Which Coach Deserves to be Next on the List

ElectricMayhem · Post #1 » by **ElectricMayhem** » Fri May 13, 2011 11:56 am

While they say it's a players league (and it's probably true), the last 24 years have shown just how hard it is to win without the right coach.

NBA Champion coaches in the last 24 years:
Pat Riley
Chuck Daly
Phil Jackson
Rudy Tomjanovich
Greg Popovich
Larry Brown
Doc Rivers

That's it. Just 7 of them. There are 5 remaining coaches in the 2011 Playoffs. With Rivers and Jackson getting knocked out, one of them will join this list.
Purely looking at the coaches and not the teams, who do you think is most fit to join this exclusive list?
(listed alphabetically)
Scott Brooks
2010 Coach of the Year. He has guided OKC to a steady improvement each year. They are a team with lots of young talent. It's easy for young talent to go awry, but the team has remained humble and motivated. While a lot of that may be attributed to Durant, the team wouldn't be this successful this fast without a strong leader at the helm.

Rick Carlisle
He coached an Atkins-Stackhouse-Michael Curry-Clifford Robinson-B Wallace starting lineup to 50 wins and a 2nd seed in the East, earning him the 2002 NBA Coach of the Year award.. He also overachieved with Indiana and IMO, Dallas to a lesser extent. The biggest blemish on his resume is his lack of playoff success.

Lionel Hollins
He's had some tough personalities to work with in Memphis, but he's turned the team around a lot more quickly than most people thought. Randolph has turned his career around and Conley has shown vast improvement under Hollins.

Erik Spoelstra
In his first year as coach, he guided the Heat to a 28 game improvement (with the help of a healthy Dwyane Wade), the most ever by a rookie coach. He has managed to keep his team of superstars from imploding and hit their stride at the perfect time. Many doubted he could last the season under Riley's watchful eye.

Tom Thibodeau
He was considered the architect of Boston's strong defense that helped win them a championship. As a rookie head coach, he has helped his star take the next step and win the MVP while guiding the team to 21 more wins than the year before he came, earning him 2011 Coach of the Year.

tiderulz · Post #2 » by **tiderulz** » Fri May 13, 2011 12:14 pm

none 'deserve' to be on it. They will have to earn their way onto it. if you went strictly by the work they have done, Hollins and Brooks have taken horrible teams and made them into winners. everyone else came into fairly talented teams to begin with.

ElectricMayhem · Post #3 » by **ElectricMayhem** » Fri May 13, 2011 12:23 pm

Ok, I could rephrase the question as "Which coach would you feel least strange about joining the list?"

My pick was Carlisle due to his strong body of work up to this point. If I were to rank them, I'd go:
1. Carlisle
2. Thibodeau
3. Hollins
4. Brooks
5. Spoelstra

Spoelstra is the only one who wouldn't have me convinced he belongs even if he wins the championship. Which is funny, because I think of the remaining teams, they're the most likely to win it.

tiderulz · Post #4 » by **tiderulz** » Fri May 13, 2011 12:33 pm

GenshiYagyu wrote:Ok, I could rephrase the question as "Which coach would you feel least strange about joining the list?"

My pick was Carlisle due to his strong body of work up to this point. If I were to rank them, I'd go:
1. Carlisle
2. Thibodeau
3. Hollins
4. Brooks
5. Spoelstra

Spoelstra is the only one who wouldn't have me convinced he belongs even if he wins the championship. Which is funny, because I think of the remaining teams, they're the most likely to win it.

strong body of work? He couldnt get job done in Detroit and i believe before the Laker series, his playoff record was 41-43. He also got progressively worse every year in Indy, though there were some circumstances.

ElectricMayhem · Post #5 » by **ElectricMayhem** » Fri May 13, 2011 1:06 pm

tiderulz wrote:
strong body of work? He couldnt get job done in Detroit and i believe before the Laker series, his playoff record was 41-43. He also got progressively worse every year in Indy, though there were some
circumstances.

He got fired after taking the team to the conference championship. He did that without the benefit of Rasheed Wallace as well, so it's not as if Larry Brown took the exact same team and made them champions. Getting 50 wins out of Atkins-Stackhouse-Curry-Robinson-Wallace is one of the best regular season coaching jobs I've seen.

As I said before, though. Any of those top 4 coaches could join that list and not seem out of place. I think the near future will be more wide open than the recent past despite all the star power conglomeration that's happened/been talked about happening.