Re: D'Antoni—the New Coach of the Lakers

by **tjmakz** Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:19 pm

By today's Press Release, the Lakers Management seems united about the D'Antoni hiring.

“After speaking with several excellent and well-respected coaching candidates, Dr. Buss, Jim and I all agreed that Mike was the right person at this time to lead the Lakers forward,” said Kupchak. “Knowing his style of play and given the current make-up of our roster, we feel Mike is a great fit, are excited to have him as our next head coach and hope he will help our team reach its full potential.”

http://www.nba.com/lakers/releases/111212_dantoni

by **worcester** Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:00 pm

TJ, For you to think Jim and Jerry Buss have more b-ball acumen than Phil (11 NBA championships) Jackson is your prerogative. However, I don't think it's realistic. Anyways, it's Mike D's team now, and the grand experiment begins!

by **swedeinestonia** Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:26 pm

by **tjmakz** Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:38 pm

worcester,

This is not about who has more b-ball acumen.
It is about who the Lakers feel is the best coach for their team.
There could also be factors that pushed the Lakers away from Phil.
If he was not planning on going to almost all road games or demanded ownership or demanded the power to make player roster decisions, LA most likely would have not been interested in meeting those demands.

by **swedeinestonia** Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:59 pm

I hope it works out for the Lakers, lots of basketball potential to be unleashed.

I am not a hater of the Lakers, I am lover of the Celtics (ban incoming) Smile

by **gyso** Mon Nov 12, 2012 7:10 pm

Jim Buss and the myth of Lakers' exceptionalism:

When you convince yourself that you are by definition exceptional, you forget that gravity applies to everyone. The leaders of the L.A. Lakers -- particularly Jim Buss, the owner's son and heir apparent, who essentially runs the club these days -- don't consider the franchise just another NBA team. The Lakers are special. The Lakers have their own rules. The Lakers are exceptional, and the rest of us just wouldn't understand.

But gravity applies to everyone.

When Phil Jackson retired for the third time in 2011 after five championships in L.A. including two with the Kobe Bryant-Pau Gasol-Andrew Bynum core, Jim Buss sought to excise all reference to the Zen Master's reign. He gave short shrift to the obvious successor, Brian Shaw, the choice of Kobe, Phil and the fans, and a well-respected assistant coach to boot. Shaw got pushed aside so that Buss could pick someone outside the Jackson imprint. Continuity matters in the NBA, especially at the very top. Rare is the team that wins a title the first year together -- it took the Miami Heat a second season together and with Erik Spoelstra to raise the O'Brien. Buss could have preserved some continuity by more seriously considering Shaw, Jackson's old hand and someone intimately familiar with the Triangle as well as the talent's strengths and weaknesses.

But Buss ignored the role of continuity, because he reasoned that these are the Lakers, and those basketball maxims don't apply.

Continuity doesn't just matter on the court; it matters in the front office, too. History suggested that the Lakers' longtime scouting crew knew what they were doing. History suggested that Ronnie Lester and his staff knew how to help prepare the Lakers' coaches. So when Jim Buss dismissed them to save cash during the lockout, that was a slap in the face to not only the crew, but to the rules of success in basketball. Buss thinks the Lakers are above those rules, that any old bartender named Chaz can come in, watch a few games and do the job.

Nope. Gravity applies to everyone.

The growing sentiment is that the Lakers weren't particularly happy with Mike Brown after the team's playoff run ended quickly last spring at the hands of the young, excited, and dominant Oklahoma City Thunder. That unhappiness became panic this season. But Buss and the Lakers failed to realize that the team's failures in 2011-12 had as much to do with the stars' ages as anything else. Kobe is getting older. Pau is getting older. Metta World Peace is getting older. Expecting them to do in 2012 what was possible in 2009 and 2010 is just foolish. Gravity applies to everyone. Players get less effective as they age. They can't carry as much responsibility, and if they are forced to, the team will suffer. Kobe is special, but he is not supernatural. Gravity applies to everyone. Even Michael Jordan had his Wizards stint, even if we have tried as a society to collectively erase it. Gravity applies to everyone, including Kobe, Pau and Metta, and that is a major reason if not the major reason the Lakers' '11-12 season ended early, and by placing any major amount of blame for it on Mike Brown, Jim Buss is insinuating that the rules don't apply to the Lakers, for the Lakers are exceptional.

