So you need a coach and Phil Jackson and Pat Riley are taken.
What do you do if you are the Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings, Seattle SuperSonics, Memphis Grizzlies or Charlotte Bobcats?
Sure, there’s Larry Brown and Rick Adelman and Paul Silas and Rick Carlisle and some others who have been around. But how do you know what will work?
Perhaps a look at the most recent coach-of-the-year voting.
There was Toronto’s Sam Mitchell, and though he didn’t make my ballot, his team did improve dramatically. Bryan Colangelo probably will be executive of the year for remaking the roster, but and Mitchell is known as a tough, hard-driving coach who a few years ago was literally challenging players to fight him.
Second was Jerry Sloan, the league’s longest-tenured coach known for demanding accountability and defense. Then came Avery Johnson, who changed the Mavericks with his no-nonsense ways, insisting on defense and not exactly worrying about the tender feelings of his players. And fourth was Jeff Van Gundy, who seems happiest when he is losing so he can work his players harder and demand more, especially on defense.
Tough, hard-working, demanding, suffering no fools … not exactly your so-called player’s coach. But relentless and successful.
Now, what follicle-impaired, grumpy-when-he-wins, headband-banning coach we know does that sound like?
“Scott is one of the very best coaches in the league,” Riley said Sunday after Scott Skiles’ Bulls’ sweet destruction of his defending-champion Heat in a first-round playoff series. “I have great admiration for him.”
This is not Mike Fratello doling out compliments during a broadcast. Riley isn’t exactly lavish with his praise of opponents, especially after losses.
But Riley was a beaten man with no answers, and while it was clear by the end that Skiles came with the better team, it also was clear that Skiles and his staff had countered nearly everything the Heat tried.
Suddenly, the profile of the ideal NBA coach is evolving again, to a former guard or swingman, a tough guy who is knowledgeable and isn’t working on making friends, a man who will get in your face and demand excellence or you know where to find a seat on the bench.
Perhaps he’s not cuddly and huggable and maybe not the best company after a game, and maybe he’s not getting the World’s Greatest Guy plaque from his players. But they perform better than they did before, even if they have to grit their teeth sometimes while doing it, and the team develops.
The talk in Indiana is the Pacers would love to get a shot at Skiles, a native Hoosier who played for the Pacers early in his career. He’s under contract, so they are expected to make a strong bid for free-agent Mitchell, another former Pacer.
Although it was a first-round matchup, the Bulls-Heat series was hardly insignificant because the Bulls defeated the defending champs and Riley.
They beat them to the punch on every adjustment, which can often determine a series’ outcome.
Initially, the Heat tried to take out Ben Gordon, which left Dwyane Wade on the bigger Luol Deng. The Bulls responded immediately with post-ups, their side pick-and-roll for Deng and staggered screens to free him, more play options than they usually use for Deng. And he was the star of the first two games.
By the end of the series, Eddie Jones, who started Games 1 and 2, didn’t even play. Riley continued trying to find openings for Jason Kapono, the league’s best three-point shooter. But the Bulls attacked him as soon as he entered, running him into quick foul problems and chasing cutters to easy baskets as he quickly exited every game.
Riley doesn’t like to play zone, which Detroit’s Flip Saunders does, and the Bulls will see much more of that against the Pistons. But the Heat tried it in desperation a half-dozen times in the four games and the Bulls scored every time but one. Riley quickly abandoned the gambit.
The Bulls moved seamlessly into their three-guard sets with Chris Duhon, who was quietly effective, and helped scatter the Heat’s slow rotations.
Watching the Bulls can be like a watching well-choreographed opera. Against Miami the Bulls ran the big guys, pushed the pace and executed the pick-and-roll so well the Heat ended up chasing constantly and failed to close. The Bulls will try it against the Pistons as well.
The initial response to the pick-and-roll is to “show” hard — have a big man help and push out the guard. But there was Kirk Hinrich kicking the ball to Ben Gordon and then cutting through, Gordon attacking the middle, then kicking to Deng and getting to the weak side, Deng moving and shooting or making a play, a merry-go-’round of player and ball movement, basketball that you can’t help admiring.
Miami never seemed able to disrupt much of anything as the Bulls were shooting 50 percent until the last game. Jump shooting isn’t a weakness when they’re open jump shots.
The Pistons are very different, of course, a post-up team like Miami, but with more options because of more versatile players. They like to isolate their players and, of course, run Richard Hamilton off screens and curls. Few do a better job on Hamilton than Hinrich, who has frustrated him. And despite being a veteran team, these Pistons of Rasheed Wallace are capable of mentally melting down at any time, as happened in the playoffs last year.
Perhaps P.J. Brown will be less effective because Detroit’s big guys like to shoot outside, though the Bulls countered that well in winning three of four this season by often playing Deng and Nocioni on big guys Webber and Wallace, who don’t like to post-up. This draws the Pistons into a game at which they don’t excel.
It’s the inside game of the playoffs, and the Bulls have won it easily thus far again the former champions and the future Hall of Fame coach.
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sasmith@tribune.com
