Let's start with the math: Five teams have won the NBA championship since 2020, including the Los Angeles Lakers, but the team is on its third coach in that span with the hiring of JJ Redick.
Frank Vogel won a title then got fired, Darvin Ham went to the conference finals then got fired, and now Redick is coming in as a hot prospect and we're hearing ridiculous comparisons to Pat Riley, Steve Kerr and Erik Spoelstra that are so ridiculous they're almost funny.
Yeah, I get it. Redick is a smart guy. He looks sharp and he talks sharp. If you want to be really lazy, the comparison to Riley falls right in your lap from a headshot standpoint. Kerr does as well, with similar player profiles and broadcast resumes.
This isn't to say Redick won't be a successful coach. No, not even the greatest coach of all time. But if he does, he'll be the exception, like the people named above, not the rule. The rule is that most NBA coaches are almost directly tied to their teams. They might get some production out of a given group, but not much. The Lakers, who have hired and fired seven coaches since Phil Jackson left in 2012, aren't the only team that consistently thinks they've managed to find the exception.
It would take forever to list coaches who were supposed to bring about big changes but ended up with pretty much the same results as their predecessors, except for improvements to the roster, but let's look at some recent examples.
The Hawks hired Quin Snyder to replace Nate McMillan, and it's worth noting that McMillan himself was a benefit of the situation with Atlanta coming back healthy to replace Lloyd Pierce in 2021. But McMillan, even with a few more years of evidence to back it up, proved unable to really elevate a Hawks roster that couldn't play defense and was too reliant on stagnant individual creativity.
Snyder came in with a plan to play faster and shoot more three-pointers, but the Hawks got worse. Doc Rivers replaced Adrian Griffin in Milwaukee, but the Bucks got worse. Rivers was also touted as a player who could improve the Sixers' performance under Brett Brown, who failed to get out of the second round. Despite the two coaching changes, the Sixers have yet to reach the conference finals.
Chauncey Billups was said to speak the same point guard language as Damian Lillard, who now plays for Rivers. Steve Nash had the same influence as a former player. Monty Williams was the guy to lead Detroit into the future, but only lasted one year. Jason Kidd just signed the same extension, in principle, as McMillan in Atlanta. Kidd is just the coach who happened to be on the sideline when the stars aligned. Kidd is not a better coach than Rick Carlisle; he just got Kyrie Irving as a model citizen and made some big additions at the trade deadline.
Again, if a team changes for the better and the coach magically changes for the better, do the math. This time last year, people were saying Joe Mazzulla was a bad coach. Was he suddenly a winning coach because he knew when to take a timeout or because he acquired Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis?
Nick Nurse that Is he so much better than Dwane Casey, who literally won the Coach of the Year award the summer he was fired, or did he just meet Kawhi Leonard?
Was Chris Finch some kind of savior, sending Rudy Gobert onto the court in an apparent switch situation with Luka Doncic only to lose in the conference finals, or did he just happen to be there when Gobert guaranteed top-tier defense and Anthony Edwards developed into a superstar?
Are the Knicks the #2 seed because they're “Thibodeau's team”? Or because they got Jalen Brunson? Before you answer, let's all agree that Tom Thibodeau is a great coach. That's not the point. What matters is that he was 78-76 in his two seasons before he got Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Isaiah Hartenstein, Donte DiVincenzo, and finally OG Anunoby. There was a time when Thibodeau was in a bind because he didn't know how to coach a modern offense. It's funny how Brunson changed that.
This is not to disparage Mazzulla, Nurse, Finch, Thibodeau, or any NBA coach other than Kerr, Spoestra, or Gregg Popovich — not to mention they're all incredibly smart, accomplished, and talented basketball players — but it's an indisputable fact that most of them, over time, will undoubtedly not produce end results that stray far from the realistic standards of the players they employ.
By the way, the important thing here is the results. Coaches affect players and teams in many ways. It's the relationships and communication behind closed doors. In fact, Redick Taylor Rooks told He said he is considering coaching as “a way to help” in 2022.
“I've had so many people help me throughout my career,” Redick said, “not just my head coaches, but my assistant coaches, my player development people, they're all very important to my heart and my life, and I hope one day I can be one of those people.”
What Reddick is talking about is the relationships that are fostered through coaching, the impact one person has on others, which is extremely rewarding and fulfilling and wonderful, but it's not what determines whether a head coach is hired or fired. This is not a high school where youth development is part of the job description. Reddick isn't getting a $1,500 coaching allowance while teaching third period science.
No, he's reportedly making over $30 million over four years and is going to do one thing – get results. Win or lose. That's it. So let's be clear. The Lakers won 47 games last year and lost in the first round. You could point to the Warriors winning 51 games in their final season under Mark Jackson and losing in the first round, and then miraculously winning 67 games and winning a championship in Kerr's first season (with mostly the same lineup), but that's also a once-in-a-lifetime exception.
The Warriors team was woefully undercoached by Jackson, and with an offensive overhaul in need of completion, it's arguable there's never been a better basketball situation for a new coach to come in and be an instant hero.
On a macro level, what is Redick doing differently than Ham? I'm not talking about Taurean Prince minutes. I'm talking about something that could really change the fortunes of the team. Redick says LeBron will play more off the ball and Anthony Davis will be the centerpiece.
Wow. Stop the traffic. I have a revolutionary idea! The Lakers have been trying to get LeBron to play more without the ball for years, that's why they brought in Russell Westbrook. What do you think is the secret to getting LeBron to play more without the ball? Find a better player than D'Angelo Russell. upon Ball. Don't hire JJ Redick.
In reality, coaching staffs don't get hired and fired that often because it really does make a big difference. Press releases will talk about earning the respect of the locker room and so on, but in reality, the coaching staff is just the variable that's easiest to change when things aren't going as expected.
You can't just change players — they have contracts and salary caps — but you can always replace coaches, and as long as that's the case, teams like the Lakers will try to package their bench “activity” and sell it as actual progress on the court.
This is the front-office version of a guy dribbling the ball at half court, deflat- ing it, and performing a string of flashy moves to wow less-discerning fans and distract from the fact that he's just twirling around and not actually getting any closer to the basket.
The Lakers are probably no closer to winning a championship with Redick than they were with Ham, and they certainly were closer with Vogel than they were with Ham, and Vogel won because he had a two-way roster with multiple playmakers and size and defensive versatility (and because Anthony Davis shot mid-range jump shots in high school gyms, but that's beside the point).
So here's what's going to happen: Either the Lakers make enough drastic changes to their roster that it actually changes their on-court fortunes, in which case Redick and the very smart people who hired him will be lauded, or they don't improve the roster, LeBron and Davis aren't as durable as they were last year, and Redick suddenly doesn't look so dazzling.
At that point, we'll start talking about who will replace him.
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