Mitch: Jerry Buss' Failing Health Made The Lakers Impatient

The Rock wrote:MWP + Big 4 have played 173 mins together all year.. MWP + Nash + Kobe your 3 perimeter guys are older and slower than ever before, especially on D. Kobe isnt much better than he was in 2011, hes still better than 95% of the league just like he was then. As Dwight acknowledged we lost a whole bunch of games because he had to leave because of injury or free throw issues from lack of conditioning so if he were 100% we'd be looking at the middle of the playoff pack

Phil couldn't have prevented the injuries which is the number 1 reason why we are where we are right now...MDA has made adequate adjustments with the roster provided to him, not to mention jumpstarted Steve Blake's Laker career, Clark and Hill have had career years under him as well

Try again

Vasashi17 wrote:Again everybody is entitled to an opinion...I just have a hard time finding any type of credibility to an argument that favors D'Antoni over Phil under any coaching capacity.

That being said, since you want to stick to this 173 number so badly, ask yourself, just how much that number is also influenced by D'Antoni's unwillingness to play a big frontline. He loves small ball and doesn't believe that a frontcourt of Dwight and Pau would work.....meanwhile, you know who would find a way to play that lineup effectively?

Anyways, moving on...

Murdock wrote:As of right now small ball is the future of NBA ... look at us in 2011 we were slow as hell .... in today's game you need athletic bigs ... not Gasol and Dwight

therealdeal wrote:

Murdock wrote:As of right now small ball is the future of NBA ... look at us in 2011 we were slow as hell .... in today's game you need athletic bigs ... not Gasol and Dwight

TIME wrote:

therealdeal wrote:

Murdock wrote:As of right now small ball is the future of NBA ... look at us in 2011 we were slow as hell .... in today's game you need athletic bigs ... not Gasol and Dwight

No, seriously, we need to get rid of unathletic Dwight and get someone like the bigs on the teams with the best NBA records this year like the Heat, Spurs, and Thunder.

Murdock wrote:As of right now small ball is the future of NBA ... look at us in 2011 we were slow as hell .... in today's game you need athletic bigs ... not Gasol and Dwight

Lakerjones wrote:
I have to say I do not understand any posters ripping on coaches for being old. That's one of the most inane criticisms of a coach I've ever heard. It has nothing to do with coaching ability. In fact, coaching is the one area in basketball where the wisdom of a maturing person actually comes in handy. It's not like Phil or any other head coach would be asked to go out and play on the court. What's required is basketball knowledge, wisdom accrued through experience and understanding.



So you'd say John Wooden was too old? He won several NCAA championships in his sixties. And I wouldn't say his abilities or understanding diminished a whole lot over his next couple/few decades either, even if he finally hung it up.

Hubie Brown won coach of the year when he was 70 years old.

Larry Brown is older than Phil by about 4 or 5 years. He's still a good coach and someone I wouldn't mind having here if he weren't such a wanderer.

Jerry Sloan - great coach. I'd love to have him. It's not like MDA is some spring chicken. He's been gimpy since he arrived and he's in his 60's too.

I just don't get the ageism thing. Not when it comes to coaches. That's the one area where age is helpful because of your basketball knowledge. You want a young coach? Mike Brown was young - I believe he was only 40. Let's go back to him.

And let's not forget that Bernie Bickerstaff inherited the same injured roster that MDA had. And he did a much better job with that group. And Bernie's pretty damn old too!!