Jackson would a great hiring for Lakers. Even if he isn't that motivated in coaching again, his aura would help them a lot. Lakers have some high quality assistant coaches to do all the time consuming work Jackson might not be willing to do.
Jackson would a great hiring for Lakers. Even if he isn't that motivated in coaching again, his aura would help them a lot. Lakers have some high quality assistant coaches to do all the time consuming work Jackson might not be willing to do.
Lakers go with Mike D'Antoni over the Zen Master. Wow. -- chris palmer (@ESPNChrisPalmer)
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Looks like it's D'Antoni:
@Mike_Bresnahan
Source: Mike D'Antoni will be the next coach of the Lakers. Not Phil Jackson.
@Mike_Bresnahan
Mike D'Antoni signed a four-year deal with the Lakers. Phil Jackson was "asking for the moon," accoring to source familiar w/ the situation.
Lakers are doooooooommmmed!
I think D'Antoni is a good hire. Perhaps a great hire.
But at least it's not Phil Jackson. Jackson would have been horrible news for the Spurs because he's the one coach who you can say is undoubtedly on another level above Pop. Pop is one of the best to ever do it but when the Spurs went against Jackson, it seemed like Jackson was always thinking two and three steps ahead of Pop.
D'Antoni, on the other hand, is beatable. An improvement over Mike Brown ...... but beatable.
Phillip 4-1
Pringles 0-3
vs Spurs in playoff series
* Horry in 2007. Plus Pringles never had a big man better than TD. He does now.
tell that to the stat s who still gloat about amares domination in 05 with his +30ppg against duncan in the playoffs, who also got his stats also in that stupid run n gun running up the score sheet
As far as Phil vs Pop, you could always argue the "more with less" angle. I don't think the Spurs would have won 4 les with Phil as our coach and with the rosters we had. The Bulls and Lakers are the 2 most profitable NBA team (per Forbes) and thus have had monster budgets
or Avery Johnson
or Alvin Gentry
or Rick Carlisle
or Lionel Hollins
or Scott Brooks
because they are the one.....oh wait.
The big negative on D'Antoni is that he failed in New York and he could fail too for the same reason with Lakers. I'm not sold on his ability to convince star players to play some kind of defense, on his ability to manage big egos and on his ability to have an offense that please everybody.
D'antoni is a way worse choice than Jackson or Sloan. His hiring is a good news for other teams.
D'Antoni has never shown an ability or willingness to play his bench, to have any kind of strategy in difficult times, or to even pay attention to defense. Mike Brown, for better or worse, was trying to build a playoff team. The Lakers just hired a regular-season coach.
When NAsh returns LA will score 150 on average
But how many will they give up?
Considering how the Spurs have been for the past two seasons, this post seems a tad ironic. Besides, bench depth matters less in the playoffs than in the regular season because starters play extended minutes. Case in point, when Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili were all on the floor at the same time against the Thunder in the playoffs last season, we outscored them. But they won anyway because they were able to play their stars longer minutes than ours.
On another note, would it be possible to sign Mike Brown as an assistant coach for the rest of the season?
I respectfully disagree. The Spurs were a high-scoring team that didn't win the championship last year, and that's about the end of the comparison. With Phoenix, D'Antoni had between six and eight guys in his rotation playing heavy minutes for the entire season and backups with little experience or time with their teammates. I remember his backups even complaining about getting any practice time. His sideline speeches during crunch time in the playoffs consisted of "Let's go, guys" or "Go get em". He didn't even draw up plays. He wasn't able to recognize favorable matchups like Kurt Thomas on Duncan in the post because he only saw the drop in offense.
The closest comparison to D'Antoni would be three or four years ago when Pop thought he could make up for defensive deficiencies and lack of easy baskets with more three point attempts. Now we might blame D'Antoni's influence on that experiment, as his teams were so good at hitting threes within the flow of a quick offense that Pop thought he could do it in the half court.
I'd be for that.
Pop got revenge against Carlisle in '10. Gentry, Hollins, and Brooks I would says legitimately out coached him. But seriously the Spurs dodged a bullet by the Lakers choosing D'Antoni. The guy can't coach defense and offense only isn't going to work. Plus Gasol can't shoot 3's consistently to space the floor.
Hard to fault him. He had the leverage. It's not like they're going to get the same thing by chosing D'Antoni. The only thing they get is reuniting Nash and D'Antoni. I can't wait till the Lakers start complaining they need to get better defensively.
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