Changes require adjustment. Adjustment requires time. Time requires patience. Adding Steve Nash and Dwight Howard: huge changes. Huge adjustment. Time needed. Patience needed. Implementing a new offensive system, is tricky, especially a complicated system. The Princeton, which Buss and Mitch Kupchak clearly signed off on by allowing Brown to hire an outside coach in Eddie Jordan was a huge change. A huge adjustment. Time needed. Patience needed. The loss of Steve Nash to injury after a preseason without, for the most part, Dwight Howard. Huge changes. Huge adjustment. Time needed. Patience needed.

No patience allowed.

To think that any other coach would have led Kobe-Pau-Bynum to the championship last season is ridiculous. Phil Jackson himself led those Lakers straight into the caldera in 2010-11. To think any coach could seamlessly add Nash, add Dwight and excise Nash all within the span of a month is ridiculous. To think any coach unfamiliar with the moving parts could do a whole lot better at this point, or to think that 1-4 is some un-Lakery catastrophe, or to give the Princeton offense exactly five games is ridiculous. The Lakers are not so special that 1-4 isn't allowed. Even great teams have rough spells. Even championship teams lose games. The Lakers are not so special that the rules of this Earth do not apply. The Lakers are not exceptional by their very existence.

Lakers fans will cheer when Phil Jackson or Mike D'Antoni is hired, and the Lakers, because they are talented as all Hell, will win lots of games and maybe some playoff series and maybe a championship. But this episode shows us that the future will be painful for the Lakers so long as Jim Buss thinks that the rules of decent team management do not apply to him, and so long as Jim Buss believes that the rules of basketball don't apply to the Lakers. The Lakers don't have 16 titles and almost 50 playoff seasons because they are exceptional, it is because the team's management -- West and Kupchak, Riley and Jackson -- have always understood the rules of decent team management and have always understood the norms of basketball and have dominated within their bounds. The Lakers aren't respecting those rules or that history right now, and it foretells trouble once Kobe and Nash are toast and Pau is gone and Howard is all that's left. No matter whether Jackson comes back for a frolicking third act in L.A., no matter what becomes of this season, that reality is stark and avoidable only if Jim Buss comes to terms with it.

The early results suggest that he will not. Some day, we may look back at the Mike Brown era and admit that this is when the Lakers came crashing back down to Earth. If you don't come to terms with gravity, that's all that can happen.

http://www.sbnation.com/2012/11/10/3626696/jim-buss-la-lakers-mike-brown-phil-jackson-exceptionalism

by **beat** Mon Nov 12, 2012 7:24 pm

GYSO

seems a little like the start of Jerry Jones ear of Cowboy fame perhaps....... can't have a coach that's "bigger" than him. Once the "big" name coaches wanted nothing to do with Jones the Cowboys have struggled despite pretty good talent.

No crystal ball but .............?????

beat

by **tjmakz** Mon Nov 12, 2012 7:40 pm

gyso wrote:Jim Buss and the myth of Lakers' exceptionalism:

When you convince yourself that you are by definition exceptional, you forget that gravity applies to everyone. The leaders of the L.A. Lakers -- particularly Jim Buss, the owner's son and heir apparent, who essentially runs the club these days -- don't consider the franchise just another NBA team. The Lakers are special. The Lakers have their own rules. The Lakers are exceptional, and the rest of us just wouldn't understand.

But gravity applies to everyone.

