A Tale of Two Coaches
Part One: Mark Jackson Lost in Space and Pace
I asked a friend what his most burning sports question was, (an
easy remedy for writer's block is to have an editor), and thus began my quest
to answer, “Why hasn’t Mark Jackson gotten another coaching job? And Mike
D’Antoni is a fraud!” The question, as I found, is a really good one, and the
statement is more a ‘prisoner of the moment’ situation. That being said, any
NBA GM entering a rebuilding phase should maybe give Mr. Jackson a ring,
because his butt deserves to be on a bench.
Mark Jackson began his tenure with the Warriors during
the lockout-shortened 2011-2012 season. That Warriors team was pretty pitiful.
They won 23 games and lost 43. They played horrible defense, (27th out of 30 in
defensive rating and 28th in opponents PTS/G) were average offensively (14th in
offensive rating and 12th in PTS/G) and featured David Lee as their best
player. The next season, the 2012-2013 season, the Warriors would begin to
build the foundations of, what would become, their championship core of Steph
Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green.
Steph Curry, who is now a two-time MVP, only played 23
games in 2011-12 as a 23-year-old. Klay Thompson was a 21-year-old rookie and
Draymond Green was still coached by Tom Izzo. Starting in 2012-13, Curry,
finally healthy, started to show All-Star promise, while Klay Thompson found
his way off the bench and began to contribute. Draymond Green rode the pine a
fair amount, but as a second rounder and 22-year-old rookie that is essentially
your expected career. The Warriors armed with a still solid David Lee, a
healthy Curry and a group of stop-gap veterans won 47 games and made it to the
second round of the playoffs. Year three of the Mark Jackson era would again
show improvements with the Warriors winning 51 games during the 2013-14 season,
a four-game improvement. Only this time in the playoffs they would be
eliminated in seven games in the first round. Following the season Mark Jackson
would be fired, Steve Kerr would be hired, and the emergence of one of the
greatest dynasties in the history of the sport would emerge. So why is the man
that laid the groundwork for the NBA’s current version of the Death Star frozen
out from NBA head coaching jobs?
Mark Jackson takes the blame (somehow) for not having the
Warriors in tip-top dynasty fashion by 2013-14. This argument is pretty flimsy
because it completely ignores the norms of player development. If you look at
the ages of Golden State’s core three during the Jackson era, Curry (23-25),
Thompson (21-23), and Green (22-23), you see three players in their early NBA
careers on the cusp of their primes. Curry, Thompson, and Green all saw
improvements in their Win-Shares and Win-Shares per 48 minutes each
season from 2011-12 to 2013-14 under Jackson.
(C. = Curry, T. =
Thompson, G. = Green)
Season
|
C. WS
|
C. WS/48
|
T. WS
|
T. WS/48
|
G. WS
|
G. WS/48
|
11-12
|
2.2
|
.144
|
1.7
|
.05
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
12-13
|
11.2
|
.180
|
4.3
|
.07
|
.6
|
.028
|
13-14
|
13.4
|
.225
|
6.7
|
.112
|
4.5
|
.119
|
Mark Jackson had just
shepherded three probable Hall-of-Famers through the early portion of their
careers. They all showed real signs of progress each season as their play and
win totals improved. Yet, Jackson has, what I’ll show next, as a failure on his
part hanging over him.
Season
|
C. WS
|
C. WS/48
|
T. WS
|
T. WS/48
|
G. WS
|
G. WS/48
|
14-15
|
15.7
|
.288
|
8.8
|
.172
|
8.5
|
.163
|
The 2014-15 season saw
the Warriors rampage to 67 wins and the NBA Championship. Steph Curry won the
MVP and the Warriors now had an unbeatable core all thanks to Mark Jackson
leaving and Steve Kerr taking the reins. Perhaps, but most NBA teams would love
to develop the Warriors’ core utilizing the 7th, 11th, and 35th overall picks.
Look at how many top-5 picks the Sixers have used to end up with Joel Embid,
Ben Simmons and the nagging sense that they still can’t compete for a
championship. When we factor in the player’s ages from the 2014-15 season the
picture becomes clearer. Curry was 26 and Thompson and Green were 24. Curry had
entered his prime and Thompson and Green were entering the beginning stages of
theirs. Curry improved by 2.2 Win-Shares from 2012-13 to 2013-14 and then 2.3
Win-Shares from 2013-14 to 2014-15. Thompson improved by 2.4 and 2.1 and Green
by 3.9 and 4 during this time period. All three players continued the growth
seen under Mark Jackson into the Steve Kerr era. If we remember the 2013-14
Warriors won 51 games and then add the Win-Share increases from this core we
get all the way to 59.5 wins. Sure, that team won 67 games so maybe Steve Kerr
was the right hire, but taking a team on pace to win 28 games over an 82 game
season and turning it into a 60 win team in four seasons is a monument to
coaching.
