Coaching Toolblog

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

Maybe it is just me, but it apperars as though the Detroit Pistons are a little rough on basketball coaches. Rick Carlisle wins Coach of the Year and goes to the conference finals and is fired to Bring in Larry Brown. When Brown led them to the NBA championship, it didn’t look like such a bad move. Then, Larry Brown is run out by the players to Bring in Flip Saunders. Now , those same players “need a new voice” after Flip Saunders has three seasons and the best lifetime winning percentage of any Detroit Coach in their 50 years in Detroit and three straight appearances in the Conference Finals.

Top 4 Detroit Piston Winningest Coaches

Flip Saunders .715

Larry Brown .659

Chuck Daily .633 (another pretty good coach)

Rick Carlisle .610 Coach of the year ( in 50 years only two Detroit coaches have won that award)

Dick Vitale did coach the Pistons for a little over a year, but did not make the list.

If they aren’t going to listen to the coach with the best winning percentage in franchise history, then who are they going to listen to? My feeling is that hey will listen to any coach who lets them have their way and lets the basketball players be in charge.

Showing videos of the players paying no attention to Flip Saunders is not an indictment of him. These are (over)paid professionals. It is their job to listen. It is not their job to run the show. In my mind, Larry Brown, an old school do it the way it has to be done to win type of basketball coach is just what they needed and it showed with a championship. But, he rubbed the players the wrong way. I don’t know about you, but those players, especially Rasheed Wallace, rub me the wrong way. It gives me even more respect for Dean Smith that he was able to keep a lid on Wallace at North Carolina.

In our of our tools of the day, I mentioned that Saunders had a card that he kept with the players pre-season commitments. Wallace’s was to be a leader. What kind of a leader comes within one of being suspended for the number of technical fouls he is assessed with in the playoffs? What kind of a leader is laughing with the other team seconds before he blows a game winning shot like he did in the Philadelphia series.

I hope that they get what they deserve. A coach who lets the players run the team in to the ground. I guess the salary will attract some coaches, but my feeling is that most would not want to touch that job.

Regardless of how passionate someone is about coaching basketball or the money, it doesn’t seem like the headaches would even amount to one dollar per, nor would there be much coaching one could do.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.