NBA Building Cardinals

Chapter 7 The Construction Head Coach
Looking at the people running back and forth on the field, Liu Rui felt dazed and slightly confused.

The salary cap policy introduced by the league is reasonable, but Liu Rui didn't pay much attention to these things as a college coach in his previous life.

The first year of construction for the Bobcats, if a sufficient salary cap is given, then such a brand new team is not insignificantly attractive to players.

In the second tier of other teams, come here to challenge the leading star.

And for players who have a contract year but may not be able to get a renewal, it is a good place to brush up their statistics.

Marginal players who are unable to play can also get more playing time so that they can have a platform to prove themselves.

For the team's starting game for the new season, Liu Rui has an idea in mind, but it still needs to be verified in the preseason.

Because this is a crazy decision, a decision that changes a player's entire career! !
Liu Rui is very clear that he is more like a "constructive" head coach.

I don't have the tactical literacy and team discipline of "Carlisle", and I prefer free basketball.

While protecting the players' careers as much as possible, the potential and role of the players are developed to the greatest extent, and the players can play a pleasant basketball atmosphere on the court.

This is what the later generations of "Cole" have done to the extreme. Although it is because the personal abilities of many of his stars are too outstanding, Cole is definitely one of the two best construction coaches after Zen Master.

Although there is suspicion of picking Mark Jackson's peaches, but if what Jackson molded was the body, then what Cole instilled was the soul.

As a representative of academic coaches, Carlisle pays more attention to skills, tactics and team discipline, and arranges tactics with defense as the focus.

Among them, the representative of the constructive head coach is the famous Zen master "Phil Jackson".

In the previous life, he often sat on the sidelines and watched the players adjust their status on the field, rarely used timeouts, and was ridiculed by people for sitting meditation on the sidelines, hence the name Zen Master.

It is also the most discussed head coach in later generations. Many people think that Zen Master can become the coach with the most championships in NBA history entirely because he met "Kobe" and "Jordan".

And Jackson is also the head coach with the highest winning percentage in NBA history. (Corner cattle don't count.)
It is also the sixth thousand-win coach in NBA history, and of course the one who called the least timeout among all thousand-win coaches.

In later generations, many people believed that Jackson's success was due to the fact that there were always superstars under him.

The triangle offense "invented and flourished" by Jackson is even more of a superstar singles tactic. Jackson, who left the superstar, is just an old man sitting on the sidelines and meditating.

Although Zen Master's tactical literacy and ability to adapt on the spot are indeed open to question, tactics are not Jackson's strong point.

As the greatest constructive head coach in history, the great thing about Zen Master is that he can screw the players together well and develop the personal abilities of the players to the greatest extent.

History has proved many times that the biggest difficulty for the star newspaper group is the distribution of ball rights among each other.

This point can be well presented whether it is the first year when the Big Three of the Heat made up in the previous life, or the Los Angeles cooperation between Howard and Kobe.

However, even when the conflict between Kobe and O'Neal has escalated to the bright side, Zen master still led the Lakers to win three consecutive championships.

It plays a vital role in the construction of the team, whether it is Odom, Grant or draft picks with O'Neal.

In the later selection of Shark Bynum, there is a shadow of Jackson in it.

Rodman once said in his previous life: "What kind of bullshit triangle offense, isn't it just giving the ball to Jordan for singles?"

In fact, the essence of the triangle offense is not to allow Jordan to force singles when he is double-teamed, but to ensure that he can complete singles one-on-one every time.

In fact, the key has already been pointed out here. The core of the triangle offense is to obtain the offensive space and ensure the formation of a one-on-one strong one-to-one opportunity on the field.

Everyone watching the Bucks game can find that Coach Budenholzer's philosophy is to allow everyone to try their best to get undefended opportunities to complete scoring.

And Phil Jackson believes that in the high-intensity playoffs, it is impossible to have a true open shot.

At this time, you might as well create a situation where superstars eat one-on-one. Anyway, he has Jordan, Pippen, Kobe, O'Neal, and Gasol.

