great point. if you recall, even phil jackson was iffy in his first few years. but then he found tex winter who implemented the triangle. phil gets credit for it, but it was tex winter 100%. its like giving doc all the credit for the celtics defense when it was obviously thibs. of course phil and doc both leaned their assistants X's and O's well enough to go on without them in the future. edit: also it was dwayne casey's defense in dallas during their championship run. rick adelman also got credit for his assistant, pete carril's princeton offense which he perfected while coaching, guess where, princeton! so you may be right and i surely hope so. remember it was chris finch that was running adelman's princeton offense so well with RGV that he got called up to the rockets. but i dont see anything like that on the court. sampson was supposed to be the defensive maestro but we are ranked only slightly above average there. i think we would be well served hiring a former head coach who is great with x's and O's to help strategize / teach mchale. sampson/finch may not be the answers. i do love jb bickerstaff who was brought up as the "player development guy. plus his dad was a great X's and O's guy I'm sure he can learn a bit from his dad. he and mchale have turned players into better players. morey gets a lot of credit for his draft choices but those guys were the ones developing them. they all share the credit. i think we need a text winter, dwayne casey, tom thibs, pete carril, etc... any ideas for former head coaches who specialize in X's and O's that could be our new lead assistant? my vote is for someone who is defensive minded, obviously since we're a great offensive team. lionel hollins comes to mind. scott skiles was ranked by this algorithm as an outstanding defensive strategist. mike malone / dwayne case, if either gets fired.
Well IMHO the obvious candidates would be either of the Gundy bros. I have no idea why SVG doesn't have an offer yet, and JVG has nothing but good things to say about the Rox even after Les Alexander essentially fired him right after one of his best coaching seasons ever (IMHO getting a top 4 seed with just Tmac, gimpy Yao, old Mutombo and Battier is harder to do than finals with Ewing and battle-hardened Knick vets).
I would've thought he was the best in the business. Too bad Cuban didn't allow him to defend their title.
I believe that this ranking is compiled using xRAPM to obtain an expectation versus performance metric. For example Spoelstra may have about as good of a winning percentage as exists in the NBA, but he inherited in his coaching debut perhaps three of top ten players in the NBA. The same with Carlisle. And many other coaches. Therefore their rankings suffer.
i would have been interested to see how larry bird ranks here…..imo he's the best nba coach i've seen the past couple decades.
it's not based on players you have, but how players perform for you compared how they did for other coaches(Nick Collison probably has the biggest impact on that rating, because he didn't dominate +/- pre-Brooks) and player development.
Yes. I believe you are right. Bayesian season weightings. It seems to be based on relatively serious statistical analysis. The RMSE is not listed. But I am just guessing.
Didn't he inherit the team while they still had the Wade and Shaq duo? I believe it may have been his 3rd year where Riley pulled off the near impossible. Then the championship expectations came.
I think that over time it will all sort itself out. McHale kept his head above water for the last two seasons, meeting or exceeding expectations, and finds himself in very fortuitous circumstances. The future looks bright for Rockets fans.
