peja played. Phil might have used him differently, played him more or less minutes, encouraged him to shoot to find his shot, or. . .


Point 2: Phil's zen session the morning of the game obviously calmed the Lakers (in fact, he said most of them fell asleep) so that they were relaxed at the free throw line. The Kings gripped and dribbled the ball while setting up to shoot at the line as if it were the crown jewels recently boiled so as to be painfully hot to the touch.


Seeing the Lakers shoot free throws so well also obviously causes the opponent to shoot poorly. Look what happpened to the Nets last night.


Point 3) Of course the Kings would have played entirely differently with Phil. Would Phil have not instructed Vlade on what to do when he came back in the game with 4 fouls? Adelman allowed Vlade to get his 5th foul on, for goodness sake, the in-bounds play after 0.0004 seconds.


And I didn't hear Adleman say, "I want you and you and you and you to run the f**k back." Now that's coaching. Triangle that.


Most importantly, Adelman would have made sure everyone knew what to do at the end of game 4. No way Horry would have been standing around 25 feet from the action combing his hair when Vlade tips the ball away. Case closed: with Phil, the Kings win that game and win the Series 4 games to 1.


Overrated? I don't know, 9 (soon to be) Championships makes a powerful anti-case. Casey Stengel was widely regarded as a clown and a loser when he became the Yankees manager. He won 10 pennants and 7 world series in 12 years. Similar situation with Joe Torre when he took over the Yankees. Stengel and Torre clearly outmanaged their opponents in the World Series. As coaching in basketball is clearly more important than managing in baseball, ins't it possible that Phil (my tongue-in-cheek analysis above notwithstanding) does make a difference?

06-06-2002, 12:44 PM
Some disagreements:


1) Scotty: To me he's the most overrrated player in the history of the game. He's an average player, no more than that. Never was more than that. In the clutch, he's atrocious. Playing with Michael and for Phil made his career.


2) Shaq is the most skillful player in the NBA. The name of the game is to score and keep the other team from scoring. He does those things better than any player in the game. The NBA has had tons of big, strong players who couldn't play a lick. He's far and away the best player in the game.


3) As for Kobe being overrated, he's the second most skillful player in the NBA and there's nobody close. Look at the rest of the supporting case around Shaq. You think the Lakers win the championship every years because they have Rick Fox, or Robert Horry, or Glenn Rice? Kobe knows how to win and has more talent and basketball savvy than any of his competitors.


4) The NBA was always about business, it's just a bigger business now, better run, and white Americans is more prepared to accept African Americans in their lives than it was in the early days. Any "romance" discerned in earlier days is an illusion.


5) Tattoos and weird hair: I don't care about Iverson's hair; I didn't care about Dr. J's. Nor Bill Walton's or Albert Einstein's or David Ben Gurion's. I care about who they are/were and what they do/did.

06-06-2002, 12:47 PM
while I take exception with your assesment of Kobe's talent, I won't go into that here. I do think you're giving Shaq a short deal, though. The thing about Shaq isn't just his size. it's his movement at that size that sets him apart. Lots of players half a foot shorter than him and a hundred pounds lighter than him don't have his footwork. He also gets a lot of flack for bulling his way through everyone. sometimes this is a valid point, but it ignores the muiltitude of times that he doesn't get a call because contact that would floor any other center doesn't seem to throw him off stride. it all evens out in the end.

06-06-2002, 12:56 PM
Rick Fox showed more sack in game 7 against the kings than Pippen did in his entire career.

06-06-2002, 01:34 PM
I believe I can best answer your questioning of his ability by asking you a question.


How many Championships have Jordan, Scottie, Shaq and Kobe won without Phil?


The answer, of course, is a big fat zero.


Phil is the orchestrator of the greatest single season coaching job ever. I don't even think its close. Which year?


The year Jordan left.


I lived in Chicago at the time. NO ONE thought the Bulls would win more than 35 games after MJ retired. They won 55 and were a bad call in NY away from a probable trip to the Finals. It was absolutely the most amazing coaching job I have ever seen.


Let me repeat that....They won 55 games without Michael Jordan.


That team had Scottie, Horace Grant (who went on to do nothing), and a bunch of role players who also, amazingly, sucked for everyone who coached them *other* than Phil.


I think he is the greatest coach in NBA history and I don't think its very close.

06-06-2002, 06:02 PM
Shaq is clearly the best player in the game right now. Its not even close.


While I disagree with those who think Kobe is the 2nd best, he is also clearly in the top 10 at the very least. I think the difference in impact and skill between Kobe, Duncan, Payton, Garnett, Kidd, Iverson and a handful of others is negiligable.


