A coach makes all the difference

I've long maintained that there are only a handful of good coaches in the NBA and a ton of mediocre to lousy ones. The good: Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich, Mike D'Antoni, Larry Brown (despite his turn with the Knicks), Doc Rivers (I can't believe I'm typing this, but he sort of owned Phil Jackson in the Finals last season), Byron Scott and holy crap, that's it. There's six and one of them (Larry Brown) loses motivation easily. Byron makes the cut because he got the Nets to back-to-back Finals and pushed the Spurs to six in one of those, and the Hornets looked like a well-prepared team every game last season. Doc finally settled on a rotation and won a championship, so he's in. Of the others, only Mike D'Antoni hasn't won a championship or coached an NBA Finals game. But that's more the product of shaky officiating and bad luck. His Phoenix teams were consistently competitive in the playoffs despite key injuries to people like Joe Johnson and Amare Stoudmire. The other often overlooked culprit in the Suns supposed failure (how any team that consistently wins at least 55 games is considered a failure is beyond me) is that they have a terrible owner who was so desperate to not pay the luxury tax that he gave away Kurt Thomas and frequently sold draft picks. Had he kept them, the Suns may have had a bench that included Andre Iguodala and Ben Gordon. Seriously, if they kept their drafts picks and hit 50% on them, D'Antoni would still be coaching the Suns.

That said, one of my predictions for this year is that the Knicks will make the playoffs and D'Antoni is the number one reason why. The Knicks look incredible this year. They're playing unselfish basketball. This hasn't happened since the Jeff Van Gundy years. And the style of play is a joy to watch. Rucker Park brought to the Garden. Jamal Crawford is lights out all of a sudden. Nate Robinson is the new Microwave. Zach Randolph gives a shit again. And look who's on the bench: undertalented, overrated malcontent Stephon Marbury and overweight, out of shape, lazy, defenseless, clumsy Eddy Curry. D'Antoni knows these two are worthless and his team is proving him right.

There's a recent precedent for a good coach taking a lousy to mediocre team to the playoffs: Hubie Brown and the Memphis Grizzlies. The Grizz had a long history of being lousy until Hubie came in. Hubie taught them how to play defense and the Grizzlies made the playoffs two straight years.

Another team to watch this year is Charlotte. Slowly but surely, that team will learn how to play defense, learn how to box out on rebounds, learn how to play team basketball under Larry Brown. They may not make the playoffs this year, but if Larry stays motivated, they'll be angling for a low seed in the playoffs next year.