Just in case you missed Avery Johnson...

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally Posted by Tom Hanx

Have you actually looked at the roster of that team that went to the finals?? Nobody on that team was really good except Dirk. our starting team was howard (sucks/gone), damp (sucks/gone), dirk, terry (sucks/needs to be gone), and harris. That was not a good team in hind sight, don't know how we made it so far. Avery brought something called defense to the table and all of a sudden the mavs are playing in the finals. Nellie could build good teams, but Avery took them to the next level.


Maybe as a coach he's an aszhole to play for but I think he's smart and knows how to win if players listen.

It's hard for me to talk about Avery Johnson without getting angry, but I'll try. Here goes.

Avery is pretty good at motivating his players for a while, but pretty damn terrible when it comes to actual basketball strategy/game management.

Yeah, I'll give him credit for emphasizing defense, but it doesn't exactly take a genius tell a team "Hey geys, get back on D!" And while you might be right about those teams not being being all that talented, I can tell you exactly why they made it so far. The first and obvious reason is Dirk; for my money the dude was the best player in the NBA for about a three year stretch. The second reason is that for those 3-4 years the Mavs were an absolutely dominant rebounding team. Say what you will about the Dampier/Diop combo, but for all of their shortcomings they rebounded at a very impressive rate. And Josh Howard may suck now, but sure as hell did not suck before 2008 (in fact he was pretty damn awesome before that.) Let's also not discount that they were consistently the best free throw shooting team in the league, which is why they won the vast majority of their really close games.

Avery's approach to the game was about as simple as it could possibly be, and in due fairness it was very effective most of the time. He basically ran an almost entirely iso-driven offense that consisted of Dirk posting up at the elbow, and guys like Howard and Stackhouse trying to score off the dribble. The problem with Avery's approach to offense was that it broke down completely as soon as guys started double-teaming Dirk and dare someone else to score. A smart coach like Riley or Nellie could see right through Avery's plan, and Avery had NO FRIGGIN CLUE how to respond.

It wasn't Avery's fault in Miami or GS. That was clearly the teams fault for choking, b/c Avery's gone and they're STILL DOING THE SAME THING. they should have blown up the team after GS.

"It wasn't Avery's fault.." That's so asinine that I'm tempted to not even respond. Two of the biggest choke-jobs in NBA history, a complete and total meltdown of the offense in both series and that has nothing to do with coaching? Nothing to do with game-planning or game-management? Give me a break. Not blaming Avery for those losses is sort of like not blaming Nixon for Watergate.

I sort of gave Avery a pass for the loss to Miami because he was technically still a rookie coach and before that the flaws in his gameplan had never been exposed before. But for the same thing to happen again a year later is absolutely inexcusable and very much his fault (although Cubes and Donnie deserve their share of the blame too for not fixing the personnel problems).

Any competent coach could have made a few basic, elementary adjustments, and things would've gone very differently for the Mavs against Miami and Golden State. For one they could've tried setting a f*cking pick once in a while, or maybe try throwing an entry pass BEFORE the shot clock is about to expire, or maybe try moving without the ball and cut to the basket instead of just standing there like idiots while Dirk has three defenders swarming around him. But no, those things were too complicated for Avery Johnson.