NBA Playoffs Thread

Man, I'd forgotten about the Wallace hit...I think he suffered a collapsed lung in that one.

When the Lakers and Blazers played their last game this season, Wallace and Artest spent the whole game going at each other...

 

Laker slobberfest radio - otherwise known as 570 KLAC/Fox Sports Radio - should be fun to listen to on my way home from Charleston tonight.

 

I have no problem with making guys pay when going to the basket but a forearm shiver to exposed ribs is not the way to do it.

As Ice T would have said - he went out like a bitch.

 

I have always assessed Jackson as the top coach in NBA history if that's all you want, but Auerbach as the top all-around boss and executive. I don't think there's any way Jackson could've coached a team if he was also dealing with how much to pay the players.
To me, the ultimate proof of Auerbach's ability was his decision to fire himself (or kick himself upstairs, whichever you prefer) and make Russell the first African American coach/manager to keep Russell on the job for three more years. If he hadn't, Bill might've quit as a player long before he did.

 

Howard's gonna leave Orlando, either via trade or as a free agent. The Magic will be happy to take what they can get.

 

What'd he say?

 

He said it was "bush league." Interestingly, Bynum told the sideline reporter, "Well, yeah, but so is stalking a co-worker."

 

I can't remember exactly what words he used, but he threaded together a bunch of other stuff, too, and didn't let up, which was the key thing. It's one thing to say "bush league" and then sabotage your own point with some bullshit "but" qualification, but he kept at it without sounding shrill, and was supported by the great Hubie (we love Hubie).

 

I laugh at the suggestion this game -- or series -- could somehow damage Phil's "legacy." My word, the man has won 11 fricken championships. People said the Detroit finals was going to hurt his legacy. And then he won two more. He's the best coach in modern history. Period. He took a team led by Scottie Pippen and Tony Kukoc to within one bad call of the NBA Finals, just to shoot down the inevitable argument that "He only rolled the ball out for Michael Jordan and Kobe and Shaq!"

(Because they won so many titles without him, right? Than number sits at ONE, when Dwyane Wade and three referees dragged Shaq to a courtesy ring.)

One ridiculous elbow thrown by Bynum -- and it was ridiculous -- is not going to be remembered by Wednesday, much less years from now.

The man was better at managing and massaging massive egos better than any coach in this era (maybe in any sport), an era when the players had the majority of the power, and could easily tell the coach and the GM to pound sand, and the owner (and fans) would almost always side with the player. For fuck's sake, the man got Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, two of the most self-confident, selfish ballhogs in NBA history, to share the ball just enough to make them winners. I really do not believe either of their careers would have been nearly as successful had someone else coached them, and that includes whatever coach from this era you want to throw in -- Poppovich, Reilly, Sloan, Rudy T, Larry Brown, Chuck Daly, Don Nelson.

The man understood modern basketball. There was certainly bullshit there, but some of that was just a smoke screen.

11 rings. No one else will even sniff it. Deal with it.

 

Perfectly said, DD. At one point Tirico was almost making it sound like Phil had personally delivered the elbow to Barea, ala Woody Hayes. And damn it, I'm still holding out hope that after a few days he reconsiders and comes back. He didn't actually say for certain in his entertaining postgame press conference that he was done done.

That stat you mentioned is perfect, the fact all those guys won one title without him. I believe Pippen-Jordan-Shaq-Kobe played a combined 32 seasons without Phil and won one title. Some years were before their prime, a few after but it's pretty obvious that playing for him helped all of them win more titles than they would have without.

Lakers messageboards are clamoring for a "defensive-minded" coach to replace him, a Van Gundy-like person, if not the short man himself. God no. Although Jerry Buss has never shown any desire to hire such a guy. And he has a decent track record with hiring coaches, outside of the Pfunds and Magics of the world. Well, and Rudy T.

SI has some funky old pics of Phil.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/1105/phil.jackson.rare.photos/content.1.html

 

No, he did not. And I've grown a bit weary of hearing this same misstatement repeated over the years. That 94 Bulls/Knicks series was in the Eastern Conference SEMIFINALS, not Finals, and, even if they had beaten the Knicks, there's hardly any guarantee they would've gotten past Indiana considering how exceedingly fortunate NY was to in an extraordinarily closely fought seven game series decided in the final seconds.

And saying that team was "led" but Toni Kukoc is rather a stretch considering that Kukoc didn't even start for that team, was only their fourth leading scorer and seventh leading rebounder (http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CHI/1994.html). There were THREE All Stars at their absolute peak on that Bulls team (Pippin, Grant and Armstrong) and none of the three were named Kukoc. Phil was hardly dealing with a barren hand there.