TMS wrote:nixluva wrote:CrushAlot wrote:nixluva wrote:CrushAlot wrote:nixluva wrote:OH Please, just keep MDA and get winning talent in here. Even if you have a lousy coach you can win if you have top talent, just ask the Cavs. It's not very complicated. Nearly all the top coaches had bigtime talent when they won their Titles. Riley was winning with a mostly offensive team in LA and no one complained. 1st get great talent! Ewing could win if we're loaded with talent, so why not him down the line. It's not like he and Oakley are a lock to be great coaches just cuz they were tough NBA players.
I think you could make an argument that MDA was Mike Brown in Phoenix if you consider that his record without Nash is 84-151.
Really? Then why do many of the greatest basketball minds in coaching hold MDA in such high regard? I think in this case MDA was no Mike Brown. PHX all but conceded that MDA's system was better for their team this year. Thing is that under MDA the Suns were a MUCH better defensive team!!! This year their point Diff is only 2.60 when under MDA they were ALWAYS one of the best in the league in Point Diff. In 2006-07 PHX was a +7.3 right behind S.A. +8.4. The Spurs as you remember beat PHX in that controversial series. MDA and the Suns could've won that series if things hadn't gone crazy.
Both have been coaches of the year. One has made it to the finals. One has always had a star the other has failed miserably when he doesn't have Steve Nash. I think it is a fair comparison. Brown also was a part of one of the most successful runs of a professional team as an assistant with the Spurs.
Dude just say that MDA hasn't done well when he has had bad teams, cuz really it's not about Nash. He's one component to having a good team, but he also had Amare & Marion on that team. What kind of team has he had here and in that short stint in Denver, with another record level bad team, you keep wanting to include? How about MDA lost those games cuz he had really bad teams period.
he did have Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson & Leandro Barbosa for much of the '03 season, his 1st season in Phoenix... Amare missed about 30 games that year, but they still had enough talent to be more than a 21W - 40L team under him that season IMO... right now there's nothing to judge MDA's success on other than when he's had an MVP calibre PG running his system along w/2-3 other Allstar calibre players.
MDA took over after a rough start by Coach Johnson and with Marbs as PG and really that team wasn't ready to win anything when he took over, after the big trade with NY, but they made progress which is why management kept him as Head coach. The choice was validated by how well the team played from there on. He took a team that at the beginning of the next season wasn't expected to do much, but MDA had that team ready and they went 62-20!!! That's a pretty good rebound from the year before and yeah he had good talent to work with and he showed what he could do with a decent talent level, tho not a great team!
People tend to overlook the fact that PHX wasn't that stocked with talent. Those players were pretty good, but this is the same Amare that people now feel isn't worth a Max contract from us. Sean Marion hasn't done anything since leaving the Suns. Nash became great under MDA and he's about the best thing they had, yet he's not a perfect player if you judge his poor defense as part of the equation and add that to Amare's poor defense as well. MDA did great with that team. He had that team playing above it's head if you really look at it. His system was perfect for the kinds of players he had. They all flourished in that style.
Then he won 54 games without Amare!!! How is that not showing what kind of coach he is? It's too easy to forget what the guy did with a roster that wasn't full of great players. Just Nash and Marion and he still won 54 games!?! How good did he make Diaw, Bell and KT look?
TMS believes that MDA wouldn't win with a good PG unless it was Nash, but just look at how much we're able to score without a good PG. We are still a pretty hard team to stop from scoring despite the fact that we have no floor general. I guarantee that if you put a good PG on this same roster he'd get a lot more mileage out of this team than he has. Nash was a big part of the success, but more than any other coach he Maxed Out Nash's potential and that is great coaching. If Dallas had any idea that Nash could be an MVP level player they would never have let him go.
2/6/2010 11:56 PM