One note on Phil Jackson. Im watching a piece on ESPN right now with people trying to diminish his accomplishments yet again because of the talent on his teams. Give the guy his damn due. With great players comes great expectations, and how can you meet those expectations any more consistently than he has?
The final 6 years in Chicago that he coached Jordan for a full year, they won the title every year. The 8 years in LA that hes had the combo of either Kobe/Shaq or Kobe/Pau, hes made the finals 7 times and won 5 rings. By my count, the last 14 times hes had championship level talent, hes delivered 13 finals appearances and 11 rings. That doesn't even include 1994 when he arguably did his best coaching job ever, without Jordan, winning 55 games with the Bulls
Lets also not forget what Jordan, Kobe, and Shaq won before Phil. Which is nothing. Now obviously im not going to sit here and argue that those teams wouldn't have eventually won titles anyway with another coach, Jordan/Kobe/Shaq were going to win rings at some point. Pippen was going to grow up at some point in Chicago and his maturation really got them over the top, Jordan was ready from day 1 to lead a team to a title. But the bottom line is all you can judge a coach on is what he gets out of them relative to the talent, and while hes had great talent THE GUY DELIVERS JUST ABOUT EVERY TIME HE HAS A TEAM CAPABLE OF WINNING IT ALL. I don't know that theres another coach that would have won all 11 with these teams. People like to say if Larry Brown had the talent hed have the same results. Larry Brown couldn't even deliver a gold medal home with by far the best team in the 04 olympics. I don't think a guy like him could manage the ego's Phil has had to, with all the run ins hes had with his players. Not saying Brown couldn't have won a slew of titles with those teams, but im not quite sure he could get 11
6/18/2010 1:05 PM