NBA Coaches

I often write about coaches on my other blog, and while I am a coach, I do think coaches are somewhat overrated (John Calipari makes $4-million per season as a college basketball coach!! Pete carroll is the highest paid employee at USC and Steve Sarkisian, his offensive coordinator, was 4th before he left to be UW's Head Coach! Really?).

Here is Bill Simmons on NBA coaches:

34. Boris Diaw

Reborn as an all-around player with Charlotte (since New Year's: 16-6-5, 49 percent FG, 40 percent 3FG), giving us 2009's best example of the Devin Harris/Avery Johnson Corollary: If you have a choice between making a major trade or firing a coach who clearly isn't working out, always fire the coach first. OK? OK.

(Here's how dumb coaches are: Just this season, we witnessed coaches playing Kevin Durant at shooting guard, slowing down Steve Nash, playing slow-it-up with the Sixers, bringing Rip Hamilton off the bench, burying Anthony Randolph on a lottery team, playing Darius Songaila over JaVale McGee on a lottery team, ignoring the stat that's about to impress you when we get to the Nowitzki paragraph, and doing everything that Mike Dunleavy did. There's a reason 85 percent of these guys get canned within three years.)

12. Dirk Nowitzki... with a ghastly 39.2 percent. Why not play him at center and embrace their stylistic advantage with Dirk in the slash-and-kick era? Not to keep touting 82games.com, but I logged onto their best plus-minus for five-man units" page to check where Kidd-Terry-Howard-Dirk-Brandon Bass ranked ... and they were first. Can't say I was shocked. But here's what did shock me: They've played only 123 minutes together. I keep telling you: Coaches are dumb.