Now that it's over (again), how do we feel about Coach Spo?

[Heat_Fan_87]

http://oi39.tinypic.com/2yknkab.jpg

[Lane1974]

I ain't got no worries

[mopper8]

http://oi39.tinypic.com/2yknkab.jpg

It's pretty nuts that, in the shot clock era, the only coaches to win more than 2 titles are Phil, Pop, Red and Riley. Basically the consensus 4 best coaches ever.

[WD]

ERIC is quietly stacking his chips

[LBJ 1through5]

Spo will go down as one of the greats

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[Mars]

Re: Spo to Coach the East in Allstar Game
by Mars on Mon Feb 04, 2013 8:52 am

Phil's first two seasons coaching Jordan, Pippen, and Grant:

(1) Eastern Conference Finals loss
(1) NBA Finals win

Spo's first two seasons coaching LeBron, Wade, and Bosh:

(1) NBA Finals loss
(1) NBA Finals win


Our boy be on that Feel Jax trajectory...

Trajectory update...

Phil's first three seasons coaching Jordan, Pippen, and Grant:

(1) Eastern Conference Finals loss
(2) NBA Finals wins

Spo's first three seasons coaching LeBron, Wade, and Bosh:

(1) NBA Finals loss
(2) NBA Finals wins



Our boy still be on that Feel Jax trajectory...

[Alex Trevelyan]

What makes coaches great is having a system that works or innovates the game.

- Don Nelson's small ball and pretty much building the Dallas Mavericks and developing Dirk and Steve Nash, creating the point forward position
- Phil Jackson's Triangle Offense which was implemented into two hall of fame caliber teams. Before the Triangle Offense Michael Jordan had the ball in his hands all the time and functioned as a point guard.
- Pat Riley inheriting the Showtime Lakers and then carrying the tradition of the hardcore defensive orientated Eastern Conference basketball
- Mike Dan'toni creating the Seven Seconds or Less Suns which pretty much became the epitome of high powered offenses
- George Karl super athletic teams that can run the fast break and have a free flowing offense
- Coach Pop's staunch defensive teams in the early 00 and then free flowing 3 point shooting teams in late 2000s to the present
- Coach Thibs staunch hard playing defensive teams

I could go on and on.

Spo hasn't done any of that. He hasn't created a system of offense, in all honesty, his offense is horrible, the Heat just has efficient offensive players. His defense is inherited from Pat Riley. His defense is also exploited routinely by coaches that have good 3 point shooters. His offense is easily exploited by packing the paint.

His offense contains very little motion, it isn't free flowing. There is a lot of standing around which makes it easy to pack the paint and guard three point shooters which the Pacers and Spurs did. He doesn't make ingame adjustments. He can't defend the three. He still doesn't know how to beat teams that pack the paint, commit very few turnovers and defend the fastbreak well.

He turns every PF with a jumpshot into Udonis Haslem.

He just hasn't done anything besides win with great talent and he got super lucky this year with Game 6 or he would've been a failure.

Good-Great coaches have great systems that they can take anywhere with a team that has a good talent level and make it work. They are innovative.

Spo isn't innovative, he just a great X's and O's guy with a great talent level on his squad. He can draw up nice plays out of timeouts, he can make adjustments after 4 games in a playoff series but he can't do the big stuff. He can't create a unique defensive system that can guard the 3 and protect the paint. He can't create an offensive system that takes advantage of Bosh, Wade's and Lebron's talent.

Thibs created a defensive system that protects the paint and protects the 3. Phil Jackson got the best out of Michael Jordan's and Scottie Pippen's talent and the best out of Shaq's and Kobe's talent. Pat Riley went from free flowing fast breaking Showtime to grimey Knicks basketball.

That's what great coaches do. It's about system and scheme, not great Hall of Fame talent because great Hall of Fame talent can be on the same team and still suck. Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard was on the same team and couldn't do nothing right.

You've taken the word great and run with it, but I'm not arguing that Spoelstra is great, merely very good, better than the vast majority of the NBA field. I'm personally convinced Spoelstra is not an original thinker. I mentioned in another post that he's your standard overachiever. He just outworks everyone else. Turns over every rock in search of an answer, my criticism of him is he seems slow to adapt, relying upon his plan, unwilling to improvise on the fly. Your criticisms have great merit. But that being said he doesn't have to measure up to the all-time greats, that's a false dichotomy, he merely has to excel over his peers. You can't criticize Spo in a vacuum, as if he's the only coach with glaring faults. They all have them and the more you watch even the so-called greats the more apparent they become.

