Quote:
Originally Posted by Thespiralgoeson
I call b.s. You can say that I was wrong if you want, but "revisionist" implies that I changed my opinion after the fact. I've been very consistent in my anti-Avery/pro-Carlisle stance, going back to 2006-2007. And yes, those teams were bad matchups, but that doesn't justify the general awful, piss-poor, boneheaded nature of Avery's coaching.
Was it really? I saw the same thing happen against Golden State. Dirk got doubled on every possession, and Avery didn't know how to respond. Okay, the officiating was terrible and Wade was playing out of his mind, but all in all the way the events played out were pretty similar.
Huh? You'll have to be more specific on that one. I'll grant you that he probably relied on Barea way too much, but that doesn't even begin to compare to Avery's ridiculous love for people like Stackhouse and George, among others. In fact, I remember one of the most noticeable things Carlisle did in his first season here was take Stackhouse out of the rotation completely.
Sure, Avery deserves credit for putting more of an emphasis on defense than Nellie did (which of course was none at all.) But people made WAY too big a deal out of that. It doesn't take a genius to tell your players, "hey guys, play defense!" If there was something remarkable about his defensive schemes, I sure didn't see it. But sure, he gets credit for not being Nellie.
And I'm sorry, but "slowing down the offense" isn't exactly a selling point for Avery.
Now THAT is revisionist history. It's true that Avery tried his damnedest to morph Dirk into Tim Duncan and choke the inspiration out of him. But if you're giving Avery credit for Dirk's fade-away jumper, I'm just going to sit here and laugh.
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I am with Spiral on this one. Iirc we used to debate a lot about what happened in the GSW series. And the one thing that was clear was that Avery had no offensive plan at all. He relied on isolations every single possession, and when Dirk was double or triple teamed the rest of the team had no idea how to rotate and get open shots. That is a huge difference right there between the two coaches.
On defense, I can say that Rick's team last year played amazing defense during our comebacks. But because he had Tyson and because he had Casey as an assistant I'll go ahead and call this a tie. But Rick's teams in Indiana and Detroit were known for their D, so it's hardly something that Avery has on Rick.
Dirk and player development in general. This is another slam dunk for Rick. The way they managed Kidd. The development of Harris v. Barea. But honestly telling Dirk to play like Duncan ultimately just took a lot of what makes Dirk great. You saw it last year that he was at his best when he had the ball at the 3pt line, drove, spun and kept his defender on his toes all the time. Dirk's post game was developing as early as 03, when he often started to receive the ball on the elbow for isos. go look at some of those Sacramento games from those years.
If anything is true about Dirk and all the other great players it's that they are ultimately their own biggest critic and motivator. I haven't seen anything from Dirk to make me think otherwise.