B. Hill really looks like a shmuck, but he may be a good coach. I'm just not totally convinced right now. He really let Dwight Howard, Darko, and Ariza play through some mistakes.
Brian Hill was terrible with a somewhat talented Vancouver team. I don't think he is an elite coach without a young Shaq.
I was thinking about this... wouldn't NBA basketball be the easiest sport to coach in pro sports? If you threw one of us in charge of the Heat next year, how bad would they do? You just tell them to do their thing and you take em out when they look tired. If you put one of us in charge of the Lions, they proabably would go 0-16. It would be a total disaster of bad plays, illegal substitutions, missing players, etc. Football has got to be the toughest. Probably follow that up with baseball, hockey, and bball in that order. That is why I'm not sure whether B. Hill is good or not. Need more data.
I disagree. Talent alone is not enough to win in the NBA. You need to have a cohesive team effort with talent. The Magic are gathering a lot of talent, but I am not sure Brian Hill is a solid team builder. Xs and Os are not enough. Compare Don Nelson to Avery Johnson.
I don't know if I'd call Dwight Howard a young Shaq even though he has been mightily impressive. I had him on my fantasy team and his rebounds were obscene but man Shaq was something special. I'm thinking just missing the playoffs again...only due to a pair of injuries. they lost some depth i thought. I am not looking for jj to be that great this year.
@lazy - Dwight Howard could be really good, but he's no Baby Shaq. I would advise looking for some highlight's of O'Neal in his first 3 years. He was an absolute terror in the league.
I assume that you're just talking about the 2 hours of in-game coaching that we see on TV and not the pre-game coaching, half-time adjustments and talk, post-game discussions, practices, individual workouts, videotape analysis, scouting, pre-season, etc.?
You don't think there is any prep work for other sports too? If it were only in-game managing, I would say baseball is the easiest.
I think managing the egos in the NBA would be tough. If Shaq told me he wanted to check into the game with 4 fouls in the 2nd quarter, I'd say "Go ahead, big fella". I agree in-game decisions in the NFL would be the most challenging. I don't think a whole lot of coaching goes on during an NHL game. There is lots of strategy by a manager in a close National League baseball game. It's a fun topic, irregardless.
Oh, yeah, roscoe36. I don't have to look back at outtakes of Shaq. I remember it well. I was such a Piston fan that I did not like him, but I do realize what a power he was. His favorite thing in those days was trying to tear down any rims that he could, and he was successful quite often in doing that. He delayed many a game while new bankboards were installed, and cost sponsors many a buck. He was special and right from the start, he got special treatment. He ran over so many people they started stationing motorcycle cops around the floor . In size, Dwight will not compete with Shaq, and I hope he does not get that big and cumbersome. He is, I believe, 7' 275, right now and I do not want him much bigger. Same for Darko. He is about 7 and a half inch, which is OK to increase a little, but I would not like to see him much over the 250 or 255 he is now.
From YouTube, here's some property damage. To me, far more impressive was the quickness of early Shaq.
Of course I do. Riley made that team worse on paper then beat us. Riley kept two teams out of the paint in 7-game series with Antoine Walker and Jason Williams in the starting lineup. Everybody's talking about the new rules BS, but the above is pretty remarkable. And that's not even counting how different our team was in the playoffs -- how we went from a defensive monster with a knack for crunch-time execution to a sieve and a crunch-time turnover factory. How we went from more than the sum of our parts to less, how last year's adversity was handled privately and productively and how this year's became a public %%%%%fest...
i don't think riley was the difference in the pistons series. i think flip was coaching handicapped. his best move that series would have been to give ben wallace limited minutes. riley simply didn't check ben so whoever was checking ben basically played zone. that destroyed rips curls, tay's and cb post up game and ben's confidence. late in games when riley didn't want us to score he would just foul ben and that's basically a turnover. also you couldn't defend wade under the new rules especially with the malcontent refusing to give effort on the zone defense.
Riley was the difference for the Heat period. In all 4 rounds. He's a master motivator along the same lines of Phil Jackson. Motivating and teaching was something that Daddy Rich did well also.
I say 15-20 range.If this is the deepest draft in recent years so they say,whoever they are.We move up or we add 2 pieces for the future that can come in and impact or spend valuable time playing in the D-league. Adding for the future while trying to win now.As long as we don't take on full rebuild or drop too many steps backward.