When Phil Jackson retired for the third time in 2011 after five championships in L.A. including two with the Kobe Bryant-Pau Gasol-Andrew Bynum core, Jim Buss sought to excise all reference to the Zen Master's reign. He gave short shrift to the obvious successor, Brian Shaw, the choice of Kobe, Phil and the fans, and a well-respected assistant coach to boot. Shaw got pushed aside so that Buss could pick someone outside the Jackson imprint. Continuity matters in the NBA, especially at the very top. Rare is the team that wins a title the first year together -- it took the Miami Heat a second season together and with Erik Spoelstra to raise the O'Brien. Buss could have preserved some continuity by more seriously considering Shaw, Jackson's old hand and someone intimately familiar with the Triangle as well as the talent's strengths and weaknesses.

But Buss ignored the role of continuity, because he reasoned that these are the Lakers, and those basketball maxims don't apply.

Continuity doesn't just matter on the court; it matters in the front office, too. History suggested that the Lakers' longtime scouting crew knew what they were doing. History suggested that Ronnie Lester and his staff knew how to help prepare the Lakers' coaches. So when Jim Buss dismissed them to save cash during the lockout, that was a slap in the face to not only the crew, but to the rules of success in basketball. Buss thinks the Lakers are above those rules, that any old bartender named Chaz can come in, watch a few games and do the job.

Nope. Gravity applies to everyone.

The growing sentiment is that the Lakers weren't particularly happy with Mike Brown after the team's playoff run ended quickly last spring at the hands of the young, excited, and dominant Oklahoma City Thunder. That unhappiness became panic this season. But Buss and the Lakers failed to realize that the team's failures in 2011-12 had as much to do with the stars' ages as anything else. Kobe is getting older. Pau is getting older. Metta World Peace is getting older. Expecting them to do in 2012 what was possible in 2009 and 2010 is just foolish. Gravity applies to everyone. Players get less effective as they age. They can't carry as much responsibility, and if they are forced to, the team will suffer. Kobe is special, but he is not supernatural. Gravity applies to everyone. Even Michael Jordan had his Wizards stint, even if we have tried as a society to collectively erase it. Gravity applies to everyone, including Kobe, Pau and Metta, and that is a major reason if not the major reason the Lakers' '11-12 season ended early, and by placing any major amount of blame for it on Mike Brown, Jim Buss is insinuating that the rules don't apply to the Lakers, for the Lakers are exceptional.

Changes require adjustment. Adjustment requires time. Time requires patience. Adding Steve Nash and Dwight Howard: huge changes. Huge adjustment. Time needed. Patience needed. Implementing a new offensive system, is tricky, especially a complicated system. The Princeton, which Buss and Mitch Kupchak clearly signed off on by allowing Brown to hire an outside coach in Eddie Jordan was a huge change. A huge adjustment. Time needed. Patience needed. The loss of Steve Nash to injury after a preseason without, for the most part, Dwight Howard. Huge changes. Huge adjustment. Time needed. Patience needed.

No patience allowed.

To think that any other coach would have led Kobe-Pau-Bynum to the championship last season is ridiculous. Phil Jackson himself led those Lakers straight into the caldera in 2010-11. To think any coach could seamlessly add Nash, add Dwight and excise Nash all within the span of a month is ridiculous. To think any coach unfamiliar with the moving parts could do a whole lot better at this point, or to think that 1-4 is some un-Lakery catastrophe, or to give the Princeton offense exactly five games is ridiculous. The Lakers are not so special that 1-4 isn't allowed. Even great teams have rough spells. Even championship teams lose games. The Lakers are not so special that the rules of this Earth do not apply. The Lakers are not exceptional by their very existence.

Lakers fans will cheer when Phil Jackson or Mike D'Antoni is hired, and the Lakers, because they are talented as all Hell, will win lots of games and maybe some playoff series and maybe a championship. But this episode shows us that the future will be painful for the Lakers so long as Jim Buss thinks that the rules of decent team management do not apply to him, and so long as Jim Buss believes that the rules of basketball don't apply to the Lakers. The Lakers don't have 16 titles and almost 50 playoff seasons because they are exceptional, it is because the team's management -- West and Kupchak, Riley and Jackson -- have always understood the rules of decent team management and have always understood the norms of basketball and have dominated within their bounds. The Lakers aren't respecting those rules or that history right now, and it foretells trouble once Kobe and Nash are toast and Pau is gone and Howard is all that's left. No matter whether Jackson comes back for a frolicking third act in L.A., no matter what becomes of this season, that reality is stark and avoidable only if Jim Buss comes to terms with it.

