how many good players is a great coach worth? realistically, if RT and chris beard were coaches in the same league, let’s say the big xii- how enormous of a roster advantage would RT have to own to have a better season than chris beard? w/l record, kenpom, NET rating, postseason results, performance in relation to expectations, etc?
i’ve talked about this a few times this year, but it continues to amaze me how huge the disconnect is among 99% of fans, specifically that they can all see how impactful one great player can be, yet they consistently fail to understand how much more important having a great coach is. chris beard is worth five max abmases. a great coach will make chicken salad out of chicken shit, while a mediocre-bad coach will mismanage and ruin the potential of an otherwise pretty good roster. we’ve seen this on both sides for as long as anyone can remember. and yet at still the majority of fans place more weight on a single player than they ever do the HC.
why don’t people understand this: your head coach is so, so, SO much more important than any one, or two, or even three players in 99.9% of cases. yet when the team loses a disu, or an isaiah taylor, or a cam ridley it’s like, “shit, that’s a really big deal!” but then when you replace a top ~5 coach with a guy who shouldn’t even be a HC at this level people are like, “now hold on, let’s not jump to any conclusions, let’s just wait and see what he can do.” why is that?
i mean whenever this job has opened up in the past, not a single person has said, “let’s go hire (anyone even remotely close to RT as a coach).” it’s like, “let’s get jay wright, or billy donovan, or Coach Cal!” for some reason the pedigree of the HC matters when we need one, but then once we hire a guy who is proven to not be able to do this job, suddenly we throw his CV out the window and just assume/predict the best. well, i say “we” when i really mean “a whole bunch of y’all”. i understand the importance of a coach; i do not understand why so many other sports fans don’t.