2016/2017 Daily Discussion Thread

Doesn't current LeBum James kinda remind you guys of Timmy Duncan when he was slowly taking a backseat to Tony Park & Manu? Timmy was still the best player. He just did less while providing just as much in terms of team success.

It's hard to imagine Tony Parker as a player of Finals MVP caliber in any era but he's done it behind Timmy system.

Yeah those Suns teams did have some very respectable Playoff runs. I guess it'd be more accurate to say that while D'Antoni's system doesn't seem to be built for championships, it has worked pretty well when he's had the talent at his disposal, and again, a star playing at an MVP level.

If anyone got a highlight real posted to youtube or something of the Suns losing the game because of a 4th quarter buzzer beater , you may add what happened last night against the Wolves. That's like what, the 5th or 6th time in one and a half years?

Saw that earlier today. Clutch shot by Wiggins.

Yeah those Suns teams did have some very respectable Playoff runs. I guess it'd be more accurate to say that while D'Antoni's system doesn't seem to be built for championships, it has worked pretty well when he's had the talent at his disposal, and again, a star playing at an MVP level.

these sound like damning compliments. do you think he is a good coach?

Yeah, I'd say he's good, not great...so yeah, more damning compliments, I guess! It is probably fair to say he's a bit underrated because some people label him as being terrible, and he's had too much success and shown too much innovation to be fairly called that. You can definitely draw a distinction between him and the likes of Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Pat Riley, and so on, though. "Good, not great" is probably a bit of a cliched saying, but I do think it applies here.

Yeah fair enough. Very few can hang with that list of coaches you named. Those are amongst the greatest in NBA history

That's certainly true. For what it's worth, I'd also rank him behind Jerry Sloan (who I believe is right up there, despite having never won a championship), Rick Carlisle, Doc Rivers, Lenny Wilkens, and Don Nelson, to name a few. That still doesn't make him terrible, of course.

Ooh i see what you did there

double post oops

Last edited by air gordon on Fri Jan 27, 2017 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

You'd have to tell me then, because I'm not sure what it is you think I did there. The first comparison was a bit lofty, so I went down a tier.

That's the thing that a lot of people seem to forget when rating and ranking, whether it's players, coaches, teams, video games, TV shows, films, or whatever. There are multiple tiers, more notches on the scale than excellent and terrible. It gets to the point of a false dichotomy, where something either ticks all the boxes to be considered great, or it's lumped in with everything else and called terrible because it doesn't meet all of the criteria. It leads to people and works being underrated, or at least poorly judged, because it becomes a two point rating scale that doesn't give any credit to anything but the absolute best of the best.

If the first group of coaches I mentioned are the top tier, and the second group right underneath them, then I'd put D'Antoni a tier or two below the latter names. He's only terrible if we're going with the false dichotomy of "The Ones You Can't Possibly Call Terrible", and "Everyone Else, Who Must Therefore Be Terrible".

how about this- what coaches currently is he better than?

Given his accomplishments and what his system has been able to achieve with the right personnel, the only current coaches I definitely wouldn't rank him ahead of are Gregg Popovich, Doc Rivers, Rick Carlisle, and possibly Tom Thibodeau. I'm on the fence about Tyronn Lue and Steve Kerr, because they've won championships, but also inherited very fortuitous situations; it's hard to know how much credit to give them, even more so than usual when evaluating coaches. As for the rest, it may be a little unfair to say with some of the newer coaches who haven't coached nearly as many games in the NBA as D'Antoni, and haven't had the benefit of some of the rosters he's had, but for the moment, he'd probably rank ahead of most of that group. It can be argued that he's at least as good or better than most of them, which would probably still rank him in the top ten right now.

Kanter having Blake Griffin injuries. I guess Westbrook will indeed have a triple double 9/10 nights

Edit:

Russ' assist percentage is much better with Enes Kanter (arm) on the court, so that injury may impact his ability to drop triple-doubles.

Kanter is a fool

That's a fair point- it's difficult to gage how much credit a coach should receive. "Good" coaches almost always have the necessary talent. Was Lenny Wilkens still considered a good coach in his last year's in the league? Where does 2 time champion Rudy T rank? Does his firing in LAL effect his coaching resume??

Or how about Larry brown?

Is there a coach in NBA history that was considered great despite having a poor record and poor talent?!

I'd give Rudy T a pass there. From memory, the Lakers actually had a winning record when he resigned in 2005, and then things fell apart after that. Larry Brown managed to squeeze some good years out of somewhat mediocre rosters, so I think he deserves a lot of credit for what he was able to accomplish (though it might be fair to say handling rookies and developing players isn't his forte).

I can't think of any coaches that are considered "great" that don't also have a lot of wins in the regular season and Playoffs, and in most cases at least one or two championships to show for it. I suppose looking at the current coaches, there are a couple of them you might at least call "good" who don't have great all-time records. There's Alvin Gentry, who has a decent reputation and has had some success as he keeps getting gigs, but he's been at the helm of some unenviable rosters quite a few times and has a sub .500 record for his career. Brett Brown was fairly well-regarded as an assistant with the Spurs and in terms of Australian basketball (for whatever that may be worth), but he's obviously not had a lot of chances to win in Philadelphia.

5 Players trown out of the Knicks vs. Hawks game and what a close ending to the 4th OT. No, this is not 2k. This just happened in real life.

Paul Millsap just became the thirteenth player to play 60 minutes in a game. Dale Ellis still holds the record with 69.

I'd give Rudy T a pass there...memory, the Lakers actually had a winning record when he .

Good points. Aside from a handful coaches there is quite a lot of turnover of head coaching positions

Doc rivers did win COY with a non playoff team ( Phil jax was robbed). Maybe that's the closest

I'd forgotten about that. Definitely an unusual turn of events.

Curry just choked big time in crunch time. Kings hand the Warriors their eighth loss.

Westbrook flirted with a 20/20/20 game against the Lakers today. He finished with 17p/18r/17a

At this point, it looks like he's going to average that elusive triple double on the season. Incredible.

Yep, with every game it's getting closer to becoming reality.

With 24 games remaining, Westbrook is now 13 behind Oscar Robertson for most triple-doubles in a single season. It would be pretty cool to see a 53 year old record get broken.

Another triple-double for Westbrook today, his 29th on the season. Just read that he needs 193 rebounds (8.4 per game) and 211 assists (9.17 per game) to average a triple-double over his last 23 games. It's really, really looking likely.