lakers were the safe choice for phil.
I think it had less to do with safe and more to do with p*ssy.
all i'm saying is that phil vs. larry is moot b/c one guy passed on the job. so who knows what phil would've done here and who knows was lb would've done in lala.
I'll take a stab at it:
Phil would have put our best scorer in a position to win games and forced defenses to key in on him. The rest of the guys would find a good spot to shoot from when the best scorer was triple teamed. The Knicks would not have been good, but better than this fiasco.
Lb in L.A. would have slowed it down tremendously, eliminated 3 pointers, and tore up Kobe in the papers...then Kobe would have had his ass fired.
all i do know is that phil always had two of the top 5 nba players in any given season and he was able to get them to believe and win a title.
Phil is one of the luckiest coaches in history, no douibt about it.
only one team over the past 20+ years won a title without having even one single top 5, 10, or 20 player and that was detroit.
3 teams: Detroit, Detroit, and Detroit.
two totally different types of coaches for two TOTALLY different type of situations.
but kobe is INFINITELY better than our best player (and you can make a case that lamar isn't that far away from our best guy either)...and he's probably #1 or #2 in the league. that will get you to .500 regardless of what else is going on.
Kobe is much better than our best player, but he does not automatically get you to .500, last year the Lakers won 34 games, 1 better than the Knicks. The Knicks had a better draft, got a big man, and had more actual NBA players at every position...and check out the result:

Always a pleasure discussing with you DJ.
oohah
[Edited by - oohah on 05-09-2006 1:36 PM]