Fire Doc!??, a reason mentioned and a question on it's vailidity

I recall reading on the boston.com board (or maybe here) recently the following point: Having Doc as coach is a mistake since he played in Atlanta thus making his approach more Atlanta-like and less influenced by the traditional and successful culture of the C's of old. I had a flashback to the old team feel yesterday and was wondering if you believe there is validity to this point, specifically: Is Doc fatally tainted by his Atlanta roots and does the idea that we should have a coach who has Boston lineage make sense?

You may have a point in your astute observation. Yes the team does look different and the players more in position.

Good one! 112288

First of all, Doc played for 4 different NBA teams - including a San Antonio Spurs team that went 59-23 and finished first in their division. On the team he played with David Robinson, Sean Elliott and two other guys that are past or former NBA coaches, Avery Johnson and Vinnie Del Negro.

He has plenty of winning in his background, having won a FIBA Basketball World Championship as a college player and being named tournament MVP. Whether you liked those Atlanta teams or not, they were very successful finishing with 57, 50, 52, 52, 50 wins over his time there.

He won the NBA coach of the year award twice - and is one of the most highly regarded X and O guys in the NBA. Celtics basketball is not one thing, and it never has been. Tommy Heinsohn's vision of what team should do was much different from K.C. Jones vision. Bill Fitch was run out of town on a rail as the players hated his style, but he helped the team to a title and then went on to coach successfully elsewhere.

There is no reason to believe that being a former Celtic is requisite to coach this team and considering their lack of success over the last 20 years, their are very few people other than maybe Kevin McHale, Larry Bird and Rick Carlisle that are both former Celtics and legit coaching talents.

The Celtics would be crazy to not keep Doc here as long as he wants to stay.

hey kleen
Horford had 3 boards against Bucks last nite,his counterpart Kurt Thomas,yes that Kurt Thomas the 37-38 year old relic had 12 boards.....you'd think he could play a little harder,these are the playoffs.
cow

Red Auerbach tried to acquire Doc as a player for the Celtics on any number of occasions, including an incident of tampering that Red owned up to years later, but Doc never revealed.

Danny consulted with Red about hiring Doc and Red not only approved but was thrilled when Doc signed on as coach. For however long it lasted, Danny and Red and Doc and Red spoke every day before Red passed over.

It's interesting that nobody's talking about what a great job Doc has done this year, getting the team ready to become the mouse that roared. Now that the playoffs are here, Doc is growing again as a coach, keeping guys like Glen Davis and Tony Allen in the game when they are playing well, and, giving Paul and Rajon practically free rein to run the offense. To my mind, this has resulted in a nice combination of chaos and creativity.

Red used to say that there are very few good bench coaches. It seemed as though Doc grew into a great bench coach in the '08 playoffs. From the first stumbling games against Atlante to the final conquering Game 6 against the Lakers, Doc improvised, adapted and overcame, just like what he is - a championship coach.

Hire Doc!

s

Very illuminating as always - thanks for the back story!

cowens/oldschool wrote:hey kleen
Horford had 3 boards against Bucks last nite,his counterpart Kurt Thomas,yes that Kurt Thomas the 37-38 year old relic had 12 boards.....you'd think he could play a little harder,these are the playoffs.
cow

Strong reply Cow...and relevant to the topic at hand as well.

Bostonian128, nice to meet you Friday, by the way...
Doc is very committed to Defense and all good things that come out of it. No secret there....There have been shades of the 60's teams in that approach. When his guys play the kind of D that he is pushing for, cheap, fast break buckets off of turnovers they remind me, at times, of some of those teams. When you can get the other team to look like a deer caught in the headlights.....well kind of a structured mayhem can ensue and good things happen. I don't think Doc needs to have a Celtic ancestory in order to win championships here. He just has to get his guys to play hard nosed D along with half decent moving offense...Something that is very hard to do, IMHO...maybe the hardest thing for a team to do, it takes a great deal out of one.

LACELT - thanks for expanding on the thread and it was nice meeting you as well and a great picture BYW B