I always said Jackson was a overrated coach..Any coach could win with Jordan, Pippen, Kobe, Shaq, etc.. then tried his hand at president and failed miserbly
and yet coaches tried before him and couldn't do it. Heck the Lakers were a trainwreck after Phil left the first time and they had a 2 time championship winning coach there. Phil was a great coach. One of the best ever. He was an absolutely terrible executive though.
I disagree about the "great coach" thing. I mean it's hard to not be a great coach if you have the best players. He always coached with the best players. I'd rather be lucky than good.
Agreed. the measure of a great coach is to achieve greatness when not working with the greatest players. He's yet to do that.
let's see how he would do if working with a team of below-average talent. let him try coaching that Knicks squad. not that he'd ever take that challenge but if he could make them overachieve for a few seasons, I'd reconsider my opinion of him.
so then Auerbach wasn't a great coach. Popovich isn't a great coach. etc. You don't win 11 titles if you aren't a great coach. Sure you need talent to win even 1 title and all time talent to win multiple titles, but not every coach can win with talent. I mean the Warriors went from a 51 game first round loser to winning 67 games and the title by merely swapping Mark Jackson for Steve Kerr. The Lakers with Shaq/Kobe had a good coach in Del Harris for four full seasons and never even made the Finals. Phil's first 3 seasons in LA were all title wins.
Red and Pop coached teams that exceeded expectations a number of times and were instrumental in keeping their franchises in the chase.
as for GSW, I would consider Kerr a solid coach even though he's had some help due to his health issues. I think the GSW improvement has more to do with Jackson not being a good coach.
Shaq/Kobe? you mean because they didn't win titles in years the Jordan Bulls and Duncan/Robinson Spurs won titles that Harris would be a bad coach and Phil is great? please. Phil lost to SAS as well after their 3-year run of title. Harris is a solid coach regardless of what he won or not.
Harris only had Kobe/Shaq for two full seasons, so I want to correct my misstatement earlier. That said the 97 Lakers lost in 5 games to the Jazz. The 98 Lakers got swept by the Jazz. Odd, that isn't the Spurs or Bulls. The 99 Lakers had Rambis coaching in the playoffs and they got swept by the Spurs (of course Phil swept the Spurs two years in a row before losing in 03 to a different iteration of the Spurs which the Lakers then beat in 04).
You are just playing semantics with Red and Pop. I mean the Spurs won 61, 55, 54, and 53 games in seasons and lost in the 1st round of the playoffs. heck they were the defending NBA champions in 00 and lost in the first round (that was the 53 win season) and then did the same thing again in the 15 playoffs (that was the 55 win season). Is that exceeding expectations?
Red was a great GM. The best ever, but you need to separate the GM from the coach in this analysis. Put it this way, Bill Russell was a player/coach for 3 seasons. the Celtics won 2 titles while Bill was the coach and still playing. I mean how focused could Russell really be on the coaching when he is on the floor playing, yet the team constructed by Red still was able to win 2 titles. That doesn't mean Red wasn't a great coach, but his coaching resume is often blurred with his GM team building resume.
Phil Jackson was a great coach. He is one of the best coaches in history. You don't win 11 titles without being a great coach. It is impossible to win that much and not be great. He was able to get great players to buy into his system and then used that system to achieve success only seen by Red Auerbach.