Systems don't dictate greatness and several of the names you mentioned would tend to prove it. Pops and Riley adapted to their personnel. They showed themselves to be adaptable. They weren't wedded to systems. D'Antoni is no great coach. He's an inflexible one-trick pony who seems to lack the humility or intelligence to see the errors of his ways. And as good as Thibs is defensively, he's weak offensively, with a penchant for wearing his players out. Bulls fans have accused the guy of injuring his players by working them like pack mules in practice. That's not the attribute of a great coach and I've always had the suspicion that fans held Thibs in such high esteem partly because of his personality; brash, in-your-face, aggressive (the opposite of Spo, it tends to mask some of his failings.)

System building or scheming is one aspect of coaching. Adjustments game to game, minute to minute are another thing. Motivation is another. Managing egos is another. Pacing the team another. Coaching is a lot more than being a madman in a lab somewhere concocting new systems and to Spo's credit he did after the debacle against the Mavs recognize that he needed something new and tried to find inspiration with Chip Kelly and the Oregon Ducks spread offense. That's a guy looking for answers in atypical places. That accrues to Spo's credit in my book. Most successes are the product of numerous trials and errors, even genius, to quote Edison, is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Spo's not a finished product. He can get better, much better. His diligence and capacity to learn is his greatest asset, because he's not Kasparov, he's not Van Gogh, he's not Bach, but who in the NBA is? Phil Jackson and Don Nelson are gone. Riley is on our side. Pop is leaving the game with Duncan (wise of him, for the Emperor may seem more naked without Hall of Famers like Robinson, Duncan and Ginobili.) Of the sixteen playoff coaches this year, which of them rivals Spoelstra or exceeds Spoelstra? Thibs? There is no Phil Jackson on his radar.

[John Thomas]

im of the opinion that what separates most coaches in player management, not X's and O's. So in saying that, yes i think he's elite.

[Alex Trevelyan]

He's the luckiest coach ever.
He's an average coach, maybe a bit above average, but he's been mostly carried by the talent he has.

And Phil Jackson and Popovich haven't? Name me a great coach who doesn't have great talent and tell me how you identify said coach, it might help me when betting NBA games?

I'd argue Phil carried his talent to wins. He took teams that other coaches couldn't win with, and he won with them. Sure, you can say an extra year of experience played a factor, but let's be realistic.

Phil won with 2 different clubs, each time with 2 versions of the team. He won with a great C, he also won without a great C. He coached the team that won 72 games in a season. Over the last 23 years his teams played 13 finals.

If you have even the slightest idea how hard it is to win a title, or even to make it to the final, you have to realize this can not be a coincidence. Not over such a large period of time. You could claim 1-2 years could be a fluke, but not this.

I've clipped your comments for brevity sake, I won't respond to them individually, because my comments weren't addressed to the specifics of your original post. I originally highlighted your sentence above and expounded on it not because I was responding to you personally, so much as I was this theme that Spoelstra is merely an average guy being carried by elite talent. I agree with that to a degree, as my response made clear, but this is in fact true of most legendary coaches. When I mentioned Popovich it was not to demean his coaching ability, it was to point out the very real fact that he's benefited from multiple Hall of Famers over his career, not just transcendent physical talents, but talents with brains and high character too, extremely rare commodities. And if you think you can separate where the talent ends and the coaching begins or vice versa, I think that's naive. I'll admit my own.

I think it absurd to argue that Popovich would be perceived, or Phil Jackson or Pat Riley as great coaches if they weren't fortunate enough to possess truly special players. The notion that Jackson for instance carried his talent is touch much in my estimation. I won't even address it, I imagine most people would agree with me. I will concede your point that it is an extremely difficult thing to get to a Finals, Spo's been to 3 in a 5-year coaching career, but you don't credit him for that. If you think Pop gets more out of his guys, maybe that's a fair statement, but Popovich has 17-years of head coaching experience in the NBA. Spoelstra has 5. You're comparing a guy about to walk out the door with a guy whose career just started. Spo is not a fully formed coaching entity at this time.

