i rate a coach by how well he does with what he has, not by how many games he wins. if a coach could take the charlotte bobcats to play .500 ball, and make the playoffs this year, he should be hands down the coach of the year.
i think sometimes just a change in scenery (such as a coach being fired and a new one being put in) can help players a little bit. when byron scott was fired last year, the nets all of a sudden got better. was it because of lawrence frank? i think maybe a little, but mostly it was probably just that there was a change. kidd, jefferson and martin were playing just fine with byron scott the year before he got fired (they won the eastern conference), so what happened, did he all of a sudden become a bad coach or they all of a sudden stopped playing well with him as a coach? i dont think so. i think you just sometimes need change to remotivate yourself and maybe rejuvenate some energy. i really dont think that lawerence frank was necessarily a better coach than scott, even though it may seem that way. i wonder if frank had initially been the coach, and the netes started playing badly, and scott replaced him, maybe people would be saying that it was becase the players were responding to scott more, and that scott was the better coach.
i have a strong hunch that herb williams, if given a contract extension, will not produce what new yorkers want him to. he'll just be another coach that got fired before his contract was up and change was necessary because he wasnt doing the job well.
actually, in that sense, i think phil jackson is a very smart guy. he realizes that there's only so much a coach can do. he knows that if he commes to the knicks now, he wouldnt be able to help much, and its not him, even the greatest coach in the history of the nba wouldnt be able to save the knicks right now. phil knows that if the situation is bad, he wont get involved. look at what happened in new jersey, scott got a bad reputation, frank got a lot of credit. the reality: scott might even be the better coach. but, the situation and circumstances and the crazy media can twist things around and make somoene look great when they arent or make someone look bad when they're good. phil jackson never puts himself in bad situations where he can get the butt end of the media's thrashing.