Posted by misterearl:

Smarmy?

oohah - you must REALLY dig Coach K.

I haven't got a clue as to what you are talking about Mr. Earl.

***

I actually met Coach K at Henry Iba's funeral. He was very courteous to my Grandfather (RIP) who used to play for Mr. Iba in the 20's. That was nice.

The first thing Coach K did was make an excuse for Duke losing the second game of a back to back. That was surprising.

oohah

I don't think the smartness itself is so important.
He is smart.
But the main thing about him in my view is that he undersands the mechanics of live.
He know why people (players) are doing what they do.
He knows which buttons to push to get what he want to get out of them.
It feels a bit manipulative (and this is probably what oohan is talking about).
But this is the only way to win with this group... may be with any group.

Marbury doesn't have the equipment to "mother" or nurture like Steve Nash, and anyone who would expect that out of him would be the one at fault for putting Marbury in that spot. Marbury is the guy who needs the nurturing, and he would be a tough assignment for anyone. There are way Marbury could have lead... passion, work ethic, confidence... but nurturing is not in his toolbox.

Marbury is all in his head, obviously. He seems to me like a sensitive guy with his heart on his sleeve at the core, with a HUGE "Starbury" ego wrapped around it. He's the type of guy whose energy is a double-edge sword, he seems sort of manic-depressive to me. When things are good with him, his energy is like a power plant to the rest of the group. But when he gets all paranoid and erratic, if you don't contain the meltdown everyone gets the radiation.

Good leaders know their limits. D'Antoni knows that he is not the type of coach who can utilize Marbury's talents on this team, because of everything else that comes along with it.

I don't know much about Lenny Wilkens, but I suspect that it might have been the last healthy, nurturing coaching relationship Marbury had... I get the feeling that Lenny has that Nash-like emotional intelligence... calm, unassuming, but he was a Brooklyn point guard who had great success. I think he was the sort of influence Marbury needed at that point in his life. But there was Isiah, the devil on Steph's shoulder, undermining Lenny's leadership. Larry Brown was more of a task master: break you down, rebuild you, I think he was more of a "suck it up!" type of leader. Marbury was too set in his ways, and again, Steph could always run crying to Isiah. Steph and Isiah I think are a lot alike in their weaknesses and just enabled each other.

So the GM also plays a huge part here. It helps that Walsh is letting D'Antoni handle the culture on the hardwood, while Walsh handles the larger Garden corporate culture.