This is really about one thing, how does Spoelstra acquit himself vis-a-vis the rest of the NBA? Go down a list of the 16-playoff coaches and tell me which ones are clearly better than Spo? Pop? Thibs? Spo is competing against the current field, not bronze statues in the Hall of Fame. It doesn't undercut my point at all for you to say, give Thibs Spo's players and Spo Thibs' players and Thibs murders him, because even if that were true, it's a philosophical thought experiment and nothing more. Thibs nor anyone else, will ever have Spo's players. I guess we lucked out there. Give the guy his props. He's doing an incredibly difficult job at an extremely high level under intense scrutiny and pressure. How many of us were screaming for his job in 2011? I can't imagine working at his level under those conditions.

[truthiness]

I will concede your point that it is an extremely difficult thing to get to a Finals, Spo's been to 3 in a 5-year coaching career, but you don't credit him for that.

Sample size.

And there's a reason I went over Phil's achievements/history. Phil did it with different teams, Phil took over teams that other coaches couldn't win with, and he won. That clearly shows his superiority.
Then, Phil managed to get something even out of not so stacked rosters. That's why I mentioned the 2005 Bulls. You could probably have the 2006 (or was it 2007 ?) Lakers there.

Spoelstra didn't do much with a weak team before getting Lebron. And he lost his 1st finals - on HIS mistakes. People blame Lebron for 2011, but I blame Spoelstra 100%. Lebron was too tired, that's why he suddenly started playing badly. And it was because Spoelstra had him chasing Rose around in the ECF, then Terry.

Will be VERY curious to see what Spoelstra will do after Miami/Lebron. Unless he has Phil's luck (well, not really luck, he chose well his next job) to coach the next best player in the league when Lebron retires/is no longer the best, we'll see what he can do with a team that's not as stacked.

If you think Pop gets more out of his guys, maybe that's a fair statement, but Popovich has 17-years of head coaching experience in the NBA. Spoelstra has 5. You're comparing a guy about to walk out the door with a guy whose career just started. Spo is not a fully formed coaching entity at this time.

That's an excuse, and it's valid, but it doesn't make me wrong. In fact, it makes me right.
Cause I am talking about Spoelstra RIGHT NOW.

And right now, he could do a better job. He sucked ass in 2011, he was so-so in 2012, and decent in 2013.
I agree he's improving, but he better take some giant steps next season, cause I'd like Lebron's, Wade's and Bosh's prime to be extended, and for that to happen they need some help from the coaching staff (and some luck injury wise).

Go down a list of the 16-playoff coaches and tell me which ones are clearly better than Spo? Pop? Thibs? Spo is competing against the current field, not bronze statues in the Hall of Fame.

I would put these guys ahead of him:
- Pops
- Adelman
- Karl
- SVG
- Thibs
- Vogel (probably)

If I wanted to, I could also argue for Mark Jackson, Rivers, Sloan and Hollins.


Look, I am not arguing that there are great coaches that didn't have great players. That's a strawman YOU built.
I am saying that Spoelstra has been a hindrance in 2011 and partially 2012, and that there are some guys who might be able to better coach this team. I wouldn't have minded him as the top assistant to Adelman, with the understanding that he'd take over after X years. He'd be learning on the job, and Miami would have a 3peat right now, IMO.

[Alex Trevelyan]

I will concede your point that it is an extremely difficult thing to get to a Finals, Spo's been to 3 in a 5-year coaching career, but you don't credit him for that.

Sample size.

And there's a reason I went over Phil's achievements/history. Phil did it with different teams, Phil took over teams that other coaches couldn't win with, and he won. That clearly shows his superiority.
Then, Phil managed to get something even out of not so stacked rosters. That's why I mentioned the 2005 Bulls. You could probably have the 2006 (or was it 2007 ?) Lakers there.

Spoelstra didn't do much with a weak team before getting Lebron. And he lost his 1st finals - on HIS mistakes. People blame Lebron for 2011, but I blame Spoelstra 100%. Lebron was too tired, that's why he suddenly started playing badly. And it was because Spoelstra had him chasing Rose around in the ECF, then Terry.

