smackeddog wrote:Uptown wrote:When you think about Lebron, Jordan, Kobe, Magic, Larry, Kareem, etc....Lebron is the only one winning championships and making final apparences without a hall of fame coach...
This years cavs team are awful (as was his Cavs team when he made the finals before leaving them)- I think this season has been one of lebron's most impressive, he's dragging his bag of trash team mates to wins almost single handedly. Hope they beat the celtics.
The press is doing nothing short of blowing LBJ in public regarding his lack of "help" on his teams.
He picks his teams. He picks who is on his teams. He is the defacto GM (until it all goes to crap, then he blames his front office) He picks his coaches and then drives them out.
Erik Spolestra will have a shot of getting into the HOF. I consider him the best coach right now in the entire NBA. Most of the guys I still know working in the NBA consider him informally as the best current coach in the NBA. Even above Pop and even above Stevens and Kerr. Riley picked Spolestra out from the crowd and groomed him and gave him real opportunity. LBJ desperately tried to get him fired?
Do you know why?
Spolestra told LBJ what every coach has told him. Every last one of them. His hero/iso ball routine works because he can overpower a gutted East and coast through the playoffs, but against top tier contender level competition (Spurs,contender Mavericks, Warriors), it's not going to fly. Add in his horrific de facto GM role, and he makes everything harder for himself.
He's an idiot who won the genetic lottery. Is he a transcendent level type player? Yes. In all of human history? Yes. Does that mean he has helped his own cause? No. He's not coachable, the entire NBA knows that. But hes so overwhelming in terms of talent compared to everyone else, he can get away with it, until he hits the Finals. And the competition is just too good ( i.e. read real team work) to stop.
He did the same thing in his first Cavs run ( pseudo armchair GM them into the ground), then with the Heat (because you need Mike Miller and Haslem more than a center...) and then the Cavs again. He's a coach killer to boot. The difference between him and other crap attitude mouth breathers in the league is he was born with a truly rare genetic makeup and he has a lifetime Nike contract.
If you try to get Erik Spolestra fired, you don't deserve a good coach the rest of your career.