The early results suggest that he will not. Some day, we may look back at the Mike Brown era and admit that this is when the Lakers came crashing back down to Earth. If you don't come to terms with gravity, that's all that can happen.

http://www.sbnation.com/2012/11/10/3626696/jim-buss-la-lakers-mike-brown-phil-jackson-exceptionalism

If you read other Tom Ziller's articles, you can tell that he is not exactly an unbiased journalist.
He covers the Kings and lives in Sacramento and usually writes articles that bash the Lakers.
He wrote this article like he is stating facts, but little about what he said is correct.
Besides going on and on about Jim Buss and how he thinks the Lakers are exceptional, his main position/opinion is that the Lakers did not give enough time for Mike Brown to prove what he can do.
Apparently, the Lakers had lost confidence in Brown and wanted to get a new coach acclimated ASAP.

by **cowens/oldschool** Mon Nov 12, 2012 8:31 pm

tjmakz wrote:MG,

Do players make coaches into championship coaches or do coaches make players into championship players?

Spoelstra was blasted on this website for about a year and a half and all we heard was that he is not a championship coach. It's funny how that changed...

The Lakers could have hired Phil.
There had to be something that spooked the Lakers management.
It could have been:
1) His salary requirement. 2) Wanting too much power over roster decisions. 3) Lack of travel on road games. 4) They might have lost faith in the offense or defense he would bring. 5) They didn't feel some players were a good fit for the triangle. (Nash and Howard)

I am very optomistic about the players that are on the Lakers.
I really don't care a whole lot about the coach.
Bobby Valentine should be able to coach Kobe, Dwight, Pau, Nash and MWP to 55 wins this season...

everybody knows that series was stolen from us, all the Knick fans in NYC I know say the same thing.

by **tjmakz** Mon Nov 12, 2012 10:48 pm

cowens/oldschool wrote:
tjmakz wrote:MG,

Do players make coaches into championship coaches or do coaches make players into championship players?

Spoelstra was blasted on this website for about a year and a half and all we heard was that he is not a championship coach. It's funny how that changed...

The Lakers could have hired Phil.
There had to be something that spooked the Lakers management.
It could have been:
1) His salary requirement. 2) Wanting too much power over roster decisions. 3) Lack of travel on road games. 4) They might have lost faith in the offense or defense he would bring. 5) They didn't feel some players were a good fit for the triangle. (Nash and Howard)

I am very optomistic about the players that are on the Lakers.
I really don't care a whole lot about the coach.
Bobby Valentine should be able to coach Kobe, Dwight, Pau, Nash and MWP to 55 wins this season...

everybody knows that series was stolen from us, all the Knick fans in NYC I know say the same thing.

Sorry, I am not sure what you are referring to.

by **cowens/oldschool** Mon Nov 12, 2012 10:54 pm

I believe you called Spolstra a championship coach

by **tjmakz** Mon Nov 12, 2012 10:57 pm

cowens/oldschool wrote:I believe you called Spolstra a championship coach

Yes, his team did win the championship last season and went to the finals the previous year.

by **MustangGator** Mon Nov 12, 2012 11:57 pm

Outside wrote:P.S. Nice to see you're around, MG.

Thanks Outside, appreciate that.

by **Sam** Tue Nov 13, 2012 12:40 am

Hey Mustang,

Welcome back to the board. I hope we see more of you here.

Sally joins me in sending our best to you, the Mrs., and Donald.

Sam

by **MustangGator** Tue Nov 13, 2012 1:02 am

tjmakz wrote:MG,

Do players make coaches into championship coaches or do coaches make players into championship players?

