Re: Slate Magazine slams Bird's coaching

["Jaims" <jaims@impactnet.com>]

Some nerve this Easterbrook has!!!  What a crapper!

Joe, thanks for always posting interesting articles even disturbing ones....

Have a nice day.

Jaims
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>
To: <celtics@igtc.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 7:17 PM
Subject: Slate Magazine slams Bird's coaching


> In Michael Kinsley's Slate.com, Gregg Easterbrook slams Larry Bird's
> coaching ability.
> Comments?
>
>
> -------
> This Bird Don't Fly
> By Gregg Easterbrook
> Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor for New Republic and Beliefnet.com.
>
> Posted Monday, June 12, 2000, at 12:30 p.m. PT
>
> Larry Bird-legendary athlete, local hero, decent normal guy, and awful
> coach. The gossip line says Bird will leave coaching ("retire" seems a
> ridiculous expression for what athletes and coaches do, unless they're
> genuinely going into retirement, like Dean Smith) after the end of NBA
> finals, now led by the Lakers 2-to-1. Bird should leave. He's doing a
> terrible job.
>
> Anyone who's had the misfortune of watching Bird's Indiana Pacers
> stumble around in this year's playoffs has seen the proof. The team is
> consistently dreadful on the execution of plays, when it calls plays at
> all. For long stretches in Pacers games, there is no apparent offensive
> scheme, just players going one-on-one. The Lakers' "triangle" offense
> may be overhyped, but at least it's a strategy with plays and
> assignments; the Pacers on offense look like five volunteers from the
> audience who just met. True, many NBA teams are consistently bad on
> fundamentals too, allowing the Pacers to fall to the top. But that
> doesn't excuse Bird for accomplishing so little in coaching his own
> group.
>
> Consider the second finals game, won by the Lakers in Los Angeles. For
> most of the second half, the Pacers ran no play more complicated than a
> screen. Possession after possession, the first guy who caught the ball
> went one-on-one as four teammates stood by watching, not even weaving to
> get open. Bird seems to have despaired of getting modern ego-irradiated
> NBA players to run coordinated plays and simply allows them to play junk
> ball. At one point in the fourth quarter, Pacers forward Austin Croshere
> shot on five consecutive possessions. One shot was justified (he was
> open), the other four were one-on-ones that led to loud clang noises.
> Michael Jordan in his prime would have been yanked out of a game if he
> shot on five consecutive possessions. Croshere stayed in, as Bird
> watched impassively.
>
> When Bird does make tactical decisions, they're often weak. Late in Game
> 2, Shaquille O'Neal drew his fifth foul. The Pacers were still close.
> Rik Smits, the Indiana center, was on the bench. Smits is a poor
> defender but an effective offensive talent who's given Shaq problems and
> drawn him into fouls. So did Bird put Smits back in and tell him to go
> straight at O'Neal and try to foul him out? No, Smits cooled his heels
> for the remainder of the game, never returning. Los Angeles pulled away
> as Shaq did as he pleased.
>
> Last night, in Game 3, the Pacers won in part because Bird finally made
> the obvious tactical move he has been resisting-front-doubling or
> "collapsing on" O'Neal whenever he touches the ball. Through the first
> two Laker wins, Bird singled Shaq, basically conceding the big man's
> points but hoping to shut down the other Laker players. This tactic
> failed in both games, just as it had failed when the Trail Blazers tried
> it in the previous series. Didn't Bird watch any game tapes? When Bird
> switched to double-teaming Shaq, which worked for Portland, it worked
> for him too.
>
> Defenders of the Bird administration point out that, starting with no
> head-coaching experience, he has taken the Pacers to three straight
> playoff years and their first finals appearance. But Bird's record is
> not appreciably different from that of previous Pacers coaches who
> worked with the same players. In Bird's three years, the Pacers have won
> 68 percent of regular-season games and 61 percent of playoff games; in
> the three years before him, the team won 58 percent in the regular
> season and 54 percent in the postseason. Thus, Bird's numbers are a nice
> increase but you must consider: He's coached post-Michael Jordan. The
> Pacers are in the same division with the Bulls. Bird only had to contend
> with basketball's best-ever player in the division for one year, until
> Jordan "retired." (That is, moved on to become, what, isn't he now
> secretary-general of the United Nations?) Adjust Bird's and his
> predecessors' records by about five games each season for the presence
> or absence of Jordan in the division, and suddenly Bird has done no more
> than keep the Pacers on keel. He's been fabulous for NBA marketing and
> Indiana home state pride. But his only clear accomplishment-getting the
> team into the finals-was secured over an injury-racked Knicks team in a
> series the Pacers tried assiduously to lose.
>
> Does Bird simply lack coaching skills? John Wooden, the Wizard,
> suggested in an NBC interview during last night's game that great
> players are rarely great teachers, since they can't understand why the
> things that came naturally to them don't come naturally to lesser
> mortals.
>
> Then there's the shoe-endorsement factor. It's a fallacy that NBA
> players today are too spoiled to play hard. In the playoffs, at least,
> everyone goes all out-attend a playoff game and what you see, during
> timeouts, are sweat-drenched players tugging at their shorts and gasping
> for breath. But contemporary NBA players go all out because not to do so
> would be shameful for them personally. Everybody would see if they
> weren't trying. Players who resist coordinated team play, on the other
> hand-most would much rather stop and launch a three because it's
> individual glory-don't get blamed for that. Poor-quality overall play is
> seen as management's fault. So the image-conscious player can dodge the
> fundamentals without being personally held accountable.
>
> And in an age when all NBA athletes, even the rookie free agents and
> didnips (DNP for "did not play" in the box scores) have guaranteed
> contracts, labor can simply defy management. As long as the players show
> up and sweat, coaches hold zero financial leverage. Magic Johnson, who
> lasted less than half a season as the Lakers' coach, is said to have
> realized the new order when a player's cell phone rang during practice.
> The guy answered. Magic told him to turn the phone off. The player
> replied, "No."
>
> For many NBA players, the deterioration in tactics and coordinated
> sport, made possible by their guaranteed-contract sinecure, is the
> desired outcome. Many don't want to run pick-and-rolls or position for
> that backdoor cut. They want the game to devolve to playground
> improvisation, with its ego-based look-at-me one-on-one.
>
> The annoying thing is that people like Larry Bird may perceive a stake
> in this same decline of quality. Bird, Magic, and Michael performed
> together in the league's golden age. They've all since complained about
> how the new generation of NBA playgrounders isn't up to their standards,
> and they're right. But subconsciously they may want it that way, since
> the corrosion of basketball standards makes them seem all the greater in
> retrospect.
>
> So, when Bird grumbles, as he often does, that his team refuses to pay
> attention when he preaches fundamentals, he may not really mind. Over
> the weekend Bird grouched to the New York Times about the fallen quality
> of competition and said, "It just seems like a lot of people aren't
> talking about the NBA as much as they used to." They aren't, and Bird's
> coaching is part of the reason.
>
>
>
>