Tricky Ricky wrote:-= original quote snipped =-
Some of you guys are acting like Doc is God, the past 3 seasons everyone on this board wanted him out of town and now some of you are acting like hes the best coach ever. I dont know if you guys are new members or just think since our records good hes good. If you take away KG youd prob have a below 500 team and would all be wanting Doc fired. Trust me the players have a bigger impact on the record than Doc, I think my Dog would have a above 500 record coaching a team this good. I know the type of responses Im going to get for this so Im not going to bother responding on this post, I dont know if some of you guys are bandwagon jumpers or really have been watching him coach the last 3 seasons but in my opinion ON THIS TEAM its the players NOT DOC!
Many people wanted Doc fired the last couple of years, but they were idiots too for putting all the blame on Doc when it was the players that sucked. How's Randy Wittman doing with those same players? Oh yeah, even worse than Doc. Now Doc has the players, and the Doc Haters were saying how Doc was certain to screw it up somehow, that we wouldn't play up to our potential, that he would blow all the close games. i think 27-3 has pretty much answered that, don't you think?
Here's things I give Doc credit for:
1) Developing our young guys to where they were valuable trading chips. While many of you were going crazy about not playing [insert your binky], the fact is we were able to pull off one of the greatest offseasons in history because the players actually had value. Yes Ainge drafted them but that's only the start. The rest is the coaching staff.
2) Creating great team unity. Look at Detroit and SA, you never hear abuot these teams bickering and taking subtle shots at each other. You may not think it's a big deal because there is no stat to measure it, but if you've played you know that it's a significant factor over the course of a season.
3) Installing an efficient offensive and defensive system. He's gotten Pierce to play at an efficiency level well above what he was doing under Obie/Pitino. He's blended the other Big Two in very well, with a nbice distributino of shots. Defensively, he doesn't get as much credit as TT, but part of the success of being a Big Kahuna is knowing when to stay out of the way and let the Little Kahunas do their job.
These are the main reasons we are 27-3. Yes, we have the talent too, and so far have been pretty injury-free, that's a big part of it. That's necessary but not sufficient; the coaching has to be there too. But Doc has ADDED to our success, it hasn't been in spite of Doc. The problem is that during the 2.5 hours of gametime, these things aren't obvious to the viewer, and they don't show up directly in the stat sheet. But you have to understand hoops to know that these are really the important things, not whether Doc called a timeout at the exactly right moment in the 30th game of the season.
As for being a sub-500 team w/o KG, not only is that wrong, but it's a stupid argument anyway. Take away a team's best player and most teams would be under 500. That's not the coaches fault, that's because the players aren't good enough. The NBA is a star's league, if you take away your star then your team suffers. I don't see what that has to do with the coach.
