The Forgotten Pop at the Top

An article from ESPN.com's Marc Stein:

It's not often in this players' league that a Christmas Day menu is so heavy on coach-generated anticipation.

It's stranger still to consider that Kobe Bryant playing against Shaquille O'Neal, for just the third time in their careers, could be relegated to a secondary spectacle, with the two greatest coaches in Lakers history resuming their own acrimonious rivalry in the same game.

It's Phil Jackson vs. Pat Riley, on top of Kobe vs. Shaq III, preceded by a tasty San Antonio at Detroit rematch with a coaching angle of its own. So it's in that spirit of X-and-O overload that we zoom in on all four coaches working Christmas.

It's in that spirit that we rank them, actually.

If, say, your faithful correspondent were granted a new NBA franchise as a holiday gift, along with the right to pick the coach from Sunday's lineup, this would be my order of preference:

1. Gregg Popovich, San Antonio Spurs
It's funny. He's almost never mentioned in the same sentence as the holy trinity of coaches, who are purportedly worth 10 extra wins a season to their teams: Phil, Riles and Larry Brown.

It's funny because Gregg Popovich is better than all of them, and his coaching is only part of it.

Pop is the whole organizational package. He hasn't merely completed a storybook rise from small college coach to ring-worthy strategist in the big leagues. More than any of his peers, he has created a culture: Pop's culture. The Spurs, as a community, are unselfish, stable, humble, progressive, confident and, in what generally ranks as an NBA impossibility, controversy free. Everything in San Antonio is done in the manner Popovich demands, and everyone wants to do it that way.

Starting with Tim Duncan.

Popovich won Duncan's unwavering support quickly and ranks as a big reason why Duncan elected to stay with the Spurs after flirting with a free-agent move to Orlando in 2000. There were doomsday fears at one stage that the Spurs might even have to leave their loyal fan base and find a bigger market if they couldn't get enough voter support to erect a new arena and then convince Duncan to stay. They wound up getting the new building and the crucial commitment from Duncan to affix himself to Pop, giving San Antonio the player-and-coach core that the franchise needed to assemble three different title teams in the past seven seasons.

There's more. Spurs vets and now even outside free agents routinely sign contracts for less money than they could earn elsewhere because they want to be a part of Pop's culture, making it easier for management to keep strengthening Duncan's supporting cast. You will also never hear that management team, led by general manager R.C. Buford, tout its cutting-edge scouting department or its recent string of great late-round draft picks. Pop is more apt to trot out his well-worn jokes about being sent back to Division III Pomona-Pitzer if the Spurs hadn't been lucky enough to win the 1997 draft lottery and the right to draft Duncan.

No question: San Antonio has been exceedingly fortunate over the past two decades, winning the Duncan and David Robinson lotteries. Right up there, though, is the good fortune that made Popovich a Spur. He arrived as an assistant to Larry Brown in 1988 with no NBA experience. With all the maturity and security he has amassed, Pop has become a better coach than Brown, willing to adapt to unorthodox talents such as Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker instead of forcing his will on them Larry-style.

Factor in everything else Pop brings to a program and he has to be No. 1.

2. Phil Jackson, Los Angeles Lakers
When the guy with nine rings can't place higher than the second slot, you know it's a tough crowd.

Of course, it's not a massive gulf at the top.

How could there be, after everything Jackson has achieved? His role in the first six titles with Chicago will always be diminished, in spite of his ability to get three rings' worth of dependability out of a loony Dennis Rodman, but there's no discounting what Jackson has achieved in Los Angeles after the breakup of Michael Jordan's Bulls.

Jackson helped preserve the perpetually shaky Shaq-and-Kobe union for five more years and made them fruitful ones, chaperoning the feuding superstars to three championships after multiple failures. Jackson is also forcing us already, with a 9-3 record in December, to treat the thinnest team of Zen Men ever seen as a legit playoff threat.

My main quibble with Jackson is that you can't build a franchise around him like the Spurs have with Pop. The Zenmeister has never connected with management that way. He coaches, entertains the media with his philosophies on life and hoops and occasionally writes a book that causes a stir. That's pretty much his range.

However ...

Under the coaching umbrella, as a man-manager, there's no one better. He got Jordan to trust in mortals. He repeatedly convinced Shaq and Kobe to coexist just long enough, after every crisis, to come away with three rings in a row. He's now in charge of a team that starts Smush Parker, Brian Cook and Chris Mihm and somehow sports a 45-win pace ... and makes them believe they can keep it up. Notwithstanding his recent coarse treatment of Kwame Brown -- addressed in a recent edition of the Weekend Dime and which still rankles me -- Jackson has repeatedly proven to be a chemistry master. No matter what you think of his smug side.

Maybe coming back to coach the Lakers isn't as brave as some suggested originally, because Bryant and owner Jerry Buss are bound to get more blame than Jackson if reuniting doesn't restore purple-and-gold glory. Yet it must be noted that anyone waiting for the opportunity to bury Jackson as a coach who can't function without an all-time great or two in the lineup is still waiting for the first hint of an opening.