Will be VERY curious to see what Spoelstra will do after Miami/Lebron. Unless he has Phil's luck (well, not really luck, he chose well his next job) to coach the next best player in the league when Lebron retires/is no longer the best, we'll see what he can do with a team that's not as stacked.

If you think Pop gets more out of his guys, maybe that's a fair statement, but Popovich has 17-years of head coaching experience in the NBA. Spoelstra has 5. You're comparing a guy about to walk out the door with a guy whose career just started. Spo is not a fully formed coaching entity at this time.

That's an excuse, and it's valid, but it doesn't make me wrong. In fact, it makes me right.
Cause I am talking about Spoelstra RIGHT NOW.

And right now, he could do a better job. He sucked ass in 2011, he was so-so in 2012, and decent in 2013.
I agree he's improving, but he better take some giant steps next season, cause I'd like Lebron's, Wade's and Bosh's prime to be extended, and for that to happen they need some help from the coaching staff (and some luck injury wise).

Go down a list of the 16-playoff coaches and tell me which ones are clearly better than Spo? Pop? Thibs? Spo is competing against the current field, not bronze statues in the Hall of Fame.

I would put these guys ahead of him:
- Pops
- Adelman
- Karl
- SVG
- Thibs
- Vogel (probably)

If I wanted to, I could also argue for Mark Jackson, Rivers, Sloan and Hollins.


Look, I am not arguing that there are great coaches that didn't have great players. That's a strawman YOU built.
I am saying that Spoelstra has been a hindrance in 2011 and partially 2012, and that there are some guys who might be able to better coach this team. I wouldn't have minded him as the top assistant to Adelman, with the understanding that he'd take over after X years. He'd be learning on the job, and Miami would have a 3peat right now, IMO.

It's not a strawman. It's just a categorical fact that great coaches are mostly the product of great players and my point was nothing more than you cannot separate great coaching from great players. You will never know at what point what you're seeing is the coaching or the talent. It blurs. I believe strongly that both come into play, but you'll never know to what extent, it's why I asked for someone to throw out some names of great coaches that didn't have great talent, let us see what great coaching is without the aid of the talent.

I think it's misguided to think you can see that line, when you can't. It's like the old saw about cigarettes killing you, at some point smoking will kill you, but at what exact point, will it kill you? Is it at the 1000th cigarette, or the 1500th cigarette, or what, or is it just a quantity that can't be exactly defined? I don't deny that Spoelstra does some inexplicable things. I can see he lacks that intuitive improvisation which is the clinical definition of genius by the way, but that's a gut reaction I get from listening to him speak, not from evaluating his coaching, most of which occurs behind closed doors. The fact is none of us knows enough about 1) coaching 2) the internal dynamics of the team 3) what they're trying to do day to day, minute to minute to say whether another guy could squeeze another win out or not, or whether he could do it more efficiently.

You're being unfair to Spo, to a point of absurdity by claiming that he did nothing his first 2-years as coach. Those rosters were garbage other than Wade. He was a complete amateur, he took a 15-win team from the previous season, coached by everyone's definition of greatness, Pat Riley, and won 43-games and pushed the Hawks to 7-games in the playoffs. If in your opinion he didn't do much with the little talent he had, what should he have done? Make a categorical statement, tell us what he should of done with that roster? The season after that they won 47-games and lost to a Celtics team that was only moments away from repeating. This in your eyes constitutes nothing, while Phil Jackson is praised by you for taking over underachieving Bulls' and Lakers' teams, teams that were already on the cusp, and making them great.

In other words, you can't lose this argument because you've injected the ultimate subjectivity into it. Spo's first year he inherits a garbage team and posts a +28 win total. Phil's first year he takes over a team that in the last non-strike shortened season before he took over, won 61-games and lost in the WCF, with a much better roster than Spo's, but it is Jackson who is praise-worthy. Not Spoelstra. Jackson takes over a Bulls team that lost in the ECF the year before he took over, but again, he's praise-worthy. Spoelstra, no. As for the Finals in 2011, I partly agree with you, but for different reasons. He didn't prepare the team to attack a zone defense and that's on him. But LeBron just froze. He wasn't too tired when they were up 15 with 5-minutes left in game 2, he just started holding the ball and standing around. For a guy named Truthiness, you're lacking in what truth is, it's always multicasual, it's never a black and white narrative, never. The real truth is more complicated, not the simplistic, linear storyline you're telling.

