Is Phil still the man? Coaching discussion.

[Danny Darko]

I can see this coming from the banter, so I thought I'd start something official for the discussions that have started to take place. The overriding issue-

Is Phil still the right coach for us?

The good:

Phil is still the most respected single coach in the league. Players pay attention to him like no other coach regardless of their status as a star or grommet.

Phil is a very good veterans coach who does not micromanage teams into the ground like Karl or larry Brown are notorious for.

Phil holds poise in tough situations that allow a team to have confidence even when the chips are down. His record is indisputable.

Motivational Zen master? hmmm I'm not sure I'm adding this to him anymore.

Offensive scheme-

The triangle is really Tex's doing, but Phil is one of the only coaches to successfully coach it. It's clearly one of the best offenses ever used.

Recruiting agents-

Guys want to play for Phil, there has to be guys who consider coming to play for us just because he's here.




The bad:

Phil's substitutions-

I believe, are among the worst in the NBA. He has a knack for inserting the wrong guys at the wrong time or leaving a squad on the floor too long or when they are being abused. You can say this is to teach the team to handle situations, but if this happens in the Finals (it did) then you wonder if the lesson is worth losing a title over... and the answer is no.

Phil's doghouse-

Cool, Vlad or whoever usually has some reason to be in there. I'm not really going to harp on this but I wonder sometimes when he's got a purpose or weather he just is a vindicative crotchedy old man.

Time Outs-

You can argue this as a positive or negative. On the one hand we have timeouts late in games for crunch time. On the other- we let momentum swallow us without him getting our guys a rest, some subs, or just a second to right the ship after some advice. I argue this as a bad thing because I've seen more games lost due to momentum he never even attempts to change than games where we absolutely needed those time outs.

Defense-

He can harp on it all he wants, but he doesn't get results on D. I think it's got to start with the coach, so he gets the blame to me. As long as he allows them to play this way without severe motivation or punishment they are going to think their offense is good enough to overcome lame D. Previous champ Phil teams have been led by player captains playing D, so he's never really been the hammer that makes anyone play it.





I just wanted to start the discussion. I am personally not ready to back him or damn him, but I will say how frustrated I am with him in particular for not addressing some of our biggest problems. That's very much different than "let's get Van Gundy" or anything of that nature. Anyhow I'm curious to see what you guys are feeling on this.

[fareweatherfan]

A few things I know for sure are that Phil wants to win a ring more than anyone and that he is more knowledgable about the game than I am.

I support Phil and his decision making this season. Phil has always been one to sacrifice a regular season game if it meant the team, the front office, or himself for that matter, would learn a valuable lesson toward winning when it really counts.

Something else to keep in mind is that a coach cannot always convince a GM, owner, etc. that a trade is needed or that a particular position/player may look great in the regular season but doesn't have what it takes to win on a championship level. Thus, I think coaches are inclined to use the tools at their disposal, e.g. substitutions, player positioning, etc, to highlight a players strengths and weeknesses. I'm treading lightly here b/c I know how knee-jerk some board members can be. So I'll leave it at this, but I think Phil is currently manipulating our roster to acheive results that have little to do with whether we win the immediate game.

Phil worked magic last year incorporating Pau into the system and happened to run up against a flat-out better team in Boston. It will take more than regular season losses for me to abandon the Zen master.

[dockingsched]

i think phil is the right coach, he's just not very good at dealing with young players, something the lakers have plenty of.

[shortfuse3]

phil needs to change his defensive philosophy if he wants to win a title. the game has changed. you can't single cover guards without any help from behind anymore. i saw the game tonight and memphis was waltzing in the lane without any help from the lakers.

[Rox_Nix_Nox]

^what? that's our main problem. helping. we do it too much. their guards are waltzing to the paint because all our guards shade to the help. only the help isn't there or it's too slow to rotate. im tired of it honestly stay in front of your man.

