If you pick Lebron, you have to keep Mchale. If you pick Pops, you can't sign any other all-stars. Choose wisely....
Lebron. In the end, players win titles. Pop is a great coach, but he's won because the talent level on the team has been consistently excellent. He's played a part in that of course, but he's going to be retired very soon and Lebron won't be. Now, if you could tell me I could start a franchise hypothetically with a rookie Lebron or a prime aged Spurs front office, I'd obviously take the FO (which includes Pop as coach.) With where they are now though, I'm taking Lebron.
Pops, obviously McHale is a pathetic coach and even if we get Cp3 and Lebron, we ain't winning anything with one of the 3 worst coaches in the NBA in McHale. Rockets regular season record was fools gold and a result of talent. Once we got to the playoffs where coaching matters, we failed and 100% because of a clueless, inompetent coach like McHale. Miami has better talent than Spurs and yet lost convincingly. Talent only takes you so far. You need the right coach and the right system. Spo may have his issues but coach Spo is on a completely different tier than McHale and yet couldn't get it done.
Lebron. What other player/coach could have taken that pathetic Cavs team to the finals in 2007. I'm sure he can teach McHale something.
Great players = Find ways to win, with a limited peak of success Great Coaching = Maximizes talent on a roster Great Coaching with Great players = winning with a sustained peak of greatness
I disagree that Miami has better talent. Outside of Lebron, bosh and Allen, Wade is not his young self, and the rest are not great role players (either due to age or skill). Duncan is one of the greatest of all time, Parker and Ginobli are hall of famers. Kawai is legit. Diaw is pretty amazing. Other players stepped up also. I think the Spurs had better talent, all the way down the bench. Yes, coaching was superior from the Spurs but their talent overall was greater than the Heat. Duncan>Lebron (Adv Heat) Parker=Bosh (Wash) Kawai>Wade [in this series] (Adv Spurs) Ginobli>Allen (Adv Spurs) Splitter>Birdman (Adv Spurs) Diaw>Haslem (Adv Spurs) Mills>Both Heat PGs (Adv Spurs) Green>Battier (Adv Spurs) It's pretty obvious that outside of Lebron, the Spurs have better players.
Pop with our currently constructed roster would get the most out of our team. He would have challenged each and every player on our roster during the course of the series...The Rockets coached by Pop wouldve have gotten us to the finals: he has Dwight and Harden in their primes.
I'll take Lebron and worry about everything else later! As long as you don't put Delonte West on the team you'll be ok. ... ....... ....... .......
LeBron. The rest of Miami is either old, hurt, or sucks. That team is not as good as they were in the past.
I disagree, Great Coaches make role players look great that's all... outside of parker Manu and duncan... the rest of the team has been changed. Yet they achieved similar success...
That's in retrospect. Going into the series if you were to rate the top 5 players from either team, I am pretty sure it would have gone this way. 1. LeBron 2. Wade 3. Parker 4. Bosh 5. Duncan And again, the Spurs bench looks better than it is because of the coaching and the system in place. I can guarantee you that most of the Spurs bench players would not have nearly the same level of success playing for just any other team. It takes a good coach and a good system to bring the best out of their bench players. Come playoff time, all the stars log heavy minutes so benches should matter little for most teams. It's only the Spurs who are different in that case.
Those Cavs teams were underrated. A team doesn't win 66 games depending solely on one player. And their defense was really good.