Mike Brown gets top honors
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Just read a good article over at espn about Mike Brown and his coach of the year honors. I must say that I am guilty of not giving the guy full credit. While he does have LeBron James, he still comes from the Gregg Popovich tree of coaches. He came to the team preaching defense and it has paid dividends. I also really liked one point the article detailed:
A good coach consistently gets his team at least as far as, and sometimes further than, it should go. Period.
And for all the ugly offensive sets the Cavaliers ran during Brown's first three years as coach, he always, without question and without fail, pushed his team further than it should have gone since his arrival in 2005.
In his first year, the Cavaliers went from the draft lottery to pushing the still-powerful, defending Eastern Conference champion Detroit Pistons to seven games in the second round of the playoffs. That Pistons team was a few miscues away from being the two-time defending world champion. There's no way the Cavs should have threatened to win that series. But under Brown, they did.
The next year, the Cavs shocked the basketball world by wiping out Detroit in six games to reach the NBA Finals. Sure, San Antonio swept them like a ball of lint in the title round, but it should have. A coaching staff of Red Auerbach, Phil Jackson, Larry Brown and Pat Riley couldn't have gotten the Cavs two wins in that series.
Last year, Brown led the Cavs to within minutes of beating the eventual champion Boston Celtics in a Game 7 in New England. He went to war with one future Hall of Famer and nearly came out on top against three future HOFers.
And of course this season, Brown's Cavs won a league-best 66 games while putting together the second-greatest home record (39-2) of all time. Do they have the league's most talented roster? High on truth serum, I don't think even one Cavalier would argue that they do.
I think this is an excellent point. Under Silias, the cavs we never able to bring it together. James game was/is still developing. The last year with Silias, 04-05, the cavs had that late season collapse that eliminated them from the playoffs. I really thought Van Gundy was going to win the award, but I am more reserved to see how he handles the pressure of high expectations. Maybe Shaq, being as eloquently as Shaq can be, has a point.
Link to article:
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