Coaching: Bickerstaff vs Brown/D'Antoni

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Didn't the Lakers do pretty well under Bernie Bickerstaff?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/LAL/2013.html

Brown 1-4, Bickerstaff 4-1, D'Antoni 4-5

I'm curious as to why interim coaches are so quickly dismissed?

[TyCobb]

What?! This is an LG type of topic.

[ennui]

1. Sample sizes are too small to make adequate conclusions.
2. Personnel that D'antoni requires to run his offense are absent, can't fully critique him yet.
3. The Laker org will not hand the reigns of a 150 million dollar team over to an assistant coach.
4. In terms of Bickerstaff's record, it can be argued that the team was playing on adrenaline due to the firing of Brown, happens often when a coach is fired.

[supaflash]

#4 easily. The team energy was completely different for a few games. Brown had lost them, the firing set them free. It's not like he did much of anything in that short timespan, about all he did was give them some freedom to adlib outside the Princeton.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Why didn't they get the same adrenalin when Mike D'Antoni, a very-well compensated, high-profile coach took over?

What happened to the adrenalin?

How many games would they have played on adrenalin under Bernie Bickerstaff?

As a Wizard fan I like Randy Wittman's coaching a lot better than Flip Saunders" coaching. Before the additions of some player that GM Ernie Grunfeld made, the Wizards won 6 straight under Wittman after playing much better than they had for Saunders. This season, Washington started off 0-12, but in all but a couple games they played tough.

I think Bickerstaff would have given the Lakers as good a coaching as anybody else.

I also don't think Phil Jackson would have worked any miracles with the existing roster. Just my opinion ...

[ennui]

Address the sample size then? Going 4-1 is no indication what would occur in the future, especially considering the schedule at the time was cupcake soft and we were on a 5 or 6 game homestand. Look up the SRS of the comp we faced during those games, I would venture to say it was horrible.

[dockingsched]

bickerstaff's still on the staff, he didn't go anywhere.

[ennui]

People need to stop looking for magic elixirs and scapegoats. We need time to gel, it's as simple as that.

[Soul Chef Fresh]

But Bickerstaff just let the Lakers play. I swear Kobe was saying they literally had no offensive or defensive schemes as the Princeton was trashed during the transition.

They were winning off talent alone.

[Gek]

People need to stop looking for magic elixirs and scapegoats. We need time to gel, it's as simple as that.

That'll be 750 gold please.

[DEEP3CL]

People need to stop looking for magic elixirs and scapegoats. We need time to gel, it's as simple as that.

Man I'm glad we still have some smart high IQ guys here, if guys think you can just roll out a team after you changed half the team in 3 months.....you don't realize reality.

As for Bernie, even when he was a head coach he was average at best, having Kobe, Metta, Dwight and Pau will make 95% of the coaches in this league look damn good.

Just because he won 4 and lost 1 doesn't make him even better than Mike Brown or Mike D, some of Bernie's biggest flaws came in the playoff with his teams.

[Mamba Venom]

Kobe's quote about Bickerstaff was telling and epic.

A reporter asked Kobe if he like Bick as a coach.

Kobe responded with: yes, he gets the f--- out of the way so we can do what we need to do. 4-1.

[Doormatt]

People need to stop looking for magic elixirs and scapegoats. We need time to gel, it's as simple as that.

That'll be 750 gold please.

the green one doesnt exist anymore this is a lie

[JustAwesome]

Man I'm glad we still have some smart high IQ guys here, if guys think you can just roll out a team after you changed half the team in 3 months.....you don't realize reality.

I was preaching this the entire time. Fell on deaf ears when everyone was demanding Brown be fired after the first quarter of the season. Fell on deaf ears again when I said that D'Antoni wasn't going to magically create a winner right off the bat, especially since he was implementing an entirely different scheme than the one that they were practicing before the season.

[TwentyOne920]

Bickerstaff coached 5 games, all part of a homestand.

vs GSW
vs SAC
vs SAS
vs PHX
vs HOU

Of the four teams they beat only the Warriors look to be seriously gunning for a playoff spot and they unsurprisingly lost to the elite team (a close loss, but a close loss nevertheless).

[Dr Aki]

People need to stop looking for magic elixirs and scapegoats. We need time to gel, it's as simple as that.

That'll be 750 gold please.

the green one doesnt exist anymore this is a lie

[TruSkool]

jackson>>>>>d'antoni>>bickerstaff>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>brown

[madmaxmedia]

Still, it would be interesting to see in an alternative universe where Bickerstaff remains interim coach for 5 more games and see the results.

I think the Brown firing freed the team from pressure and expectations for a bit, so they were about to just go out and play. I don't think that was going to last forever, regardless of who came in to succeed Brown. Phil Jackson might have been better able to manage the team's mindset going forward. I'm not excusing the Lakers for the poor performance but with all the crushing attention it's like they have to win a NBA championship every night, or at least prove that they can/will win it. It can definitely make a team tight. The 'championship or bust' thing is still going on, the reality is the team unfortunately isn't good enough to have such a goal. I think the sooner they realized this, ironically the easier things might start coming to them again. Because they are still better than a 9-12 team.

Granted the Lakers were beating bad teams when Bickerstaff was coaching, but they lost a tight game to SAS in the only loss. And right now the Lakers are having problems beating even bad teams...

[lakersdynasty]

I' ve been saying this a lot, these players dont wanna be coached by anybody.. And i dont think thats even on purpose, like kobe said about biker, get the **** out of the way and let us play, thats kinda of what they wanna do like team usa

[Malik Starks]

I' ve been saying this a lot, these players dont wanna be coached by anybody.. And i dont think thats even on purpose, like kobe said about biker, get the **** out of the way and let us play, thats kinda of what they wanna do like team usa

I'm not a Lakers fan but this is exactly what I have thought. Kobe simply wants a coach who will make sure the players are playing hard, know their roles, are held accountable and beyond that will "get the f*** out of the way". Phil Jackson was perfect for this mindset. The triangle has defined roles but very little play-calling, and even during games Phil was very hands off, even allowing opposing teams to go on double-digit runs with opting to take a time-out.

Mike Brown was the opposite of this when he first came in (according to my understanding), he preferred to call plays most of the time, and the players saw him at least in the beginning as too controlling. He backed off later in the year and the team responded to him more.

I actually think the Princeton was his attempt to "be like Phil", with an offense that provided structure, but basically ran itself once players had it down. He wanted the triangle effect without the actual triangle (or to have control without being hands on). Unfortunately for him, management didn't bring in Steve Nash to have him standing out on the wing waiting to shoot threes. I'm of the opinion he would he would still be the head coach had he kept a more conventional offense.