When he was in the Lakers, O'Neal's godfather watched the game and yelled at Zen Master: "Give the damn ball to Shaq!"

The Zen master replied coldly: "Your job is to talk nonsense here. My job is to give your son the ball when there is only one person defending, and then watch your son dunk."

And whether it is "Jordan" and "Rodman" in the early stage, or "Kobe" and "O'Neal" in the later stage, it has never been a fuel-efficient lamp.

Rodman doesn't say much, Jordan is called an old hooligan by people, Kobe's arrogance and stubbornness, O'Neal's arrogance and poisonous tongue.

In this case, Jackson was able to get along well with them, and he convinced the basketball god "Jordan" on the court, and even said the classic saying "If my head coach is not Zen Master, I will choose to retire".

This in itself is a kind of ability, and the disagreement between generals and coaches has long been a major problem in the NBA. Neither Sloan in the Jazz era nor Rivers in the Celtics era failed to solve this problem well, causing him to leave the game hastily.

This is also the main reason why many famous coaches in the NCAA are not willing to come to the NBA to coach. (There are still different opinions on why the classic old coach K is unwilling to come to the NBA to coach.)
In recent years, with the retreat of Zen Master, there are fewer and fewer constructive coaches. League coaches pay more attention to team discipline, whether it is Mavericks coach Carlisle or Jazz coach Schneider.

Or it is a team coach like Budenholzer, Atkinson, and Wharton, who pays attention to equal appearance and everyone has a chance.

In this case, in addition to the Warriors coach Cole who is still struggling, there is also a Thunder coach "Donovan" who has been discussed in recent years.

Donovan and Cole are definitely the two best constructive head coaches in recent years since Zen Master. They don’t have the tactical concept of ghosts (Cole’s revised elevator door tactic was banned by the league in the 19th season.

This is also the reason why Bell publicly contradicted Cole many times in the Warriors team in his previous life and was banned from the team. He was too arrogant.

Compared with Cole, Donovan is definitely a purebred construction bishop, and his Buddhist teaching style is even higher than that of a Zen master.

It is often seen that the team was beaten to a 10-0 spurt, but Donovan remained unmoved off the court, and even took a couple of sips from the water glass beside him.

Sometimes Westbrook, who was so anxious on the court, kept looking back at Donovan, and couldn't believe that a timeout was not called at this time.

In the case of limited tactical ability, in the 2015 season, Thunder general manager Sam Presti still announced the appointment of Donovan as the team's new coach.

You must know that he has never had the experience of coaching an NBA team before this.

It is because Donovan is the best coach at shaping a talented team.

As early as in college, Donovan used the twin towers of Noah + Horford as the base, together with Brewer, Taurian Green and Humphrey, to create a very talented team with unlimited rotations and give full play to the team's own attributes.

Or the growth of Durant and Westbrook are both indispensable to Donovan.

The Thunder's infinite defense is similar to that of the Warriors Cole and the Zen Master during the Bulls period.

And in the first season when Donovan took over from Brooks to coach the Thunder, he defeated the Mavericks led by Carlisle and the Spurs led by Popovich in the first two rounds of the playoffs, leading the team all the way to the Western Conference Finals.

Although his on-the-spot command has been criticized repeatedly, this cannot conceal his brilliance. After all, there is a specialization in the arts, and no one is perfect in this world.

Whether it's the famous coach Jackson, the mad scientist Nelson, or the cardinal Auerbach, or the pick-and-roll maniac Sloan who has never had a championship in his life, they all have fatal weaknesses.

So even if he did it all over again, Liu Rui never thought of being the No. 1 coach in the NBA, because Liu Rui knew very well that even if he could predict the future, it would be difficult to surpass Carlisle, Popovich and other old guys in terms of tactical quality.

In this case, it is better to give it a go in the field that I am best at. Maybe the NBA can really be turned upside down by me. After all, I am only 31 years old now...

(End of this chapter)