[doozyj]

phil needs to change his defensive philosophy if he wants to win a title. the game has changed. you can't single cover guards without any help from behind anymore. i saw the game tonight and memphis was waltzing in the lane without any help from the lakers.

The game has changed??? That much from only 5 years ago???. Come now, the man has 9 rings and we are discussing how he needs to be tweaked. Ridiculous, simply ridiculous. This man probably knows more ball than all of us that post here combined.

Also lets all remember the Lakers are over 800.

[Slava]

If we had lost today's game, having followed the same no D pattern that we've been losing with all season, there would have been enough reasons for the Buss family & Mitch to even consider making a coaching change. We do not have too much time to recover and beat a team that has been so consistently good like Boston or a team on the rise like Cleveland and when the owner is paying luxury tax, he wants to see the results coming with it too.

No matter how big the coach's reputation is, the modern game is very much based on results and if you aren't producing them, your past resume doesn't matter much. Also the fact that he's not been able to command the respect of players like he used to could be a very decisive factor in his contract extension talks at the end of the year if we fail to win the championship.

I really am keeping an eye on Popovic and the Spurs and when they decide to rebuild after Duncan, he could be enticed into coaching Kobe and winning here.

[doozyj]

If we had lost today's game, having followed the same no D pattern that we've been losing with all season, there would have been enough reasons for the Buss family & Mitch to even consider making a coaching change. We do not have too much time to recover and beat a team that has been so consistently good like Boston or a team on the rise like Cleveland and when the owner is paying luxury tax, he wants to see the results coming with it too.

No matter how big the coach's reputation is, the modern game is very much based on results and if you aren't producing them, your past resume doesn't matter much. Also the fact that he's not been able to command the respect of players like he used to could be a very decisive factor in his contract extension talks at the end of the year if we fail to win the championship.

I really am keeping an eye on Popovic and the Spurs and when they decide to rebuild after Duncan, he could be enticed into coaching Kobe and winning here.

So a record of 22-5 isn't producing results but Popovich and the Spurs are??? Perhaps we should hire Dunleavy.

[Erik Eleven]

Good thread.

I just can't make myself rule out Phil just yet. He has won too much to be questioned so severely, so quickly. We're over .800. Not time yet to call for the coach's head, in my opinion.

At the same time, he's not doing a good job motivating this young roster to play hard. To me, the team has looked more inspired when they've played for Rambis, the last few years.

Should Phil against all odds get fired before his contract runs out and they wouldn't promote Rambis, I would have to hope for Popovic, Pat Riley or Nate McMillan, in that order.

[Slava]

If we had lost today's game, having followed the same no D pattern that we've been losing with all season, there would have been enough reasons for the Buss family & Mitch to even consider making a coaching change. We do not have too much time to recover and beat a team that has been so consistently good like Boston or a team on the rise like Cleveland and when the owner is paying luxury tax, he wants to see the results coming with it too.

No matter how big the coach's reputation is, the modern game is very much based on results and if you aren't producing them, your past resume doesn't matter much. Also the fact that he's not been able to command the respect of players like he used to could be a very decisive factor in his contract extension talks at the end of the year if we fail to win the championship.

I really am keeping an eye on Popovic and the Spurs and when they decide to rebuild after Duncan, he could be enticed into coaching Kobe and winning here.

So a record of 22-5 isn't producing results but Popovich and the Spurs are??? Perhaps we should hire Dunleavy.

The real objective is not producing a great regular season. If that was the ultimate objective, Mike D'Antoni would still be the headcoach in Phoenix and Avery Johnson would be incharge at Dallas.

[hermes]

i'm going believe Phil has a master plan, and it will all work out in the end

[shortfuse3]

defense will be the biggest problem for the lakers this year

[Kobay]

defense is all on the coach. Its not a fluke, every team Tom Thibodeau has been to have played monster defense.

