More Than 800: Why Carlisle is ‘Almost’ a Hall-of-Fame Coach
Is Dallas Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle a Hall-of-Fame coach just because he recently won his 800th game?
Of course not. But it doesn’t hurt. Of the 15 coaches ahead of Carlisle on the all-time wins list, nine of them are already in the Hall of Fame. Two of them — Gregg Popovich and Doc Rivers — are still coaching, and something tells me both will get in once they’ve called it quits.
As I project Carlisle’s chances, I look for common denominators, especially with the 15 coaches ahead of him. One of those is NBA titles. Carlisle is one of those rare coaches to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Twelve of his fellow coaches in the 800-win club has at least one title. But winning a title isn’t a pre-requisite to getting in the Hall of Fame.
Don Nelson tops the all-time win list with 1,335 wins, but he never won a title as a coach (he did win five as a player). Neither did Jerry Sloan (1,221). But they’re both in the Hall of Fame. The other three coaches in the Top 16 with no titles? Rick Adelman, Cotton Fitzsimmons and George Karl. But none of them are in the Hall of Fame.
Plus, there’s one NBA coach with a title that isn’t in the Hall of Fame, and you know him — former Mavs head coach Dick Motta. He won his title with Washington.
That feels a little random, right? What makes Nellie and Sloan better than Adelman, Fitzsimmons, Karl and Motta? Motta won a title. Adelman, Karl and Sloan coached in at least one NBA Finals. Nelson and Fitzsimmons never did.
Did playing careers help? They’re not supposed to, but … Nellie and Sloan both played in the NBA before embarking on coaching careers. And that might make some sense until you realize that both Adelman and Karl played in the league, too.
Nellie was considered an offensive innovator. He pioneered the ‘point-forward,’ he built the ‘Run-TMC’ offense in Golden State (named for Tim Hardaway Sr., Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin) and, of course, swung the deal for Dirk Nowitzki, forever changing the way the game looks at 7-footers.
Sloan built a winner in Utah, not the easiest location in the NBA to build a winner. He coached two players, Karl Malone and John Stockton, who turned the pick-and-roll into NBA art, and everyone tried to copy that piece of art (remember when the Mavs drafted Randy White, who was supposed to be the ‘next’ Malone, mostly because he also went to Louisiana Tech?). Unlike Nellie, who loved his offensive show, Sloan loved his system, and it worked for two generations of players.
Thing is, Adelman, Karl, Motta and Fitzsimmons had their own way of looking at the game and made their own impact, too. So trying to parse Carlisle’s Hall of Fame chances from comparing Nellie and Sloan with Adelman, Karl, Motta and Fitzsimmons feels like a snipe hunt.
So, how about I just assess Carlisle on his own? Because my gut instinct tells me he’s very nearly there.
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His apprenticeship was an extensive one, but it was fruitful. As a player he was exposed to the legend of Red Auerbach. As an assistant coach he worked for Hall of Famers Bill Fitch, Chuck Daly and Larry Bird. Then, as a head coach he led the Detroit Pistons to two straight Central Division titles before he was fired. He then led Indiana to a Central Division title and reached the Western Conference Finals, where his former employer, the Pistons, eliminated him.
It was a great three-season run to start his career, but the bloom came off the rose for a few years before the Pacers finally fired him after the 2006-07 season.
Once Carlisle joined the Mavericks, the resume beefed up. He led the Mavs to a division title in 2009-10, and then to the NBA title the following season, fueled by Nowitzki’s incredible playoff run. Many will credit Nowitzki with that title, and he certainly deserves it. But remember what Carlisle used to call his offense back then? ‘Flow?’
Yeah, ‘Flow.’ It’s not ‘do-what-you-want,’ of course. There are sets and there are rules. But what happens after the sets is up to the players, and while that sounds like there’s no guidance from the coach, that’s not the case. It’s just that much of that guidance comes before game-time, with Carlisle and his players fine-tuning that during the game (and defenses getting frustrated with not knowing what’s going on).
It's about preparation and instinct. No one ran the offense better than Jason Kidd, the point guard for those 2011 champions.
The ‘Flow’ rose at a time when the pick-and-roll was prevalent in the game. But as Carlisle’s assistants took their own head-coaching jobs — Terry Stotts in Portland, Dwane Casey in Toronto and Detroit and Stephen Silas in Houston — they’ve carried the ‘Flow’ with them. Casey told the Dallas Morning News that half of the NBA uses some concepts from Carlisle’s offensive philosophy. They just call it something different.
In fact, Carlisle apparently calls it something different now, too: ‘Pace.’
The offense is now in the hands of Luka Doncic, who like Kidd has a high basketball IQ. Doncic has a teammate in Kristaps Porzingis, another 7-footer who is hard to define, but one could say he’s a second-generation Nowitzki.
And Carlisle now has the tools to do the final thing, I think, to make him a lead-pipe lock Hall-of-Famer.
Make another Finals run, with a completely different set of players, including two stars heading into their primes, using an offensive philosophy that evolves the way Carlisle plays a piece on the piano.
Do that, and my gut tells me the deserving Rick Carlisle is even more of a shoo-in.
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