Stevens is doing actually what Doc couldn't, and that's using the entire roster, and drawing up key plays.
Many coaches like Doc, throw out the stars on the court, and win or loss, based upon that.
If Stevens had been seasoned couch in '08, with Thibs by his side, I believe the Lakers go down 4-1. I never believed that the Lakers were a better team than us throughout the entire series, too much Kobe ball and soft players.
And we would have won in '10 as well.
Think back to how many backup PG's Doc went through and none of them panned out. Save for the year they won it, the bench was never quite deep enough and Doc wouldn't try to develop his bench during the season.
Brad on the other hand seems to be able to get contributions out of most of his roster - and this is all with most of these guys not being here for a training camp.
For the most part, Doc was a quitter. What I mean by that was that he'd consistently fall back to his starters, mainly Pierce & KG, to save the day. What that does is that a lot of the bench doesn't get utilized and thus, no one's got enough in-game experience to know what they're good at.
And remember that finals game 4, the greatest comeback one. Doc basically rode House and Posey, for much of the game because those two didn't need any coaching. They were both hustle players who could perform under that kind of pressure. The only thing he did was to keep the momentum going.
And in reality, it was poor defensive in the first half, which created that hole to begin with. If let's say Stevens were at the helm, meaning Stevens with 4-5 years of coaching NBA experience, the way the series would have gone is that the Lakers would have won a closely contested game 3 and that's about it. The rest would have been the Celtics.
Even today, if we had let's say a 2008 version of Pierce, we'd probably be near the top of the conference, between Chicago & Toronto, and at the same time, every game wouldn't be a Pierce iso/hero ball event. Stevens would be able to keep Pierce fresh for the playoffs. On the other hand, with Doc, we'd be in the toilet because he'd run screens for Pierce, all game long, until Pierce would get injured.
Topic: Don't think Danny thought Brad would learn this quick... (Read 6776 times)