But I know you're a man of conviction in your opinion, so let's just hope that I'm right and you're wrong, it's better for the team that way.

[weouthere]

He adjusted a lot

Re inserted Battier when needed

Stopped doubling TImmy

a lot of adjustments

This.
I appreciate that he did these things. I sense hes getting better but we need better offensive sets. We don't use Bosh right and we need to somehow play better with bron and wade on the court. More cutting etc etc

[theFRANCHISE]

I think he's grown since the first year of the big three era. He deserves credit for making adjustments instead of being stubborn. I hope next season he makes bosh a more important role in the offense to take some of the load off wade/LeBron

[dolphinatik]

He is only going to get better. in a few years he would have seen every play situation, substitution, scenerio, matchup, defense, offense and will be able to adjust without thinking twice about it. I dont think he is the best now but sure he could be later. You learn a lot of tricks with time and all the vets we bring in can share their tricks and wisdom. You can argue that Spo is in the best situation of any coach in this league. Also because he has won twice nobody can say that he cannot get it done. In 10 years the league might be talking about Spos legacy.

[Flash4thewin]

He is growing which is the best we can hope for.

One thing i will go out of my way to credit him is how he basically told Wade point blank No your going to play big mins for game 7 of the eastern finals.

Wade underwent an MRI to rule out additional problems during the East finals against Indiana, and said he was driving into a meeting with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra before Game 7 of that series -- not long after saying in the immediate aftermath of the Game 6 loss to the Pacers that he needed the ball more -- to tell him that he felt he should only play short minutes because his ineffectiveness was hurting the team.

Spoelstra had other ideas, and Wade decided to scrap his plan.

I felt like if I was going to be playing the way I was playing, and hurting the way I was hurting, I wasn't going to be able to help us move on to the next round," Wade said. "I was going to say play me short minutes only, and give Mike Miller and guys other opportunities. But I came into the meeting, and all Spo was about was giving me more opportunities and getting me ways to be more successful. So I was like, 'Well, changed my mind

[DeeDub]

I'm not going to just change my mind because we won. We won because our players hit the shots that were given to them all series. He made some adjustments, sure, but that's what a coach should do. Nothing he did was special in any way. He's a slightly above average coach with a a LEGENDARY roster.

Every team that has ever won did so because the players hit their shots. That is not unique to the Heat. But is also true that whent he Heat lost they did so largely because the players didn't hit their shots in those games. Let's face it, if LeBron was even a reasonable facsimile of his normal self in the 2011 Finals Spo would have won 3 straight championships.

I think Spo is one of the top coaches in the NBA and is very likely in the early stages of a HOF career. For the last several years the Heat have been one of, if not the, best teams in the league in terms of the success of plays coming out of a timeout. Much of the credit for that goes to Spo. In the playoffs he did a great job of gettign the team to bounce back after a loss. In the regular season he did that too and also did a great a job of helping the team avoid complacency after wins, which enabled it to go on the 27 game win streak. He helped make a team that was very "flawed" in a conventional sense -- no true C and mediocre PGs -- one of the best teams of all time and a 2-time champion. He stays calm, doesn't panic, seems to maintain a great relationship with the players and manages a lot of big egos. Yes, he does have some great players. Of course, the same is true of every other coach who has won multiple championships.

And before the Big 3 came here, Spo showed that he can get a 4th or 5th seed with one great player and virtually nothing else. He took over a 15-win team and improved it by 28 wins in his first season. The team then improved the next season too.

This year, Spo's Heat was 5-1 without LeBron, 11-2 without Wade and 8-0 without Bosh. Think about that for a second. Yes, there were usually 2 other great players left (but sometimes only 1, or none), but that requires adjustments. You don't just take a LeBron out of the lineup and roll the ball out there and expect the team to win. He's a very good coach. Considering how young he was when he started and the start he is off to, he will almost certainly go on to be a HOFer.

I don't agree with some of his rotations and in-game moves. Of course, that has been the case with every coach of every team that I have ever liked. Riley used to make a lot of moves that drove me crazy too. So did Shula. If I was a spurs fan I certainly would have felt that way after these Finals. I've seen that from Phil Jackson and doc Rivers too. Unfortunately, I am resigned to that being the case for every coach unless/until I become a head coach.