Well, the best move Rick Adelman made today was totally by mistake. The Lakers started off the 3rd on a 9-0 run and RA called timeout way too late. He brought the same lineup back in and the Hayes quickly picked up a 50/50 foul (his 4th). Landry gets subbed in due to foul trouble, not adjustment and finally gives the Rockets life in the 3rd quarter. While I don't blame RA completely...I think he's a great coach, but it's simply alignment stuff that LA was doing and allowing Hayes to just stay in the low block uncovered...and the Rockets didn't change their offensive set. It was Landry that made the difference and RA didn't have any foresight or strategy to save the Rockets in that instance. He probably just wanted them to "be patient, make the extra pass, and attack the defense". Well, sometimes you have to change the lineup or make adjustments to help your team do that RA!
No one is perfect. How do you think Phil Jackson's adjustments in this series? Clearly, Adelman > Jackson btw, Landry played most of Scola's minutes in the 4th quarter.
Adelmans finally getting revenge for Jackson relating him to Hitler. Any coach that does that is a jerk that needs to be taught what true coaching and team building is about. Princeton > Triangle!
The Triangle is such hyped up BS anyway. Yeah, it works great when you have Jordan and Shaq as your team's best player. Guess what? My octagon offense will win half a dozen Championships if I have those guys on my team.
Did Scola even play in the 4th? And there was a period there where he took Hayes out when he really didn't need to but it ended up not costing them anything; beginning of the 4th maybe, can't remember. Also, keeping Battier in the game for the start of the 4th when Bryant was on the bench - I thought it might cost them the game. But Battier still ended up getting 3 minutes of rest with Bryant on the bench. I wonder if Adelman knew Bryant would stay on the bench or not. I really thought that might hurt them.
That's a very astute observation, which also reminds me the 3rd quarter of Game 2. Unfortunately similar "mistake" didn't happen then. If Adelman were truly a tactician, he would stick with Landry and keep Yao on the bench in that game after the half-time.
I will say this......If Rick Adelman had coached the same players in his career, the MJ's, Pippen's, Shaq, Kobe's, he would have 10+ rings. He can produce an offense just as efficient as the triangle offense. He can utilize bigs the same way Phil does. Kobe would look just as good running the high post offense as he would with the triangle. He coaches to his player's strengths. Gets the most out of role players like Von Wafer. Dude is one of the great coaches on the same tier with Jackson and Pop.
Without Gasol, Kobe never advanced to second round. That's been proved. You don't even say without both of them.
The last sentence is a big point. RA was smart enough to leave Landry in there. As for Phil Jackson, I think both of the coaches have been okay in their adjustments from game-to-game. But within each game, they've both been pretty terrible. It's like one team comes out and takes the lead, and the other team is screwed. Honestly, I think it's about vision more than anything . I have no idea how you can see anything in terms of positioning as a coach from the bench, especially the action on the other end of the floor. From the bench, you can observe energy, you can observe shot selection, and overall ball movement...but you're really still limited. You can see, imo, different things from a sky view or tv view, and I think that one day there will be coaches who watch the action from the sky view and/or tv view. I'm a bigger NBA fan than NFL fan, but I honestly think the overall money, time and effort spent on NFL coaching staffs in game preparation and in-game adjustments is better in the NFL than in the NBA. I think they're more advanced in their use of technology and the Chess game is being played on a higher level. I know it's apples and oranges, but I know I can prove my case by breaking down the video and showing you how slow RA and even Phil is at making adjustments. The biggest evidence is the comments by the coaches themselves. Too many a response in the post game is "I don't know, I'll have to watch the tape". WTH????!!!!??? With the millions of dollars spent, you should have coaches watching the tape during the game and talking to you during the game with a freakin headset!!!
Phil Jax is not that great of a coach, he was just lucky to have great front office and players like Air Jordan, Shaq, Kobe......etc and P.jax had mafia-ref-betting help.
I've always said that Adelman is an underrated coach. Thank you Les for getting rid of Gundy and bringing in Adelman
cosign. Especially when RA had to make the adjustment when Yao went down for the season. Personally, I can't stand Phil Jackson (he's got a HEALTHY roster with TWO legit All Stars, and they still can't get the job done)....plus, I just flat out despise the guy....he should just quit basketball and try to make it acting, if hollywood ever does a biopic about the life of Colonel Sanders....PJ's their man.
They're giving Adelman some respect on LA sports radio. Well maybe not directly but they're saying the Rockets are an under manned but well coached team, which of course means Adelman gets credit.
yeah , Rick win this series Phil is a coach who need A LOT TALENTED around him, luckily he always has,so he has 7 rings
I'm really surprised by how badly Phil Jackson is getting outcoached in this series. The whole thing about the Lakers not coming out with intensity and whatever, that's just bad coaching. With our injury problems, the first 10 Laker plays of the game should have been post ups. Adelman is tearing him up.
