Belichick’s record with Brady 244-66 without Brady 53-70

Jan 2, 2021 18:57:21 GMT TheGoodMan19 said:

Vince Lombardi never won anything without Bart Starr. He also took over a Green Bay team that already had much of the talent that would win them titles. Starr, Paul Horning, Jim Taylor, Boyd Dowler, Forrest Gregg, Jim Ringo, Ray Nitschke, Henry Jordan. Would he have turned around a moribund Redskins franchise, who knows? He did break a 14 year losing streak in his one season.

My point about coaching in general. Steve Kerr won coach of the year in a season where Luke Walton coached the team to more wins than he did. They go to a bunch of Finals in a row. The Warriors' best players get hurt and the Warriors finish dead last in the league last season. Meanwhile Walton has also been a disaster as a head coach elsewhere. Pretty sure that Warriors team could've had a sex doll on the bench and would've been just as successful.

Players are just great, you know the talent when you see it.  Players in every sport are considered 'great' while never winning a title.  Barkley, Marino, Ted Williams.  A coach is considered 'great' when he starts winning multiple titles-- which he cannot do without talented players.  

Jordan's teams had better playoff results each year and when Jackson arrived, they won three straight titles.  Credit Jackson, right?  Jordan leaves for two years, the Bulls finish 3rd and 5th in the conference respectively and don't even make the Finals either season.  Jordan comes back for a full season, they trade for another all time great player in Rodman, three more titles.  But it's all about Jackson?  He was there when they finished fifth, and they still had good players.  I wonder what he'd do with a terrible roster?

It goes on and on.  Red Auerbach clearly has one of the greatest basketball minds ever.  The greatest GM in the history of sports, I'll argue that with anyone.  But as a coach, there isn't much to suggest the Celtics needed him as long as they had Russell.  The winning didn't start until they had Russell, and the winning continued after Red stepped down as a coach and Russell was still playing.  So the coaching value add is at least in question.  I know this is sacrilege, I'm a Celtics fan!  That doesn't make anything in this paragraph untrue.    

Sports are a macho playground, the closest thing to actual combat most people will ever experience.  To win in war, you need superior training and superior officers, thus the prevailing wisdom surrounding the importance of 'great' coaches.  But sports are about talent, always have been, always will be.  Red Auerbach, Phil Jackson, Steve Kerr, Bill Belichick, Vince Lombardi, Nick Saban aren't winning championships with the two of us playing for them.  They won because they had great players.  All the coaches have to do is not fuck it up. 

There are good coaches and there are bad coaches.  There are even great coaches, but great coaches are much more rare than people want to admit.  If you have success (you don't even have to win titles everywhere you go, just show considerable improvement at multiple stops), you can make an argument for 'greatness.'  But coaches who fell into a situation with great players, while the coaches have a history of total failure at every other stop, shouldn't automatically be considered great. 

I'm not worried about public perception or how many fans, pundits or hall of famers disagree with me.  The results I mentioned in this post are 100% true and inarguable, and in my opinion, that casts doubt on how important the coaching aspect is to championship legacies.  If the talent is great enough, the coaching only has to be adequate.