He needs to coach another team before we can judge but everybody knows it doesn't take much basketball knowledge and play calling when you have freaking Lebron, Wade & Bosh out there.
Looking at how D'Antoni and Mike Brown couldn't even win with their superteam makes me think you really do need a good coach to win, even with superstars
But the Lakers have Kobe, Nash, Gasol and Howard, all four very good all-star level players (yes even at their ages) and they can barely make the playoffs..
It takes awhile for a team to get comfortable with each other. I remember Miami having some troubles too when they first started playing with each other. Comparing Lakers starts to Miami stars, Lakers are on the downside of their career with the exception of Dwight. Miami, all of them were hitting their peak. Also the changing of coaches couldn't help much. Not saying Spoelstra is a bad coach because I think he's doing pretty well. Just responding to the example for the Lakers.
The Lakers four played only ONE game together all year due to injuries. Even Kobe breaks down from time to time at his age, and you can just imagine how much maintenance Nash and Gasol needs. Dwight is slowly getting back to where he was, but he was nowhere near his peak at the beginning of the year (he was getting punked by the likes of Perkins and Cousins). D'antoni is not a great coach by any means. But I really do want to see the Lakers in the playoffs because by then I expect them to make some noise
and no, he isn't better than Rick if that's what you may seem to think is implied by the winning streak. Rick won 22 with a bare bones team.
He's good. He's not the best at drawing up plays but look at the system he's put together. Miami sucks at the 1 so they run their offense through the 2 and 3. A guy like D'Antoni would just force his mediocre 1 to pretend he's elite. They got two dominant ballhandlers so he uses Lebron as primary creator and has Wade run secondary plays off the weakside. They coexist extremely well. Contrast with Harden-Lin, where coexistence is not there yet. They have no dominant bigs that can defend the paint. So he has his team trap the PG before he can even get the ball to the paint. Traps lead to steals which lead to easy transition baskets that negate paint points and Miami now has the best trap defense in the league. Their pnr D is also really good and between this and traps, Spoelstra focuses on limiting penetration at the expense of giving up 3's. Because he knows if he gave opponents a step ladder to the paint Miami would get killed. 3's he can live with. The Heat also suck at rebounding because they hedge hard all the time. So Spoelstra does little things like use Bosh as a stretch 5 to draw out the opposing big, to help them get offensive boards He's also not a coddler (Lebron hated that Spoelstra wouldn't kiss his ass the first year) but he's gotten a team full of stars to buy into a unique team identity and roles. IMO the guy just doesn't get enough props because he's young and he works for Riley
Well to be honest I have a lot of respect for Coach Spo because even though he didn't have a ring he got Wade and LBJ to co-exist. He also had the brilliant idea of playing Bosh at center and playing LBJ at any position which was needed at the time, something Mike Brown never tried in all the years LBJ was in cleveland. Comparing him to greats like Pops and Riley is pretty stupid because he's pretty young, that'd be like all the homers comparing prime Yao Ming to DH when he was 18. At this point in time I think he's pretty much as good as Pops or PJ or RIley in their 3rd year of coaching, I think he's gonna be one of the all time greats when he retires.
Kobe was not at his prime then, and was not a top2 player yet. Otherwise you can say Tmac/DWH before Tmac was leaving ORL.
very good coach.. at least he knows when and how to move out of the way... and that's sometimes the hardest thing to do...people often have a need to interfere and do their own thing
He can keep his cool that's for sure. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pso05PxtoyU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yes, do you not remember year 1 when the Heat were struggling? Do you remember all the threads that popped up around here that said Spolestra would be fired and that the big 3 should be broken up because it just wasn't working? Spolestra turned it around, got Wade to slow down and told him this was LeBron's team, he got all these guys to work together and believe in the system and now they are unstoppable so yes he's a damn good coach. See this thread where clutchfans said they should break up the big 3 and fire Spo, THERE ARE SOME CLASSIC POSTS IN THIS THREAD, GREAT FOR A LAUGH: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=220025
Holy crap, you definitely didn't lie. I was starting to copy and paste all the best quotes, but then I realized there were way too many... and I was only on the first page. LOL message board GM's are the best.
He's actually had some fantastic out of bounds plays. It did take over 2 years for him to figure out how to make Miami with Lebron and Wade into an elite offense. I think it's more the players than the coach. I don't think he's elite. I don't think he's Vinny Del Negro. I would say slightly better than Scotty Brooks.
He had the guts to sit his superstars, something even an old guy like McHale would never dare to do. He had like plays that set weak side screens to get players easy backdoor layups/dunks, not just relying on his stars to break down D and make tough iso shots all the time. He actually had a clear defensive philosophy. And yeah he never missed playoffs in his career even before Lebron came on board. And since with Lebron, 2 Finals appearances and 1 ring and counting. Yeah, Spo is a pretty good coach, at least better than 90% of the coaches currently in the nba.
