FanShot

ESPN INSIDER...coach of the decade PHIL or POP

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The only thing Ric Bucher and Chris Broussard like to do more than report on the NBA is argue about the NBA. So we decided to combine those two skills for Insider's weekly One-on-One series, in which they'll debate the hottest topics in the Association. Question: Who has been the best coach of the past decade? BUCHER: Two coaches have stood above the rest of the NBA during the past decade: The Lakers' Phil Jackson and the Spurs' Gregg Popovich. There are coaches who have been impressive in various ways -- the Jazz's Jerry Sloan and the Celtics' Doc Rivers immediately come to mind -- but they are, at best, fighting for a distant third. The question is, who deserves to be considered the best? I'm going to go with the man they call Pop. BROUSSARD: Obviously, Pop is a terrific coach, one of the best to do it. But my pick for coach of the past decade or so is Jackson. With five titles and seven Finals appearances since 2000, he's led two separate dynasties in one decade. Not only has Jackson been the best coach of the past 10 to 12 years, he's been the best in NBA history. RB: That was my initial thought, too. Who argues against all those rings? Jackson's five versus Pop's three since 2000, right? In fact, I'd be willing to concede that Jackson is battling Red Auerbach for best of all time when you include Jackson's Chicago run. But when I look at what he's working with, and where and for whom, this feels like a race in which one runner has a 10-yard head start every time. The Los Angeles Lakers' winning has never come as a surprise; in fact, when they've lost, it has been an upset. The San Antonio Spurs, on the other hand, have been the favorite very few times because their talent never warranted it. Yet every season, including this one, they win more games and go deeper in the playoffs than their pure talent says they should. If you measure strictly by results, there is no argument here: Jackson wins. But measure results against what they were working with, and Pop clearly has "coached up" his teams more consistently than Jackson has. CB: Obviously, there's the Jackson's-had-tremendous-talent argument, which does have some merit. But when you consider that Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, both All-Stars at that point, got swept by the Spurs in the second round the year before Jackson got there and promptly led them to three straight titles, I think the argument loses some zest. Remember, even though Jackson has had great tandems, no other coach, including the solid Doug Collins, was able to lead the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen and Shaq-Kobe teams to titles. And then the post-Shaq Lakers were a disaster under Rudy Tomjanovich. So we're talking two good coaches, and the respected Del Harris, who couldn't do much with teams that Jackson made dynasties of. Also, there's Jackson's ability to keep his teams from getting complacent -- a Shaq-Kobe three-peat and a Kobe-Pau Gasol repeat are incredibly impressive. That's one mark against Pop -- the fact that he's never won back-to-back titles. In fact, his teams have never even played in back-to-back Finals. RB: Fair point on Jackson's ability to drive a team to defend a championship, which, without question, is one of the most difficult challenges a coach can face. He is a master at maximizing great talent. But let's not muddy the debate by giving him points for being better than Harris or Collins. Jackson took over a team that won 61 games and went to the conference finals its last full season under Harris, who will be remembered as a very good coach who had very talented teams in several places and never won a title. Collins is part of Jackson's Chicago legacy, which means all that is not part of this debate -- but that team went to the conference finals, too. Collins and Harris "couldn't do much" with those teams? Really? The truth is, Jackson is a closer, and those guys were not. Give him the best hand and he will win with it nearly every time. But there's more to coaching than that, and that's where Popovich has him. His teams have repeatedly overachieved no matter how they were constituted, and I can't think of one season when his team didn't surpass expectations. Jackson went into two NBA Finals as the heavy favorite and lost; he also got bounced in the first round of the playoffs twice in a row despite holding a 3-1 series lead the first time. Popovich also has lost twice in the first round, but the first time was after Tim Duncan suffered a season-ending knee injury right before the playoffs started, and the second, in 2009, was without another star, Manu Ginobili. CB: You're wrong in saying that Jackson is only a closer. He proved in his first two years back in L.A. that he also could maximize mediocre talent. You crush him for losing in the first round of the playoffs in '06 and '07, but he did a great job of just getting those clubs to the postseason. In 2006, he took a team that started Smush Parker, Chris Mihm/Kwame Brown and Brian Cook to the playoffs. That was the same crew (plus Caron Butler and Chucky Atkins) that struggled badly under a great coach like Tomjanovich (and later Frank Hamblen) and missed the playoffs the year before. Jackson took that crew to the brink of upsetting the power-packed Phoenix Suns in the first round. And even though the Lakers were beaten more soundly by Phoenix in the playoffs the next year, Jackson did a terrific job of just getting that team -- which started Luke Walton for 60 games -- to the playoffs. That's not to mention 1993-94, when Jackson took a Chicago Bulls team sans MJ to 55 victories. So don't give me the "he's just a closer'' argument. He's proved to be both an absolutely incomparable closer as well as a guy who can maximize lesser talent. RB: Popovich has never had the amount of talent Jackson has enjoyed and is neck-and-neck with him in just about every category. In fact, in terms of pure regular-season wins from 2000 to 2010, Popovich has 626 to Jackson's 553. Jackson, of course, was fired by the Lakers after the shocking loss to the Detroit Pistons and sat out a year. But even if you throw out Popovich's best season (63 wins), he still finishes 10 wins (563 to 553) ahead of Jackson during that stretch. CB: You and I both know that regular-season win-loss marks mean nothing to these two coaches, so let's not even bring that into the debate. That said, I think you're sorely underestimating the talent Pop has coached. We know he had the Twin Tower effect of Tim Duncan and David Robinson for his first two titles. Ginobili is probably going to be a Hall of Famer, largely because of his international success, but he is a multiple-time All-Star who for long stretches has played at a near-MVP level. Years from now, there will be an argument to be made for Tony Parker as a Hall of Famer. He's won three rings and was a Finals MVP and still has plenty of time to add to his résumé. So although Pop hasn't had a Shaq-Kobe tandem, he has had a core of three possible Hall of Famers. So let's not act as though he's been making champions out of chump change. Twice, Pop's Spurs have been beaten in the second round the year after winning titles. In an argument like this where we're nitpicking two of the greatest of all time, that seeming inability to root out complacency among his players can't be overlooked. In 2006, the defending-champion Spurs went down to a lesser-talented Dallas Mavericks team that started Dirk Nowitzki and four non-All-Stars. So we can't blame that on talent (which you could say about losing to the Shaq-Kobe Lakers in 2004). We have to blame that on complacency. You've never seen that sort of complacency on one of Jackson's teams, which is why he's going for his fourth three-peat.