NBA Playoff Head Coaches We Trust the Least
Can you trust your favorite 2024 NBA playoff team's head coach?
This is a complicated question, one this exercise attempts to answer while acknowledging that all of these clipboard-carriers have forgotten more about basketball in the past five nanoseconds than yours truly could ever hope to know.
With that said, critiques are fair game when it comes to track records and unassailable results—or lack there of.
Deflective or uninspiring sound bites, weird or detrimental lineup configurations, longstanding inflexibility or reticence to experiment and just general curiosities that could go either way will be the focus here. Appearances will also be qualified relative to team expectations rather than purely experience.
Perhaps Orlando Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley doesn't rank too favorably on your playoff trust meter because he's never navigated the postseason in this capacity before. That's fine. But the Magic are in a different stage of their competitive development than many other squads.
Coaches tasked with stewarding more urgent situations will be thrust under our limelight. Their appearance shouldn't be treated as irreversible doubt. This is more like a list of names I'm monitoring with measured skepticism and varying degrees of equivocating confidence.
The 'Have They Graduated from This Discussion?' Duo
1 of 5
Jason Kidd, Dallas Mavericks
Taking issue with Kidd's coaching tactics is a pastime for basically every fanbase who has watched him chaperone their favorite team. The Mavericks situation was no different.
Emphasis on was.
Dallas is putting the bow on its second 50-win campaign in three years with Kidd at the helm. And its performance since the trade deadline—which includes the league's second-best net rating and a top-six defense—is hardly in spite of Kidd.
Moving to a starting five of Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, P.J. Washington, Derrick Jones Jr. and Daniel Gafford wasn't a no-brainer and has proven to be a stroke of genius. The Luka-Kyrie dynamic has exceeded expectations basically all year. There is a synergy to the way they operate off each other, and Dončić, specifically, has never played at a faster pace.
Minor quibbles persist. Will Kidd fall too in love with Tim Hardaway Jr.? Give us too many random Dwight Powell stretches? Equivocate on how to close games around Luka and Kyrie depending on matchups and how well Washington is shooting from three? (He's trending upward!) Potentially. But to call him untrustworthy, at this point, goes a measure too far.
Tom Thibodeau, New York Knicks
Look at how far we've come from this blogboy calling for the Knicks to fire Thibs in the early aughts of the 2022-23 season.
Traces of stubbornness continue to permeate his coaching style. His views on minutes management and the center position haven't abated. He will play his best guys gobs of minutes and staunchly prefers traditional rim-protecting bigs
But Isaiah Hartenstein's offensive usage has ever so slightly yanked Thibs' from his impenetrable this-is-how-centers-should-play shell. And more than anything else these days, Thibs deserves credit for trying #stuff.
From three-guard lineups to undersized 4s, he's attempted it all. Ditto for futzing and fiddling with mid-game rotations—especially, again, in the frontcourt. The Knicks are fourth in three-point-attempt rate since the trade deadline, in part because Donte DiVincenzo is a human volcano, but also because Thibs lets the offense run in more predictable ways.
Now, do we trust he'll give ample court time to Bojan Bogdanović and the desperately needed shot-creation and -making he can provide in the absence of Julius Randle? Or that he can scheme around the (even more) blitzes Jalen Brunson will face over the course of a seven-game series?
Arguable. And that's sort of the point. Thibs no longer deserves to be pigeonholed into the "Curmudgeon who gets the most of his players in the regular season at all costs." He is still that. In so many ways, though, he's also more.
J.B. Bickerstaff, Cleveland Cavaliers
2 of 5
Including J.B. Bickerstaff feels a little icky relative to the number of injuries and subsequent recoveries the Cleveland Cavaliers are, frankly, still navigating at the top of the roster. He deserves many fist bumps for their scorching-hot midseason stretch in which they went 25-8, largely without Darius Garland and Evan Mobley, and ran roughshod over (their admittedly team-friendly) schedule and pummeled defenses into submission with their speed and spacing and frenetic defensive efforts.
At the same time, Bickerstaff's game management on shorthanded nights has merely reinforced how problematic his, let's say, risk-averse approach can potentially become.
This is not another "the two bigs can't work together!" slampiece. Promise. But the Cavs have just barely won the minutes they play together thanks to anemic offensive returns. And while Bickerstaff has overseen an evolving dynamic that includes Mobley taking threes (almost two per game since his return) and working in tandem with Allen on certain sets, the latter moments still come at a functional cost, invariably marginalizing Garland or Dononvan Mitchell.
Injuries gave Bickerstaff cover for going the one-big and four-out route. And to his credit, he has made more tough (awkward?) crunch-time lineup calls in recent weeks.
But will he make those same tough-to-awkward decisions in a playoff series, when the lights are brighter, the stakes are higher and the optics are more likely to take on a life of their own?
