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Originally Posted by jsarno
I believe Eddie Jones and Damon Jones (.432 3 pt%) to be better players than Jason Williams, and Antoine Walker for instance. Walker was probably THE most overrated player I ever saw in my entire life, and possibly the most overrated player in history.
Van Gundy had better role players. I am still surprised a team with Payton on it won it all. Then again, Gary took a major back seat role with Riley, so that's a good reason.
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Ok, well that's just your opinion versus mine
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Riley took them from 32 to 42 to 61...what's your point?
Point is, Van Gundy SHOULD have won it all, and he didn't. It took Riley's coaching ability to get it done no matter how you want to slice it.
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I wasn't knocking Riley's coaching abilities, just saying don't ignore what Van Gundy had accomplished and wasn't given the opportunity to complete
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Shaq only averaged 20.0 and 9.2 boards that season. He also had a pathetic 46.9% FT percentage. Also had 2.8 turnovers a game on average (high for a center), and a very high 3.9 fouls per game. It's not like Chicago losing Jordan, or the Celts losing Bird, or LA losing Magic...or even Kobe. I understand the point, but Van Gundy still had an unstoppable Wade.
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Not so much now, but back then just Shaq's mere presence on the court made his teammates better
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Again, Van Gundy's heat was EXPECTED to win it all, and underacheived, while Riley actually won it all. Can't really complain about that. If we kicked Gibbs out after say a 5-5 season, and hired anyone and that coach took us to a SB victory, I would care less that we fired Gibbs regardless of circumstance. EVERY decision a team makes should have one goal in it's sights...winning it all. Riley did it, Van Gundy didn't. It's that simple. And it's not like Van Gundy didn't have his shot. He did, and blew it.
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Fine. But if Zorn took us to an OT loss in the NFC championship game this year and then next year we get off to a 5-5 start with Portis missing 8 of the games and then fire Zorn, I think it'd be ridiculous to say Zorn was a failure or underachiever