Battery wrote:
Of course Larry brown nitpicks every single day in practice and in public, it's because he takes over MEDIOCRE TEAMS that are flawed. I'd love to see Phil Jackson take over the Charlotte Bobcats before last season. Unfortunately that would never happen because he only goes to teams that have SUPERSTARS. HUGE difference! The Bobcats would have drove Phil Jackson INSANE. No matter what you say, Phil's "master motivational skills" are not getting through to Stephen Jackson and unless he's skilled at increasing someone's bball IQ, this would have ended in a huge disaster.
Right now we have the perfect coach for this flawed and highly sensitive team. Silas doesn't criticize them publicly, doesn't call anyone out and the team just goes on it's merry way. Unfortunately these types of coaches don't last very long because the players always end up running the entire show and the team becomes soft. Then management has no choice but to step in at some point. But this type of coach will get to hang around longer than usual because mediocre flawed players LOVE that sort of coach so they don't make any waves.
you are right about jackson. my biggest beef with phil has always been that he has never had to and/or is unwilling to coach a bad or even a mediocre team. he knows what he is good at, which is handling great teams and making them champions, and he sticks to it. kudos to him.
and you are right that larry has been historically pretty good and helping turn around struggling franchises, at least in the short-term. we can debate whether he short term success is worth the problems he leaves behind after he "leaves".
could you imagine larry brown trying to coach the current heat or the current celtics though? he would ruin them, the same way he destroyed team usa in the 2004 olympics. he doesnt have the type of personality or coaching style to mesh that many big egos and get them to buy into his system.
i guess i am just not impressed with the way larry handles himself as a professional. for a man who has been around a long time, he can be bitter, stubborn and he lacks the ability to adapt to his current situation. i guess maybe he is a complete control freak and just cannot handle not having 100% control of every situation. i am much more impressed with coaches who have shown the ability to adapt to each specific situation. that is not to say that coaches should not have a system that stick with, for the most part, but they all need to be flexible enough to adjust.
when everyone around him is giving him what he wants and his players are buying into his system, then and only then is he an effective coach. sadly he has never really found the way to maintain any form of success over a period of time. you cant just discard that part of his career when discussing his legacy.
as for the specific situation in charlotte, once again his fatal flaws were
1) the perception (real or not) that he either wanted to be somewhere else or that he wasnt happy here. i believe most of the players as well as mj could sense it and it affected how they responded to him.
2) he couldnt quite seem to get past losing felton. i realize that he would have preferred to have him stay, but at the end of the day, once felton left, larry needed to move on and forget about it. it just seemed like he couldnt let it go. like the saying goes, no sense in crying over spilled milk.
3) he never found a way to get the best out of dj. we can argue dj's merits as a point guard all day long, but that is irrelevant. i have been on record many times expressing my concerns about dj. however, dj was here and thats what larry had to work with. larry needed to find a way to push the right buttons in dj. but instead larry refused to change his approach, using the old "my way or the highway" approach, while most likely pestering higgins and mj non-stop about trading for a new pg. its like having an argument with your girlfriend where you know you are right and she is wrong. and you keep pointing out you are right over and over and over to the point that she decides to leave because she is sick of you acting like jackass. was it really worth it to prove you are right to the point of losing your girlfriend? sometimes you have to just back down and try a different approach to make things last.
i'm sure that sooner or later another gm will give larry a chance to turn around their struggling franchise. he may get them 10 extra wins, but in the long term, i bet it also ends in a giant mess. is it really worth it?
Harbaugh seems like a real jackass, but this is the NFL and most coaches aren't nice.