Beyond that, does he have the stomach to finagle around Garland's present struggles? Will he give Isaac Okoro and the invaluable defense he provides a longer leash than last year if his threes aren't falling? Give Sam Merrill enough runway to get in the game and fire-fire-fire away?
Darvin Ham, Los Angeles Lakers
3 of 5
Even as the Los Angeles Lakers offense has surged post-All-Star break, head coach Darvin Ham remains subject to calls for his job, of varying extremes, from much of the fanbase.
I'm not here to validate those sentiments. The Lakers must reach the postseason through the play-in tournament again, but they are comfortably above .500 in a brutal Western Conference and this year has featured career-best basketball from Anthony Davis (at both ends), D'Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura and Austin Reaves.
And yet, do we trust Ham to not veer into "Absolutely Inexplicable Lineup Decision" territory?
Probably not.
Anything and everything is at play with him, oftentimes in a bad way. The Lakers will go overly small. He will fall in love with too much Cam Reddish and Taurean Prince.
There are no assurances that he won't roll out a five-man arrangement that includes both Hayes and Reddish and neither AD or LeBron James. There is no guarantee he will fall out of love with Hachimura or Reaves. And how much better off in the standings might the Lakers be if it didn't take Ham until late January to start both of them together?
This says nothing of the team's, er, questionable defensive tactics. Los Angeles is 23rd in points allowed per possession amid some baffling decisions—most notably, and egregiously, playing AD in drop coverage and conceding open jump shots against teams with, uh, lethal jump shooters.
Doc Rivers, Milwaukee Bucks
4 of 5
Doc Rivers' honeymoon phase with the Milwaukee Bucks is officially over—insofar as he ever had one.
Feast on the team's coaching splits:
- With Adrian Griffin: 30-13, 10th in net rating, fourth in offense, 21st in overall defense, 22nd in half-court defense, 30th in opponent transition frequency (14th in overall fast-break defense)
- With Doc Rivers: 17-17, 14th in net rating, 13th in offense, 13th in overall defense, 15th in half-court defense, eighth in opponent transition frequency (10th in overall fast-break defense)
Milwaukee's effort guarding on the break has ratcheted under Rivers. And there have been moments in which the Bucks look devastating, right down to the Giannis Antetokounmpo-Damian LIllard dynamic. But the overarching improvement isn't nearly pronounced enough to give Rivers the benefit of the doubt.
Insert your favorite "blown 3-1 series lead" joke here. This goes beyond that.
Injuries provide cover for some of their recent letdowns against lottery teams (Memphis, Toronto, Washington)—but not all of them. And they most certainly don't explain the squandered double-digit lead against the Knicks on Apr. 7.
This is all happening, mind you, as the Bucks are trying to lockdown should-be-pivotal playoff seeding. And through out it all, Rivers has been a deflective machine:
"What will he say next?" is a genuinely harrowing game to play. Especially with Giannis having suffered a not-insignificant calf strain ahead of the playoffs.
Will Rivers be chock full of more excuses if the Bucks flame out earlier than expected or is deemed acceptable? Impromptu film sessions that, ostensibly, don't include the entire team? Declarations of his own genius for playing Patrick Beverley over Malik Beasley? Or Bobby Portis Jr. instead of Brook Lopez? Musings on how Dame isn't technically a real point guard? Or about how Khris Middleton should have visited the LeBron James of knee doctors?
The scope of possibilities is endless—and terrifying.
Frank Vogel, Phoenix Suns
5 of 5
Frank Vogel is the toughest inclusion here.
On the one hand, the Phoenix Suns continue to stumble through extended stages of self-discovery that, some nights, verges on incoherence. On the other hand, how much steadier are they supposed to be when it took Bradley Beal, Devin Booker and Kevin Durant so long to put together extended stretches of joint availability and the roster is both populated by fliers and was turned over, again, at the trade deadline?
Context is important and provides a level of excuse. The notion that Vogel must coach for his job during the postseason is uncomfortable, if not potentially stupid—less about the job he's doing and more about the Suns' heightened urgency and complete absence of other cards to shuffle.
Still, harping on some of his decisions and the team's flaws is fair game.
Is Vogel responsible for the roster makeup? Not at all. Is he responsible for rolling with Drew "Represented Phoenix's Entire Scoring Production for Almost an Entire Quarter Against the Los Angeles Clippers on Apr. 9" Eubanks over Thaddeus Young or Bol Bol? Absolutely.
Are the Suns' fourth-quarter (and crunch-time) woes entirely on him? Last I checked, he's not the one over-passing or committing turnovers against pressure. But could Phoenix's offensive approach include more creativity—more variance in how they get Durant the ball or two- and three-man sets between their stars? Without question.
The Suns have hinted at more down-the-stretch innovation in recent weeks. That's great. It has not been consistent. And even relative to circumstances beyond their control, that has been their modus operandi all year: inconstance as their only constant.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac. Draft-pick obligations via RealGM.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