The Bulls had the most talent in their first run, IMO. The key difference was Paxson/Cartwright vs Kerr/Harper/Longley. The last of the Bulls championship teams won on pure heart. I think that the arguement that the Bulls had way more talent than the Lakers is a close one. Certainly more than this team, but I don't think as much as last years team.


As far as Phil vs Adleman. This series came down to OT in the 7th game. It was practically a dead heat. Saying that switching coaches wouldn't have switched the outcome is basically saying that the coaches are equal to each other, and their impact on a series is zero. Clearly that isn't remotely true.


Oh....one last point: "now everybody is an entertainer. everybody has wierd hair and tatoos."


Ummmmm, you DO remember Dennis Rodman, don't you??

06-06-2002, 06:12 PM
I also haven't seen goldfish inside high heeled shoes lately. I think some of that ABA stuff was way more outrageous (and way more entertaining) than a couple of tats, rap albums and shaq's latest movie.

06-06-2002, 06:16 PM
1. I think Scotty was one of the most *underrated* players in history. He should have won the MVP the year after Michael retired. He was an absolute stud that year and carried that team. He's possibly the best non-center at team defense in NBA history.


2. Shaq clearly is the best player in the league. There is no sane arguement for anyone else. When its all said and done he'll be in the top 10 in the history of the league.


3. Saying Kobe is clearly the 2nd best player in the NBA and no one is close is a bizarre statement to me. I can buy 2nd best, though I disagree with it. But no one close? No way. Duncan, Payton, Kidd, Garnett, Iverson and Webber are all like, WAY close if not better. Let alone players like Pierce, Carter, Finley, Malone and Wallace.


I admit its a bit of Apples to Oranges, but Kobe doesn't take the Nets as far this year as Kidd did, and I don't think he takes the 76ers as far last year as Iverson did. Tim Duncan is a beast, and Payton is among the 5 best point guards of all time.


4. Its a business that has struggling because it took a few years for teams to fill the void left by the Bulls. Now that the Kings and Lakers are proving to be superior teams, that will change and the league will start to get healthy again.


5. I liked Kobe's hair better when he had the big fro. /images/smile.gif

06-06-2002, 06:18 PM

06-06-2002, 06:29 PM
Tom -


The cowbells should be gone, I think I agree. But remember why they are there - cuz Jackson opened his mouth and called Sacramento a cowtown...that's what initiated it, not the fans.


And Sacramento HAS fans. 4 years ago, when they were a .500 team, they were a great basketball city. I was in college, and many of my friends went to kinda-nearby Davis High School. They lived and died by the Kings. When the Lakers lose, this damn city down here (LA) is going to forget that they exist. They aren't fans. They are bandwagon jumpers.


Josh

06-06-2002, 06:36 PM
in answering your question (how many championships to Kobe, Shaq, Jordan, and Pippin have w/o Jackson), you have to realize that they also have zero without each other. Kobe w/o Shaq, zero. Jordan w/o Pippin, zero.


The only coach how has coached two of them together besides Phil was Del Harris, who was coaching a prepubescent Kobe, and a "I came to LA cuz of Hollywood" Shaq.


Think about the whole picture.


Josh

06-06-2002, 06:39 PM
Andy -


Zen Shmen. If Phil's Zen session helps with freethrows, why hasn't he done it before? Is it because he CHOOSES to not coach well during the regular season? If that's the case, well, my point is made. No great coach would choose to not coach well.


In the second half in games 1, 2, and 5 in Sacramento, Phil quit coaching his team. Arco Arena was so loud that his team couldn't hear him. So, he wrote one or two phrases on the whiteboard.


Why was it so loud? Those damn cowbells. Why are there those cowbells? Cuz he opened his mouth last year. THERE IS NOT ANOTHER COACH IN THE LEAGUE THAT WOULD PUT HIMSELF IN THAT POSITION. He makes his job harder on himself. He took himself out of games 2 and 5 (game 1 was a blowout), when, if he was really that good, his team could certainly use him.


I just don't see how that makes him great.


Josh

06-06-2002, 06:41 PM
I think the Del Harris team was better than the one that Phil won with the very next year. Kobe had gone through the worst of his growing pains already. Don't forget that they also had Eddie Jones. That team was loaded.


As far as Shaq....who do you think it was that got him focused?

06-06-2002, 06:43 PM
P.S.


Yeah, Peja played, but we cannot even pretend to live in a world where we can get away with calling him healthy.


