Official NBA Coach Recommendations: Can the Coach of Your Team Win the Quest or Not?
This is the third of three NBA head coaching Reports. The first two were Real Coach Ratings Reports in the two versions, one looking back on 2009-10 and the other looking ahead to 2010-11. This last one takes the entire work product from the first two and condenses it into specific up or down recommendations for all head coaches from 2009-10 and at the start of 2010-11. The simplification here is useful but the details in the full Reports should be reviewed by anyone serious about finding out whom the best playoffs and/or the best regular season coaches are.
The complete User Guide for Real Coach Ratings is here.
Quest for the Ring (QFTR) starting this year is giving separate playoffs and regular season recommendations for head coach for NBA teams. QFTR is not giving overall recommendations for two main reasons. First, it turns out that there is a big, big difference for a lot of coaches in how well their coaching works out in the regular season versus how well it works out in the playoffs. It turns out that it is relatively common for pro basketball coaches to be very good regular season coaches but poor or very poor playoffs coaches. For these coaches, the way they look at and understand basketball and how they have their team playing works better in the regular season than it does in the playoffs. Because of this alone, making combined regular season / playoffs recommendations would be far less productive than you might think.
The second reason why we don't even attempt an overall recommendation is that franchises will look at the importance of the regular season and the playoffs differently. For franchises who know already they are most likely not going to be in the playoffs for a while, and also for franchises who think the regular season is more important for them than the playoffs, they might perhaps use the regular season recommendations more than the playoff ones.
However, QFTR strongly disagrees with any owner or manager who places the importance of the regular season above the importance of the playoffs. By rights, the playoffs should always be considered as more important than the regular season. If a team is not going to be making the playoffs this year it should by rights have a great playoff coach anyway, so when the team does make the playoffs in the near future it has the right coach for winning in the playoffs.
THE COACH RUT
Teams should avoid getting stuck in a rut that the public is completely unaware of but that QFTR has proven exists. This rut is where a team has a very good regular season coach but a lousy playoffs coach. It can be extremely difficult to get out of this rut because it is very hard to fire a coach who usually does very well in the regular season.
Plus, which coaches are not good for the playoffs is basically a secret from the public. This is one of QFTR's favorite and most important topics, and yet it took even us until November 2010 before we assembled all the hard proof and officially reported out which coaches are lousy playoffs coaches. And this is most likely the first time in history anyone carefully and mathematically investigated this. It took many hours of work to prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt and it was not very easy to do. So it is understandable that most people are in the dark and would not believe that there are a substantial number of coaches who are very good in the regular season but are poor in the playoffs.
The point is, this is basically unknown territory, so don't expect that these good in the regular but bad in the playoffs coaches are going to be fired when they should be (or never hired in the first place). Instead, expect that teams are going to make mistakes with these types of coaches year after year after year. People and things other than the coach will get the blame, and in some cases other people and things are also to blame. But the problem remains that this type of coach is very seldom if ever blamed simply because no one is aware that this type of coach exists and is fairly common.
Most lousy playoffs coaches get away with being lousy playoffs coaches year after year after year as long as they are good regular season coaches. A franchise can be in the dark about this for many years, for the entire time the coach is the coach. A team stuck with this type of coach will typically go along year after year thinking they have a chance to win the Quest, whereas their coach may be so poor in the playoffs that realistically they have no chance whatsoever to win it regardless of who the players are.
RECOMMENDATIONS ABOUT THE RECOMMENDATIONS
QFTR highly recommends that all franchises use the playoff recommendations more strongly than they do the regular season recommendations. But some words of caution are in order. Never completely ignore the regular season recommendations. It is going to be very unusual for a great playoff coach to be a not so good regular season coach (unlike the reverse which is surprisingly common) but if there ever was a coach with an outstanding playoff record but a poor regular season record, you would want to avoid this coach as a kind of insurance policy against having the wrong coach overall. This scenario could play out if the number of playoff games coached was relatively low and a fluke amount of statistical error resulted in an artificially high playoffs rating (whereas meanwhile the lower regular season rating was exactly accurate).
At an absolute minimum, the playoffs should be considered equal in importance to the regular season and the playoff coach recommendations should be just as important as the regular season coach recommendations.
