The Players Make the Coach, Not Vice Versa

The Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and Sacramento Kings covet Phil Jackson. More precisely, they covet Jackson's nine championship rings. Larry Brown lingers as a nice consolation prize.

Jackson and Brown are good, maybe even great coaches. However, talent wins, and each benefited from tremendous talent. The media characterizes the Pistons as plucky overachievers, ignoring the talented roster featuring two #2 overall picks (Milicic and McDyess), a #3 overall (Billups), a #4 overall (Rasheed Wallace), a #7 overall (Hamilton), a #10 overall (Hunter) and three other first round picks (Prince, Delfino and Campbell). Jackson won six championships with the most dominant player of his era (Jordan) and three with the most dominant player of his era (Shaq).

These coaches are not miracle workers. They do not resuscitate needy franchises on the brink of disaster, but elevate great teams to a championship level.

The Lakers, the Knicks nor the Kings is a great team. The Lakers have Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom and spare parts. They have nobody to protect the basket and nobody who matches up well with the best players in the Western Conference, namely Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitski, Yao Ming and Amare Stoudamire. The Lakers are a one-star team with two players who need the ball in their hands: Kobe and Odom. They have nobody who moves well without the ball and the closest player they have to a point guard is reserve small forward Luke Walton.

The Knicks are Stephon Marbury's team, and until he stops shooting twenty-plus times per game, his team will never win a play-off round. Besides Marbury and Jamal Crawford, who is more or less a younger, taller Marbury, the Knicks have a team of small power forwards (Malik Rose, Kurt Thomas, Michael Sweetney, Maurice Taylor and Jerome Williams) and injured, high-priced shooting guards (Anfernee Hardaway and Allen Houston).They have no center and the most exciting player on the roster might be former second round pick Trevor Ariza. This team is nowhere near championship-caliber, though their salary cap might suggest differently, as it is the highest paid bunch in the league.

The Kings have the best collection of talent, but they dissembled their prolific, aesthetically pleasing offense in favor of constant pick-and-rolls, and the team s no longer greater than the sum of their parts. In years past, with Vlade Divac, Brad Miller and Chris Webber in the high post and Peja Stojakovic, Jimmy Jackson, Mike Bibby, Bobby Jackson and Hedo Turkoglu shooting jumpers and Doug Christie defending the opponent's best perimeter player, the system elevated each player's level of play. These players are better in the Kings' system, the high-post Princeton-style offense, than in other systems, as Webber and Christie's lethargic play proved this season after mid-season trades. With the in-season moves, made ostensibly to improve its defense-a move which back-fired in the play-offs when the Sonics scored at-will-the Kings negatively impacted their system, as Thomas, Skinner, Williamson and Mobley do not fit the Kings' style.

These moves leave the Kings with no real power forward or shooting guard entering next season. They lack the size inside to battle Duncan, Stoudamire, Nowitski, etc., and have no proven shooting guard, with Maurice Evans and rookie Kevin Martin fighting for the starting spot. And, they still have no back-up for Stojakovic, meaning Head Coach Rick Adelman will again overwork him during the regular season, leaving him fatigued during the play-offs.

These teams have significant wholes, which Jackson cannot remedy. Jackson cannot make these teams strong inside, as they lack an interior presence. He cannot improve the Kings' offense, as they remain one of the highest scoring teams in the league, even with the changes. In New York, he'd find two shot-happy point guards, the exact opposite of point guards whom he has coached in championship runs previously.

Los Angeles, of course, is the best option because Kobe Bryant desperately wants to be the next Michael Jordan. Kobe has the talent to win games almost single-handedly, and Jackson may be able to find a way to channel his energy and talent for the good of the team, possibly by making Odom more of a focal point of the offense. With any luck, the draft may bring a talented newcomer to complement the skills of Kobe, Odom and Caron Butler, and one key free agent signing in the post could put the Lakers right back into contentions.

Sacramento and New York may long for a savior, if only to get a glimpse of a championship ring up close and personal, but Jackson is not the answer for either of these franchises. The answer is better players; players who fit together and provide an answer defensively against the best teams in their conferences. Until the players are in place, Jackson and Brown are just like any other coaches, handicapped in a sense trying to win a championship without a championship caliber team. Players win championships. A franchise must have the talent to win. Jackson would be 2-3 years too late in Sacramento and about a decade too late in New York.

If Jackson lands in LA, and he and Kobe get on the same page, he may be able to work his magic. If Brown leaves Detroit for anywhere, he is crazy, as the Pistons have a young, talented team and Joe Dumars has managed the salary cap well to insure the Pistons continued success for the foreseeable future, regardless of who coaches the team.