The biggest problem was game 4. Bibby, Turk, Webber, and Vlade were playing well. They developed a big lead. But man, Christie and Jackson were horrid. They didn't have a fifth warm body to put in who could touch the ball without handing it to a Gold Jersey. There is no doubt in my mind, or any other non-Laker mind, that if Peja was healthy in that game, the Kings win in 5. NO QUESTION.


A healthy Peja can play more than a couple minutes per game. He's always played with ice water in his veins. He in a huge crunch time player. And he doesn't airball three pointers. I daresay that a healthy peja in game 6 or 7 also guarantees a win, but it is not as open-and-shut as game 4.


I guess what I'm saying is that saying "peja played" is utterly meaningless, albeit true.


Josh

06-06-2002, 06:45 PM
Clarke -


reread my post. I agree that Jackson is better than Harris. But Harris is hardly NBA-head-coach material.

06-06-2002, 06:53 PM
Baggins -


You won't find a person in LA who dislikes Shaq as much as I do. I don't know how the people of SoCal have been blinded into liking his personality. He is better at manipulating the refs than any player since Barkely. Of course, he does it off the court, via press conferences, instead of on the court.


And when a buddy of mine and I bet on a pool of players for "who would get the most MVP votes", I hated myself for taking Shaq with the third pick.


And I constantly get into arguements with other people around here regarding how good Shaq actually is. I often make the claim that if he was 6'10", he wouldn't be as good.


And that's obviously true. Anybody who disagrees is blind. Height helps at his position.


But the fact remains, and I hate admitting this, that he does have great footwork. He's great at getting defenders off their feet (although, again, this is due in large part to his height). And he's very strong (I get the understatement-of-the-thread award). Shaq is better than MacColoch (man, I really don't know how to spell his last name), Dikembe, Bradley, Olowakandi, Johnson, Miller, Campbell, Robinson, and other 7 footers in the league. And he's not much bigger than they are.


When he retires, he'll go down as maybe the best player with his back to the basket. He is good.


And he'd still be 60% that good if he was only 6'10".


Josh

06-07-2002, 12:04 AM
"Oh....one last point: "now everybody is an entertainer. everybody has wierd hair and tatoos."


Ummmmm, you DO remember Dennis Rodman, don't you?? "


of course i remember rodman. i loved rodman. he made the game fun. he also performed like crazy. not many players are in the game to mix it up and focus on rebounds. i don't have a problem with everyone in the league being a character, and having 'weird hair and tattoos'. i love it. but it seems like the focus has shifted from basketball performance to entertainment. not completely, but something pure about the game is lost, it seems to me.


shaq is the best player in the league, or kobe?? maybe, maybe this league. i don't care much about this league.


i do underrate shaq, im sure. i just don't see what there is to get worked up about. he's a big oaf. his physical advantage is 90% of his skill, and i don't see what all the hype is about. sure he scores points, sure he plays a god game of defense. but with that physical stature, i think he could be doing more. i really do. if you played poker with a stacked deck, you'd get all the money, and everyone would think you were a great player. but you wouldn't have to work very hard. and it wouldn't mean that you were a great player, simply because you had all the advantages. i really do think that his physical advantage is overwhelming. im a big guy, and i played basketball in high-school (not that HS basketball is the same as NBA, but it is the same game). i wasn't a great player, but i had some pretty important physical advantages. i was taller than most of the opponents we played against, and much bigger. if i had been a smaller guy, i probably wouldn't have made the team. anyway, thats how i see it.


LA's fans are a big part of why i hate the lakers. also contributing is that im from chicago. its a dumb way to look at things, but its also a f***ing sports competition. it matters not in the grand scheme. im not much of a fan either way.


as far as 'best player', based on stats, sure, whatever, give the title to shaq. i just think that he has way more potential than he uses.

06-08-2002, 01:47 AM
n/t

06-08-2002, 01:49 AM
Not to say Dale Davis isnt a good player but he has just as much skill as Shaq just not the size.

06-10-2002, 08:11 AM
Shaq said it best, no coach coaches an NBA champion without having good players. Phil has a great scheme on offense and defense and more importantly gets his players to "execute" within that system. A coaches job is to motivate his players to play at their best and sell them on adopting team goals instead of personal goals if you will. I certainly think he's accomplished this with Kobe and Shaq. He seems to handle substitutions and game situations very well. He gets quality minutes out of his "role players." The Bulls played great defense and the Lakers play great defense now. In short his record speaks for itself as I don't think it's right to even question his greatness as a coach i.e. unless you're Red Auerbach /images/smile.gif.