One thing QFTR could do (and what QFTR would do if forced to make an overall recommendation) would be to use a formula where the playoffs rating was more important than the regular season rating. Or for that matter we could change the overall Real Coach Ratings system so that it was even more weighted in favor of the playoffs than it already is. We choose not to do either of these things at this time because of the complexities already discussed and because of other factors not mentioned here.
To some extent this discussion about which recommendations to use is not completely on point, because obviously, the best thing and what you want is a coach who is above average for BOTH the playoffs and for the regular season. Unfortunately however such coaches are much rarer than most people think they are. It turns out that although it is not rocket science, coaching basketball at the NBA level is much more difficult and complex than most people think it is. And then NBA playoff coaching is more difficult and complex than regular season coaching is. Ironically, many of the head coaches themselves apparently underestimate how difficult their job is and many of them don’t even begin to understand the magnitude and nature of the differences between the regular season and the playoffs.
I have a theory (can’t prove it right now) that on average Americans underestimate the importance of coaching more so than other people do. Maybe Canada can find that perfect coach who can bring the NBA Championship to Toronto and to Canada? That would be so sweet.
THE PHIL JACKSON ADJUSTMENT FOR THE PLAYOFFS RECOMMENDATIONS
Phil Jackson is by far the best and most successful NBA playoffs coach among current and recent head coaches. Actually, he is most likely the best NBA playoffs coach of all time (although there are a handful of other ones who are in Jackson’s ballpark). Jackson has repeatedly won playoff games he wasn't supposed to win versus some of the very best of the other NBA coaches. Jackson has won just about 42 playoff games he (statistically) wasn’t supposed to win out of a total of 323 playoff games. Jackson’s all time playoffs record is 225-98 but according to the QFTR investigation his “par record” is just 183-140.
This means that if you think (as most of the general public does) that Phil Jackson wins in the playoffs mostly according to how good his players are and that he has little or no impact on how many wins his teams get you are completely wrong. Jackson has had good teams, since he was “supposed to be” 183-140 in the playoffs but he boosted that to 225-98 and this was such a big improvement that we know, for example, that Jackson would not have won 11 rings (and probably not even half a dozen rings) if he were an average playoffs coach and we also know that Jackson would have won very few if any rings if he was a well below average playoffs coach.
Some coaches have come up against Phil Jackson in many more playoff games than others. Rick Adelman, Jerry Sloan, and Greg Popovich lead this pack, having faced Jackson in 29, 27, and 26 playoff games respectively. Adelman has pretty well held his own but Sloan and especially Popovich have been hammered by Jackson. After these three there is a group of five coaches who have faced Jackson in between 12 and 16 playoff games and three out of five of these have been handed (by Jackson) a big bunch of losses that should have been wins. The damage to them, though, is far less than the damage to Popovich.
For a big majority of coaches, the more playoff games a coach has played against Phil Jackson, the more his Playoff Rating is going to be depressed because Jackson has heavily dominated in playoffs coaching. Therefore, for my recommendations, I decided to remove most of the bias caused by big differences between coaches in the number of games versus Phil Jackson. For determining the recommendations you see below, 4/5 or 80% of the scoring from games versus Phil Jackson is removed.
The "Phil Jackson adjustment" is NOT done in the main Real Coach Ratings Report. All of the numbers in all sections of that Report include all games played against Phil Jackson. Only in these final official recommendations are in effect 80% of the games versus Phil Jackson taken out.
The primary beneficiaries of this adjustment are Greg Popovich, Jerry Sloan, and Flip Saunders. But Saunders is still "strongly not recommended" even after being boosted by the Phil Jackson adjustment. Sloan goes from "strongly not recommended" to simply "not recommended". The biggest swing is with Popovich. Believe it or not, Popovich, who has won four Championships in years when Phil Jackson's team was not competitive with Popovichs’ Spurs, would be "strongly not recommended" if all his games versus Phil Jackson were included whereas Popovich is "recommended" if you take away 4/5 of the effect from Jackson! The Popovich versus Jackson coaching saga is very much like the road runner versus Wily Coyote!