[hermes]

defense is all on the coach. Its not a fluke, every team Tom Thibodeau has been to have played monster defense.

i'd say some of it is on the players too, since defense is mainly effort, and that is on the players

[shortfuse3]

it's up to the coach to coach the players though. tom thibodeau's resume speaks for itself. a lot of laker games i see they like to gamble for steals. if your not disciplined defensively that comes from the coach.

[fareweatherfan]

This is getting ridiculous. Phil is arguably the best coach of all time. This one falls squarely on the players.

At the start of the season we couldn't have enough player appreciation threads, now we question whether Phil should be fired. I don't care to single anyone out, but I am absolutely blown away by some of what has been posted in this thread.

Its one thing to pull the trigger quick on a coach who is unproven (although I don't like to see that either) but Phil will never be fired. I was even upset when Elton Brand's ineptness got Mo Cheeks fired. Unbelievable.

Each Laker needs to hold a one-on-one meeting with their ***sack, just to make sure its still there.

[dockingsched]

all i know is that it wan't the coach that asked the veterans to compete in getting the most steals during the season. gambling addicts they've turned into, and not the money kind of gambling.

[garcia3]

Although sometimes i find myself scratching my head because of Phil's coaching decisions, he has proved most of us wrong by giving Sasha Vujacic playing time and the green light to shoot since he came to the Lakers. And it worked wonders last year with his emergence. And I do remember that at the start of last year most of us wanted Phil to give Sasha's minutes to Javaris Crittenton.

He also shocked the world on that series we lost to the Suns in 7 games, by making freaking Kwame Brown (of all people) more of a focal point on OFFENSE for God's Sake. And it worked wonders, he shocked everybody, including us Laker fans, we were a rebound away from bouncing them out of the playoffs. He just couldn't adjust to the Suns doubling Kwame once he got the ball on the block, since Kwame is not a good passer, nor he was accustomed to pass out of double teams.

What I'm trying to say is that Phil coaches in some mysterious way where at first we don't understand most of his decisions, like having Luke Walton's slow ass in the starting lineup, while Kobe plays his best at the 3 position and is a good passer, and way better defender than Walton will ever be. And while I agree with both Danny Darko and j-far that he is not getting results on D, I know Phil knows what the hell he's doing, and he has shown it with the results I pointed out in the previous paragraph.

My 2 cents.

[kobeaki]

all salient points, both pro and con, but my argument against phil, is that these are issues his teams , since being with the lakers, have all had, lackadaisical defense, slow first halfs, piss poor pick and roll defense...have been hallmarks of his teams, now with shaq and kobe, complimented by 4 or 5 hardened , savvy veterans, that tends to cover or at least render the deficiencies null.

now, i love phil jackson, i love his sense of humor, i love how he can totally tell someone to f off in his undercover sort of way, as a recovering smartass myself i appreciate that. i dig his demeanor and how nothing seems to rattle him..

but i really have to wonder how effective he still is, and how much this team still listens to him, now when things are going well, there is a certain quality to his teams, but after all this time there does not seem to be an identity to this team, that may be part of the master plan, that may be intentional...

but there has been some seriously critical coaching flaws, and they rear their heads in the playoffs...

06 versus phx comes to mind, with that rebound at the end, with a foul to give and timeout left...
the fact that we needed a thug in last years finals, whilst a triple black belt big man mbenga was on the bench...

for a staff with sooo much rich playoff experience, the vast lakers org. braintrust(rambis,magic,lew, rudy t.?) etc, and a head coach who clearly is so intelligent...it makes one wonder...

[snaquille oatmeal]

although I sometimes get frustrated with some of Phils decisions (timeouts, substitutuions, defense philosophy) I do respect what he has done his second time around in LA. the one thing that does disappoint me is when he doesn't panic and doesn't whoop a$$ when he should, like games 7 with the Suns and the Celtics.

I wish we had a guard dog type of player like Shaq, Rodman, Barkley, or Machale, and I do blame Phil for not insisting on one.