If that opening never materializes, and these Lakers nab a playoff berth, Jackson just might have a fairy tale for his next tome that tops the Bulls' Scottie Pippen-led 55-27 record in the club's first season post-MJ.

3. Flip Saunders, Detroit Pistons
The cynic would say it's too soon to put Saunders this high, when he has been in Detroit for only a few months.

Me?

I say his start has been that good.

Weren't the Pistons supposed to miss Larry Brown? It's early, sure, but it already looks like you're safe saving any of your grave concern for Brown and what he's facing with the Knicks.

Saunders' offensive creativity, as advertised, has liberated and energized a group that needed a jolt after being dragged through a year of daily drama by Brown. Chauncey Billups first blipped onto Detroit's radar as a free-agent target when his potential as a playoff killer was seen for the first time under Saunders in Minnesota back in 2002. Now that he and Flip have been reunited, Billups has taken his game a notch higher than his NBA Finals MVP best. Rip Hamilton, meanwhile, isn't exactly struggling in a system fueled by player and ball movement.

The true test of what effect Detroit's new offensive bent might have on the Pistons' legendary defense won't come until springtime, yet even the biggest doubter in Motown would have to concede that the transition couldn't be going much smoother at the quarter-pole. Especially when you scan the standings and see that Detroit, as of Thursday morning, had played fewer home games than any other team in the league.

It is strange to see the Pistons outside the top five in points-per-game allowed and field-goal defense. I bet they'll be there by season's end, though. You'd also struggle to find many folks willing to wager that Saunders isn't coaching against Popovich in the NBA Finals come June ... and the calendar hasn't even flipped to 2006 yet.

There is a tangible calmness around the Pistons these days, to go with an ever-present chip on their shoulders -- the in-house belief that they can never rest because the outside world is constantly underrating them. The chip has been there for awhile, but credit Flip for stepping into what many peers considered a no-win situation as Larry's successor and infusing a good bit of calm.

Playoff success is the only thing that has denied Saunders more frequent mention among the coaching elite, but perhaps we should count up how many times he lost a series in Minnesota that the Wolves were supposed to win. I would say none. At least one upset would have certainly helped his standing, but I would also say that playoff success shouldn't be a problem any more. As with the Spurs in the West, it's difficult to envision a scenario where Detroit doesn't get back to the Finals under its new boss, barring a major injury to a Pistons starter. Or a major surprise from the powder keg coached by the last guy on the list.

4. Pat Riley, Miami Heat
If you choose to believe Riley had no intention of taking the Heat back from Stan Van Gundy at some point this season, then you also have to believe that the cleanup slot is where even Riles would rank himself in this foursome.

Why?

Because he said so.

Rewind to the start of the 2002-03 season -- months before the Heat, stripped of a disease-stricken Alonzo Mourning, would finish 25-57 in the worst season of Riley's coaching life -- and you will read and hear a public admission from Riley that endorses a steep drop in his standing among the bench elite.

''I'm just another coach now,'' Riley told our ESPN The Magazine colleague Dan Le Batard at the time. "Take my name off the marquee."

Riley's Miami résumé leaves little need for debate. The best teams in his frustrating decade on South Beach were the last two Heat teams ... both coached to their maximum potential by Van Gundy.

The first, led by Lamar Odom and a rookie named Dwyane Wade, overcame an 0-7 start to finish 42-40 and win a round in the playoffs. Chances are Miami wouldn't have had a shot at trading for Shaquille O'Neal without that success, and Van Gundy overachieved again last season when he took a new Heat team to the brink of the NBA Finals -- just 125 seconds away -- despite injuries that severely sliced into the levels of dominance O'Neal and Wade provided during the regular season.

The eight seasons before those two were often excruciating for the slicked-back former Showtime conductor and not just because of the kidney ailment that robbed Mourning from him. The Heat first suffered four first-round exits in the six times they did reach the playoffs under Riley, whose reflex answer to every postseason failure was pushing the group even harder.

Three years later, Riley is saying similar stuff. He poked fun at himself the other night by acknowledging his long title drought and suggesting that it might not be so wise to push his players so hard all the time, telling The Miami Herald: "I haven't won [it all] in 17 years, so I better think about some adjustments."

Riley's solace is that his new players believe he's still the guy who won a championship in 1988. That at least gives him a chance to bring cohesion to an overloaded roster that pretty much no one outside of Miami likes.

That said, I'm not one of those folks who says Riley has to win his fifth coaching ring this June to get his name back on the marquee. Getting the Heat past Flip's Pistons and into the NBA Finals will do it for me.

Of course, Riley has to do that just to prove that he's a better coach for the Heat than Van Gundy.

-Marc Stein

My own thoughts? Completely the same.