Phil Jackson as a coach

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

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

"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.

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?

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.

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.

Rick Fox showed more sack in game 7 against the kings than Pippen did in his entire career.

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.

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??

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.