There are two coaches whose ratings would be lower rather than higher if their games versus Phil Jackson were removed. Doc Rivers and George Karl have very slightly gotten the best of Phil Jackson in the playoffs. (Yes, the fact that George Karl has gotten the better of Phil Jackson, even if only by a small margin, is quite a surprise). Even though the Nuggets were destroyed by the Lakers in the elimination game, the 2008 West Conference final was nevertheless one of the greatest achievements for both Karl and the Nuggets because the Nuggets did better than they were supposed to in that series.
For Doc Rivers and George Karl, the Phil Jackson adjustment is ignored so that they get credit for their limited success versus Jackson.
Note that QFTR can in theory include in these recommendations any coach who has ever coached in the NBA (subject to the 25 playoff games and 200 regular season games minimums). If you need a specific coach evaluated, contact QFTR.
The following includes the 33 head coaches from 2009-10 and the six new head coaches for 2010-11 not already among those 33. In total 39 head coaches from last year and the year coming up are included.
Here are the official QFTR recommendations:
========== COACH RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PLAYOFFS ==========
--The 33 head coaches from 2009-10 are included (three teams changed their head coach during the season)
--The 6 new head coaches for 2010-11 who are not among the 33 who coached last year are included; a total of 39 head coaches are included.
--Coaches who have coached fewer than 25 playoff games are not included in the playoff recommendations due to insufficient information.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-An extremely good team or just a very good team could easily win with these coaches
Phil Jackson
Larry Brown
Mike Dunleavey
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-An extremely good team could easily win and a very good team could relatively easily win with these coaches
Stan Van Gundy
RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-An extremely good team could win with these coaches; a very good team could possibly win with these coaches
Byron Scott
Jim O'Brien
Mike Brown
Gregg Popovich
NEITHER RECOMMENDED NOR NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-An extremely good team could possibly win with these coaches but there are no guarantees among these
Lawrence Frank
Doug Collins
Rick Adelman
Nate McMillan
Paul Westphal
Doc Rivers
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-These coaches are not recommended but an extremely good team could possibly win with these coaches, especially if the players were smart enough to help coach themselves
Scott Skiles
Eddie Jordan
Mike Woodson
Jerry Sloan
Avery Johnson
STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-It is very unlikely that the following coaches could ever possibly win the Quest for the Ring regardless of players
Flip Saunders
VERY STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE PLAYOFFS
-It is extremely unlikely that the following coaches could ever possibly win the Quest for the Ring regardless of players
Don Nelson
Mike D'Antoni
George Karl
Rick Carlisle
NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION
Alvin Gentry
Erik Spoelstra
Jay Triano
Jeff Bower
John Kuester
Keith Smart
Kiki Vandeweghe
Kim Hughes
Kurt Rambis
Larry Drew
Lionel Hollins
Monty Williams
Scott Brooks
Tom Thibodeau
Vinny Del Negro
========== COACH RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE REGULAR SEASON ==========
--The 33 head coaches from 2009-10 are included (three teams changed their head coach during the season)
--The 6 new head coaches for 2010-11 who are not among the 33 who coached last year are included; a total of 39 head coaches are included.
--Coaches who have coached fewer than 200 regular season games are not included in the recommendations due to insufficient information.
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Phil Jackson
Gregg Popovich
Jerry Sloan
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Rick Adelman
George Karl
Stan Van Gundy
RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Mike Brown
Avery Johnson
Rick Carlisle
Flip Saunders
Paul Westphal
Doc Rivers
NEITHER RECOMMENDED NOR NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Mike D'Antoni
Don Nelson
Doug Collins
Larry Brown
Scott Skiles
Nate McMillan
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Jim O'Brien
Alvin Gentry
Lawrence Frank
Byron Scott
STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Mike Woodson
Eddie Jordan
VERY STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE REGULAR SEASON
Mike Dunleavey
NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION
Erik Spoelstra
Jay Triano
Jeff Bower
John Kuester
Keith Smart
Kiki Vandeweghe
Kim Hughes
Kurt Rambis
Larry Drew
Lionel Hollins
Monty Williams
Scott Brooks
Tom Thibodeau
Vinny Del Negro
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The complete User Guide for Real Coach Ratings is here.