Originally posted by LA9erFan:
Originally posted by DelCed2486:
Sorry, but that's just empty rhetoric to dismiss him with comments like that. He just finished up only his THIRD year as a coach at any level, let alone a head coach in the NBA...was he just supposed to waltz into the league and instantly be better than the likes of Popovich and Doc Rivers? I kinda think going from 21 to 47 to 51 wins and having strong showings in the playoffs, to include taking the Rivers-led Clips with 2 of the Top 10 players in the world to 7 games--WITHOUT your starting center the entire series and final 2 games without your 35-yr old backup center--is indicative of someone with some coaching chops and brings a little more than just "rah rah" to the table.
I think the Warriors improvement is commensurate with the talent that they had on the team. Of course they improved. They added guys and their existing talent got better. They won 36 games under Keith Smart in 2010-11. Steph got hurt in '12 and Jackson was a bit over his head, so they underachieved during that lockout season, but in a broader scope, they're right on track with where you'd expect them to be, considering their age and how much more talented/mature the roster is now compared to 2011.
There's plenty of skepticism about Jackson's X's & O's, even within the Warriors FO. Iguodala was criminally underused. His offensive contribution is as a PG, which gives you the opportunity to run perhaps the best shooting backcourt in NBA history off of screens. Instead, the ball was in Curry's hands way too much, minimizing Iggy's contribution and the overall offensive potential of the team. And the insistence on posting up against mismatches was puzzling, as it was very inefficient. The defensive improvement is great, but there's way too much offensive talent on the team to be the 11th most efficient offense in the league.
C'mon, if you watched the Warriors how can you possibly try to pin Iguodala on Jackson? The guy got hurt, missed a lot of games, and when he was in, he underperformed, not to mention the negative impact his acquisition had on Barnes, plus the money they're paying him + draft picks surrendered. I'm not disagreeing with every point you're trying to make, but some of what you're saying makes you come off as one of these fans who thinks all you need is a couple good players and then you just have to roll the basketball out on the court and they'll do fine. I'd think a fan of the Lakers would know that very recent history shows us this just isn't the case.
And you act like there's not a learning curve for coaches...sure Jackson made mistakes, pi***d me off a lot...but I've seen enough horrible with the Warriors over the past almost-40 years to know something special was being built, and as a fan was willing to be patient a little while longer. It's not every day that a coach gets almost universal buy-in from his players, but they bought what he sells and that fact should not be discounted.