<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (CB4AllStar @ Mar 5 2007, 07:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Yeah, he is my choice for COY. I know Boozer, Deron Williams, and Memo have emerged, but their best player last season has also played like crap. No one expected them to even make the playoffs, and now they are the 3rd or 4th best team in the League. My next candidate would probably be JVG, just for the way he has kept the Rockets atop the West even with Yao out...He is an amazing defensive coach.</div>I don't see Van Gundy as a candidate for coach of the year at all. He has a good team with him, and has had a healthy Tracy Mcgrady for the most of the year. When you have a team that can play defense like this team does, as well as someone like Tracy Mcgrady that can shoulder a scoring load as well as anyone else in the league it's not hard to coach well. I think this Rockets team is a testament to how much of a difference a healthier Mcgrady makes, rather than the coaching job Van Gundy has done.<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Something-To-Say @ Mar 6 2007, 06:51 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'> But he helped make those HOFers work together. If you put stars together on a team this year, they are 80% guaranteed to fight like every day. Red had as you just said 20 HOFers and got them to work together into over 10 championships. And I personally wouldn't bring up the salary cap, because if the players this year really truly cared, they'd take say, 5 mil, not 20.</div>What you said here makes no since. If it's players of today that fight like every day, then why was it so impressive that he put hall of famers from the 50's and 60's together and got them to play together. By your reasoning players of that day and age cared about the game, and didn't have attitudes, so putting them together was nothing special. This is way off topic, but any which way, I think Phil Jackson was a better coach than Red was. I say this because he has nine titles, which may be less than Red, and sure Jackson had Kobe, Shaq, Michael Jordan, and Scottie Pippen four great players of all time. He played in an era where there was free agency, trades, players with big time gripes and dislike for each other, and got them to play together. What he has done with the Lakers in his two seasons there has been amazing, making that younger team play good ball, even through all the injuries and mishaps that the Lakers have had. Phil Jackson in my eyes is just a better coach, and knows basketball better than Red did.
