Thought for the day.
Jackson after years of having the horses finally has to Coach. Ain't easy when
you don't have Shaq or Michael. Even with the greatly hyped, but very good
Kobe alone, they can't win. I for one always thought that football Phil as a
Coach was very overrated and so far he is proving it. Bottom line, it is
tough to Coach without the players, even in a watered down league. As far as I
am concerned he is no better a Coach than O'brien, Brown or Scott or most of
the Coaches in the League .
You're certainly right about needing the players, but I'm not sure you're
being totally fair to Phil. He's never pretended to be an X and O guru as a
coach. That, brains, and a secure enough ego that can handle it are why
he's always brought in very strong assistants. What he is is a very good
manager as coach, particularly of people. Shaq wasn't going to any
championships until he teamed up with Phil despite being a physical force
from the start. And for that matter, neither was MJ, who only became
convinced that basketball is a team game and he couldn't win anything on
his own no matter how much he scored after Phil arrived. Yeah, you've got
to have the players, but you've got to be able to manage them too. There
are plenty of examples of the same people performing as stars under one
coach after looking vastly overrated under another. Look at the difference
here with O'B's spell as interim coach vs what happened that same season
with the same players under Pitino.