NBA Playoffs 2011: Why Coaches Don't Cost Teams Championships

As the Oklahoma City Thunder squandered a golden opportunity to even the series with Dallas, at home, I thought about Scott Brooks.

The Wiz kid of the OKC success story has proven to be a fraud in these playoffs hasn’t he? In the end the Thunder have had too many isolation plays with Westbrook taking it upon himself too many times to carry the load.

Westbrook’s follies cannot be ignored most of all. With one of the NBA’s premier young talents in Kevin Durant, it should be written in Westbrook's contract that, unless it’s a fast break, Durant must get a touch on every possession. Still, Westbrook might be in love with his own hype after a coming out party at the 2010 world championships. Maybe it’s our fault for feeding his ego.

Or maybe it’s Scott Brooks’ fault for not keeping Westbrook in check, letting Durant bring the ball up the court and find better plays for the Thunder to run that don’t involve isolation against a defensive team so quick.

If the Thunder go home before reaching the NBA Finals, Scott Brooks will be to blame.

Then I remembered improv.

In the Chicago performing arts community, improv is a big deal. The dream of Second City’s Mainstage and a shot at Saturday Night Live looms large, and it’s paramount to get your name up on the radar of important people. For many young performers (I, myself, once one of them) you have to have a good improv team. That means going through painstaking efforts to hire a top-level coach. Plenty of the best are busy and expensive.

Still, young performers have paid the price to work with the biggest, brightest and most influential in the Chicago improv scene. These are coaches who have pushed them to the limits and yet years later they still toil in anonymity, realizing that they will never realize their dream of SNL. But it’s not because they didn’t have the right coach. It’s because victory on any level takes more than a coach. More than one thing.

In sports, it’s a little harder to understand it that way. We value coaches and understand there is a difference between Vinny Del Negro and Phil Jackson, just like there is a difference between Bill Belichick and Ron Rivera. But no coach achieves winning alone, or loses alone. Few coaches, great or otherwise have been a bigger determining factor in the outcome of the game than the players (with the possibility of football aside).

Phil Jackson is the benchmark for all coaches, but his mark as an NBA coach was made with great players. Yes, he was the great manager of egos and the great motivator of men, but in the end those championships were won and lost on the brilliance and dominance of four central players: Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Kobe Bryant.

Remove any player from the equation and Phil Jackson has far fewer than 11 NBA championships. I’m not saying that good coaches don’t make a difference, but they aren’t the reason you win championships. Players are. And when victory falls short they are often not the reason you lost.

Examine the Chicago Bulls. For a team that had won 62 games in the regular season they have looked woefully unprepared at points in the playoffs, no more perfect example than Games 2 and 3 against the Miami Heat. There the Bulls have looked confused on offense as Derrick Rose has been stymied by double teams that he can’t fight around.

Tom Thibodeou, the current NBA coach of the year, has failed to make the necessary adjustments. However, a look at the personnel will tell you the whole story. Without a shooting guard that can create his own shot, the Bulls have been stuck with overplaying Kyle Korver, a clear defensive liability. While he spreads the floor he can’t create his own shot, has been cold from the field and forces Derrick Rose to work a much more difficult defensive matchup.

True the Bulls have been exposed to a certain degree, the same way Dallas has exposed OKC’s weaknesses, but it comes from a place of surrender. There seems to be little Thibs can do to adjust to such a scheme that requires the one type of player he just doesn’t have.

The coach who has figured out such a scheme is Erik Spoelstra, the same coach who was rumored to be on the hot seat in November. The same coach who went into the playoffs without ever having learned how to make LeBron James and Dwyane Wade co-exist in a half-court offense.

If the Heat lose to the Bulls, will Spoelstra still be the right guy for the job? If he wins a title will he have been better? If he wins four with the Miami Heat will he be better than Gregg Popovich? His equal?

Coaching is about timing more than anything. It’s the right guy for the right players. It’s hard to believe Phil Jackson would have won with the same cast of Detroit Pistons that won in the early part of the last decade. It’s hard to believe that same Larry Brown who coached the Pistons to a title could have managed the relationship with Kobe and Shaq.

NBA failure, at least at this advanced stage, isn’t about coaches. It’s about players. We like coaches because we live in a world where we need a scapegoat. We need someone, something to blame. We need direction for our anger and answers for our questions of fault.

In the end, coaches advise. They consult. They do not win or lose. That’s the players' job.