Top 3, imo....best coach this year though, tbh.
A solid argument could be made. He's definitely one of the best. However, it is impossible to determine who the best coach of all time. If you think ranking players is hard, HAH. Ranking coaches is 1,000x harder due to the variability in the players that they coached. There is always the question, "Was the coach great because of his players, or were the players great because of the coach?"
If it hasn't been done before, I will deem this "the basketball Euthyphro dilemma."
He may not be the best but there is no other coach I would rather lead my team.
Coach POP is easily in the Top 3.
PJ
Red
POP
Great coach. Who cares about All time records, which are subjective.
Doug Collins
Sloan?
Don't give me that championships BS.
Sloan > Daly, Rivers easily.
Larry Brown, Don Nelson are also in the mix (maybe top 20)
last 5 seasons i concur.....
big PJ Carlismo fan there???
IMHO: Pop is top 4 right now (with PJ, Red, Riley)...Problem with him is, that up to this point he linked his carreer to Timmy. Ok, its not like these other guys had no great players/teams, but what we need to see is, if Pop can do a good (not even a great) job without Timmy.
Get a post-Timmy team to the playoffs...get a team without Timmy to be called a "fringe contender"...its not like he needs to win another ship (the others didnt without Superstars either), but we need to see some years without this one guy.
I would choose him, if there was an All-Time-Draft and I had to pick a coach, but if his carreer ends today, everyone will recognize Timmy+Pop, Timmy for himself, but probably not Pop for himself (not to the point the deserves).
After all, Coaches are measured by championships...Brown has one (and a big coaching one), but other than that, he is a guy that changed teams like others switch TV channels.
Nelson didnt do anything else, than play goofy basketball. He did a lot for this game, but he isnt one of the greatest ever.
Sloan deserves to be mentioned too...but the ships are missing!
Lenny too.
It's really tough to argue against Pop as I feel like if he had stars like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant he probably could have done the same thing Phil has, if not more rings. Phil will always go down as the best because of the # of rings he has won. Pop def isn't too far behind tho. I'd put him top 5 in NBA history.
a coach is nothing without talent. IMHO, few are qualified to truly debate this subject because of a general lack of knowledge concerning the x's and o's and what happens behind the scenes.
Jackson-1big PJ Carlismo fan there???
IMHO: Pop is top 4 right now (with PJ, Red, Riley)...Problem with him is, that up to this point he linked his carreer to Timmy. Ok, its not like these other guys had no great players/teams, but what we need to see is, if Pop can do a good (not even a great) job without Timmy.
Get a post-Timmy team to the playoffs...get a team without Timmy to be called a "fringe contender"...its not like he needs to win another ship (the others didnt without Superstars either), but we need to see some years without this one guy.
I would choose him, if there was an All-Time-Draft and I had to pick a coach, but if his carreer ends today, everyone will recognize Timmy+Pop, Timmy for himself, but probably not Pop for himself (not to the point the deserves).
Pop-2
Riley-3
Red-4
I gotta put pop at #2 simply because he has done so much with so little..Look at the lineups for Riley at LA and Red at Boston and tell me how you cannot win a championship with those players.
NO. Seriously?
Phil Jackson is a great coach but I don't think he is the best even though he has the most championships. With the Lakers and Bulls, he had the best player in the NBA. Sure, Pop had Duncan but one could could argue the Spurs had the least amount of talent compared with those PJ teams.
Great coach, probably top 10, but a quote like this solidifies why he's not the greatest or even top 5. About Tiago Splitter this year...
“Everybody says, ‘How did he improve so much?’” Popovich said. “He didn’t improve a lick. He’s been doing this for years in Europe. This is who he is. He just didn’t play last year.”
He's at least in the discussion. He's in the all-time Top 5 without a doubt.
fifyIs Gregg Popovich the Most Overrated NBA coach of all time?
I Think so.
He's rode Tim Duncan like a horse his entire career. I'm gonna hate to see him without Duncan. lol
Top 3.
lol Best PnR player in the league.
I agree top 10, may have a case for top 5. I would love to see him sans duncan. Riley, red and PJ didnt win rings without their big stars but were able to win with different casts.
To me, that is the only difference. He wins one post duncan he should at LEAST be in the convo with Pat Riley ...
He not only won't win a ring without Duncan, he'll be lucky to make the playoffs without him.
To me that's not the way to compare coaches because teams are always going to have different talent levels. I think the best way to compare coaches is by how well they maximize whatever talent they have. I think it's fair to say PJ maximized his talent. You can probably say that about Pop in the past but right now with letting Splitter sit on the bench last year and overusing Bonner it's a hard argument to make.
Another point is that the more talent you have the harder it is to properly maximize that talent. Look at the Heat and Knicks. PJ was a master at that but Pop hasn't shown me the ability to maximize a talented team. People forget that in '09 after they got Dice and RJ Pop said he should be fired if they didn't win a championship. He still hasn't figured out how to maximize that talent. Now there talk of amnestying RJ and making the team less talented just because he can't figure it out.
If there were a Mount Rushmore for NBA coaches, I think you would have to give Pop at least strong consideration for being on there. Personally I think he's on the very short list of coaches that have to be considered the best ever.
Coaches are even harder to debate than players though, because what statistic is there to differentiate coaches other than winning percentage and championships? That's often as much a reflection of opportunity and talent as much as it is good coaching. Even though Pop might have not have a ridiculous number of all-stars career wise, he's been extremely fortunate to have the Spurs organization draft guys like Manu and Tony. There's no way Phil has the number of rings he currently has without coaching Jordan, and then falling into the Shaq-led Lakers with some ridiculous role players like Kobe and Horry.
I think if you find a way to comprise a metric that evaluates "efficiency vs talent", you could have a somewhat clearer picture. Pop has to be near the top of that list, IMO. The media has been writing San Antonio off since 2006, and they have a very real chance to make the Finals again this year just by getting the absolute maximum from players who might not even get minutes on other teams.
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