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Funny thing is thajust yesterday the same CNNSI writer said that not only could the Suns win the series, but that Pop wasn't outcoaching D'Antoni.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...25/suns.spurs/
As the First Round Series That Could Be The Conference Final moves to Phoenix on Friday night, two obvious questions present themselves:
• Can the Suns come back?
• Is the Spurs' Gregg Popovich outcoaching his Suns counterpart, Mike D'Antoni?
Both are easily answerable. Yes and no, respectively.
Of course the Suns, as bad as they've looked at times, can come back. What, they've never won two in a row at home?
And as much as the one-coach-is-beating-the-other-coach theory has been advanced, it is far too simplistic to see the first two games of this series, both San Antonio wins, as a victory for Popovich's brain over D'Antoni's.
This storyline of so-and-so outcoached somebody else has been overblown, as it usually is. Sure, it happens. It's a good bet that, say, Jim Valvano would've outcoached Guy Lewis into perpetuity, as he did in the memorable 1983 NCAA championship game. But great coaching reveals itself over a long period of time, not in one or two games. If you want to have a discussion about whether Popovich is a better coach than D'Antoni -- or a better coach than anyone, in fact -- well, that's a legit discussion. But the Spurs are not ahead 2-0 because one coach is on his game and another is off.
There's more but the gist of the article is that McCallum comes across as yet another Suns apologist. He even echoes the D'Antoni party line that "Challenge No. 1 for the Suns is to be more efficient on offense."