Mark Jackson proved he was a good coach with the Warriors
over the course of three seasons but was never given the chance to prove he was
a great coach. After his firing, he has not taken another job, and it seems as
if he won’t for the foreseeable future. The reason why perhaps could be a
misconception about his tactics. Pace has become king in the NBA. Mike D’
Antoni, who I’ll talk about next, brought pace to the forefront of NBA front offices
minds with his seven seconds or less Suns. To give an example of how much this
has changed, the 2004-05 Suns led the NBA in pace at 95.9 while the 2018-19
Rockets were 26th in pace at 97.6. In today’s NBA what was fast 15 years ago is
now unfathomably slow. In the 2014-15 season, the Warriors ranked first in pace
at 98.3. The Warriors of the 2013-14 season played at the leisure pace of 96.2
which was 6th in the league. The season before that 94.5 and 4th in the league.
What’s clear is that the league began to play at an increasingly quicker pace
during this period, and while Mark Jackson was not pushing the envelope in this
department he was not holding the reins back either. If there is one major area
of criticism for Jackson it is in his offensive system. Kerr instituted a new
offensive system that catapulted the Warriors to the 2nd best offensive rating
and the most PTS/G during the 2014-15 season. Under Mark Jackson, the team was
14th in offensive rating and 12th in PTS/G in 2011-12, 11th and 7th over the
course of the 2012-13 season and was 12th and 10th the following season in
2013-14. So perhaps the offense had stagnated under Jackson, and Steve Kerr
unlocked a new gear for the Warriors. This can all be true and Mark Jackson can
still be a good coach because the last time I checked basketball was a two-way
sport.
The Warriors under Mark Jackson truly went through a
defensive renaissance. In his first season, they were 27th in defensive rating
only to move up 14th the next year and then 4th in his final season. Going from
a bottom 5 team to a top 5 team in any category without the acquisition of
super-star caliber player over a three year period is absurd. Not giving credit
to Jackson as an excellent defensive coach would be criminal, and the last time
I checked Tom Thibodeau has been able to find work as a defensively oriented
coach. Again, what does Mark Jackson in is the 2014-15 season. That season the
Warriors improved from 4th in defensive rating all the way to the top. While
they allowed .4 more PTS/G more than the previous season, finishing 15th in
that category, the increase in pace and overall offensive output of the whole
league makes staying relatively static in that category an achievement all on
its own. I’d be willing to wager that if Mark Jackson had coached the 2014-15
Warriors they would have been able to go from 4th to 1st in defensive rating
with the improvements made by Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
Mark Jackson deserves an NBA head coaching job. Maybe he
doesn’t want one. Maybe he only wants to enter a truly enticing situation.
Maybe the most enticing situation is an insane amount of money that no one will
offer him because they do not view him worthy of that type of contract. The NBA
is not valuing Mark Jackson properly because of what a team he did not coach
achieved. The secret to the Warriors dynasty has been their defense. Every
challenger they have faced has had an offense that rivaled them, but none had a
defense that was truly as stifling. Mark Jackson laid the groundwork for the
Warriors championship defense. I’m sure he would love to do so for your team.
End of Part One
Interlude:
Mark Jackson is viewed as being resistant to space and
pace. As shown earlier, he was not afraid of playing fast, but perhaps he was
lacking in his utilization of space. Steve Kerr installed a new offense that
allowed the Warriors to fully galvanize the unique talents of Steph Curry and
Klay Thompson, two of the all-time great shooters. What Mark Jackson failed to
do was adapt quickly enough to the changing style of play in the NBA. The idea
that he would not and could not is hilarious. Perhaps being a player from an
earlier era it is easy to envision him trying to play the grind it out style of
the ’90s, which if he had done from 2011-2014 would have torpedoed the Warriors
chances anyways, or maybe he was viewed as not being tactical enough to make
the necessary changes. For a player that played 16 years in the league and led
it once in assists, I find ‘not being tactical enough’ to be coded
language. Every NBA team has tried to copy the Warriors since 2014-15 utilizing
some aspect of their offensive concepts, and everyone, save LeBron ‘freaking’
James has failed. When something wins players and coaches copy it the idea
that Mark Jackson would not is idiotic. His tenure is viewed by what he failed
to do and not by what he accomplished. He built a championship caliber defense
with Steph Curry, who last time I checked isn’t and wasn’t renowned for his
defense, as his primary point guard. Tom Thibodeau did that with Derrick Rose,
didn’t win squat, got to hold onto his job, and got another one where he again
didn’t win squat and got to hold onto his job. The perception that Mark Jackson
is not capable of coaching a modern NBA offense has been the roadblock
preventing him from landing another job. Which leads us to the coach that
created the stylistic roadblocking that has derailed Jackson. Mike D’ Antoni.
Mike D’Antoni was dead in the water following two relatively
unsuccessful stints as the coach of the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles
Lakers. He has found new life in Houston because of how the league had adopted
and adapted the playing style that launched him and the Phoenix Suns to the top
of the league back in the mid to late 2000s. D’ Antoni has yet to win a
championship, but is he really a ‘fraud’? …………….Part Two will be coming soon
Excellent analysis
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