This question could be answered in different ways depending on what side of the argument someone falls on. In other words, someone could find situations in NBA history to support either side. For me, I generally believe Players make coaches look good, but it takes a good coach to push a team to the next level (championship). Obviously, it helps to have the horses to get to the finish line. However, you need a good coach to get said horses to cross that finish line. I will use our own Lakers as an example. Kobe, Shaq, and Fisher to name a few were together for three years prior to Phil Jackson's first arrival to LA. Prior to that, the Lakers had only made the conference finals one time the three years prior PJ arriving. PJ first 3 years in LA, 3 NBA Championships. So, was it the players, or the coach? I have always contended that it was the coach that helped them get over the hump. Wthout the coach, no NBA Finals. Of course that is only my opinion. No one can really prove one way or the other.

tjmakz wrote:
I am very optomistic about the players that are on the Lakers.
I really don't care a whole lot about the coach.
Bobby Valentine should be able to coach Kobe, Dwight, Pau, Nash and MWP to 55 wins this season...

You should care about the coach. To say you couldn't care less who the coach is, then would suggest that the Lakers failures of late should be contributed to the players. But on the other hand, you say with this rostor anybody, including Bobby Vanetine could win 55 games. I notice you say 55 wins, and not winning the title. In the 96-97, and 97-98 seasons with Kobe, Shaq, and company they finished with more that 55 wins and watched the finals on TV. Is that acceptable for you? Don't answer that. I think I know what you are trying to say, but you sound like you are really disvaluing the role of a coach.

MG

by **MustangGator** Tue Nov 13, 2012 1:10 am

sam wrote:Hey Mustang,

Welcome back to the board. I hope we see more of you here.

Sally joins me in sending our best to you, the Mrs., and Donald.

Sam

Thanks Sam. Back at you and Sally. Hope all is well and you and Sally had a terrific Veterans Day Weekend. I have been checking in almost weekly and reading the threads. I never really completely left. I had actually been thinking lately about dropping you an email sometime. I have been very busy, alot going on. All is well with Kelley and Donald.

MG

by **Sam** Tue Nov 13, 2012 1:32 am

Mustang,

Thought of you the other evening when BobH and I met at Lefty O'Doul's. Had to go elsewhere to catch second half of Celtics-Bucks game. Not the same without you and Jeb, to say nothing of Sally.

Sam

by **MustangGator** Tue Nov 13, 2012 2:02 am

Sam,

Your up kind of late, or really early. I did see the posts about your trip to SF. I would have loved to join you, and BobH. I just have not been able to get away, to anywhere of late.

by **sinus007** Tue Nov 13, 2012 9:40 am

Hi,
This is just to add to the discussion.

AK

by **NYCelt** Tue Nov 13, 2012 4:53 pm

AK,

It sounds like Jackson made the decision for the Lakers.

I'll give credit to Dr. Buss and crew; no way someone's going to hold my feet to the fire like that if I'm the owner. I'd have told Jackson to take a hike and hired D'Antoni too.

Regards

by **Matty** Tue Nov 13, 2012 7:20 pm

good to see ya Gator!

say hello to the family!

by **RosalieTCeltics** Tue Nov 13, 2012 8:45 pm

Hi Matty--So I understand from BobC that you claim to have the best cheesecake on the board!! Would love some day to challenge you to a bake off!!!!

Rosalie

by **MustangGator** Tue Nov 13, 2012 9:36 pm

Matty wrote:good to see ya Gator!

say hello to the family!

Thanks Matty. So, hows the married life treating you. Well I hope. Best to you and the Mrs.

MG

by **NYCelt** Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:47 pm

MG,

Too long...I hope you and yours are well and that the busy is a good busy.

Regards

by **MustangGator** Wed Nov 14, 2012 12:12 am

NYCelt,

Thanks. The busy has been some good, some not so good. Such is life. Best wished to your son and the rest of your family. Hopfully your settled back in after Sandy.

MG

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