dirkforpres wrote:jamaalstar21 wrote:dirkforpres wrote:Dallas would make me so happy
I've never understood the camp of Dallas fans who hate Carlisle. I understand not agreeing with some of his decisions but: Carlisle pretty much guarantees you an overachieving bench, and in the playoffs his adaptability is second to none. Carlisle out-adjusts everyone in the playoffs. I'll never forget 2014, when Dallas almost beat San Antonio (who decimated everyone that year) with 35 year old Dirk and Monta Ellis. He then got joke level squads (built around Dirk's final years) to the playoffs for 2 more years before Dallas completely bottomed out for a bit. Him and Doncic are going to be a dangerous playoff duo for the next many years, so enjoy it!
Like you really want them to move on from Carlisle and hire...who? Carlisle is a top 5 coach. The moment he leaves Dallas, half the teams in the league are going to offer him the biggest contract possible.
Carlisle is a perpetual first round exit coach with the exception of the one year Dirk absolutely carried them. He doesn’t play young players and alienates countless others. There’s a reason that guys like Rondo, Odom, Noel, Crowder, and Barnes all have some of the worst years of their careers statistically while under Rick. In any other sport or hell, on any other basketball team, if you don’t get your team out of the first round once in the last 10 years, your ass is in the unemployment line. Why should Carlisle be any different?
This is all pretty cherry picked stuff that has to ignore context and list only bad and not good.
1. Perpetual first-round exit coach. Carlisle has been to the playoffs in 13 of the 19 years he's been a head coach. His teams have been eliminated in the first round 7 of those times. He's won a championship once. He went to the Conference Finals twice. He's been in the second round 3 other times. He also got to at least the second round his first 4 years as a coach, across 2 different teams. But that's not the only point. We don't judge a coach in any given year solely by how far they get in the playoffs. We have to also judge it by how good was their team, how far were they expected to go.
- The first time Carlisle lost in the first round, was the 2006 Indiana Pacers. This was the team decimated by Malice at the Palace Ron Artest suspension. This was the year Reggie retired and Artest was traded for Peja, who got hurt and missed most of their first round. Jermaine O'neal missed half the season with injuries as well.
- His first year in Dallas, he got to the second round. His first round 1 defeat in Dallas came the next year against lower seeded San Antonio. That was technically an upset and I guess you can hold it against him. I felt at the time that Dallas was a regular season overachiever that didn't have a real starting center that could play with Dirk. Dampier, Hayward, Diop... it took Dallas a long time to put the right center next to Dirk (and then they let him walk the next year).
- The year after that they won a championship. You can give 100% of the credit to Dirk if you want, but you'd have to ignore a lot of stuff to say that Carlisle didn't outcoach Phil Jackson, Erik Spolestra, Scott Brooks and Nate McMillan. This team was a very well coached 2-way that made lots of great adjustments and changes to the rotation. Putting in Peja against the Lakers sunk them. Dallas' decision to go zone against Lebron handed the King the biggest embarrassment of his career.
- The years after that, the roster was hamstrung by Cuban/Nelson's desire to go big game hunting. They let Chandler walk, let Kidd walk, never signed a significant free agent, and pretty much told Carlisle to try his best with scraps of the junk heap around a gradually aging Dirk.
Pretty much, which series was Carlisle supposed to win but didn't win? Maybe 2010, maybe second round in 2009, but I don't see any other year where they should have won a series and lost instead. Why didn't Dirk just carry them the other years if Carlisle's coaching mattered so little in 2011?
2. Alienates players. Besides maybe Rondo, you didn't give a single good example of a player who has floundered under Carlisle and succeeded elsewhere.
- You listed Lamar Odom. Did Carlisle introduce him to crack cocaine? Was that Carlisle's fault somehow? Explain.
- Crowder was a young guy. He showed promise in Dallas and they used him as a trade chip. It took Crowder 2 more years before he learned how to shoot well enough to become a really useful rotation piece. I bet Dallas would have liked to keep him, but at the time, trading for Rondo was as no brainer. Crowder didn't explode right away in Boston, he simply continued his career trajectory as a useful 2-way rotation piece.
- I'll give you Rondo I guess. I've never seen a player quit on a team like that in the playoffs. It was a worse look for Rondo imo, but if you want to give Carlisle a fair share of the blame, I don't know enough to tell you not to.
- How did he alienate Barnes? Barnes got the offense built around him for a couple years and then they no longer needed him when the drafted Luka. Barnes hasn't been particularly great anywhere, but Dallas was the height of his career in terms of individual performance. Weird example.
- Noel turned down a 72m contract and then it just became awkward since he was obviously going to leave anyways. Clear front office issue. If Carlisle didn't like him, that's another issue. He was fine with Carlisle before the contract got turned down. It's not like Noel has been anything more than a plucky backup at any other stop.
