Um, There’s no way Phil Jackson is the best coach of all time

He’s not even the best coach in the NBA right now.  He’s solid, but cmon.  Adrian Wojnaadslkfahrgu at yahoo thinks this win by Phil Jackson “ends the debate.”  Um, between Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson?  Yeah, there is no debate.  Red is better.  That’s just dumb.

Adrian.  Yo Adrian, ya know who is a better coach than Phil Jackson?  Greg Popovich.  That one might be worthy of a debate, but in the end, Greg wins.  Relatively easily I might add.  Winning the championships he did with those players?  Bruce Bowen was never a good player.  Just because Phil Jackson was better than Doug Collins at using Jordan to win games doesn’t mean he’s the greatest coach of all time.

Jerry Sloan is miles ahead of Jackson as well.

Real quick– Red Auerbach was…

-the first coach to start five black players

-the only coach to win eight straight championships

-not the guy who rode Michael Jordan to 6 finals wins (and not the guy who couldn’t win in 1995 with Jordan in the playoffs)

-a man so far ahead of his time (he hated flopping 40 years ago!) it renders this whole argument stupid

I feel I’ve given this topic too much credit by writing this many words.

On a more positive note…

Holy Heroic Homer Batman!

The clutchness… the scrappiness… head… exploding…

I do love that they ended up losing.  I thought Eck was all about winning! Well, I guess not, F that guy

Hey Trevor, How ’bout you play D for once?

I’m not saying the Magic were robbed in that game.  I mean, everything being equal they probably win, but who knows?  That’s not the point here.

Laker textbook defense

The point, or question I guess, is why do the Lakers never play defense, ever?

Other than Lamar Odom (and sort of Bynum, occasionally Bryant), LA never plays defense.  The stuff they get away with is amazing.  They basically just reach, reach, reach, slap, slap, reach, and dare the refs to keep calling it.  That picture to the right is absolutely perfect.

Trevor Ariza, I’m looking at you.  This guy can’t stay in front of his man, but because he complains a lot when refs call him for handchekcing he’s suddenly this super defender?  He’s terrible.  I’d be happy to see him on the court if it wasn’t for the officials giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Who taught this guy defense?  Guys who gamble for steals and slap arms aren’t good defenders.  I’ll even throw Rondo into that group. Play straight up Rajon!  You have the ability!

Ariza certainly didn’t go to UCLA when John Wooden was there.  The same Wooden who once said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”  Trevor, you need to do it over.

Every guy on the Lakers is just like this.  They do not stay in front of their guys.  They just run near them and slap, slap, slap, it’s so frustrating, I keep waiting for Turkoglu to deck one of them.  They almost deserve it.

Did you see how many times they slapped it away from Dwight Howard in the post?  Did you see how many of those were clean? Did you see Kobe and Fish run into defenders who jumped straight in the air and then see these great defenders be punished for playing defense the right way?  This is why we have a generation of hand checkers.  Jordan used to say, “You reach, I teach.”  Where are you MJ?  We need you.

And of course a couple possessions later, after Kobe picked up two straight phantom calls, Hedo drives into Ariza and Ariza gets out of his way, slaps down on the middle of his arm (surprisingly far from the ball– it looked closer live than it was, I’ll give the refs that) and the ball goes off Hedo’s leg out of bounds.

Great D Trevor!

Woohooo NBA basketball!!

[puts head in oven]