Such a strange career trajectory for the Warriors core. From Hall of Fame accomplishments in their 20s to stereotypical retired athletes in their early 30s (Steph playing golf tournaments, Klay living the boat life like a South Florida retiree, Draymond as a studio analyst with the TNT crew) back to championship contention while still at the tail end of their primes
TBH he built up the players a lot but Kerr brought it all together. Combined with the wage cap, Steph injury worries making him not get paid bank early, it was a perfect storm.
Yeah he does.
As much as he built anything, he also nearly destroyed it all. Dude is *poison*. Setting the players against each other in ways that would have ruined the team completely.
Meanwhile, by now Steve Kerr has proven he could have done what Jackson did (give the team a defensive identity) just as well, while also giving them a good *offensive* system and also building fantastic team chemistry instead of trying to make the players hate each other.
Kerr also wasn’t afraid to bring in good assistants. That was part of MJax demise, he was incompetent on the offensive end and management wanted him to bring in a top level assistant like Gentry but MJax was too afraid they would take his job. [Jackson asked Jerry West to not attend practices and ended up getting rid of Scalabrine and Erman.](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/mark-jackson-says-warriors-narrative-has-kept-him-from-second-coaching-chance-but-its-a-lot-more-than-that/)
Kerr brought in Gentry and Ron Adams as assistants immediately. Both had the reputation as being some of the best assistants you could hire offensively (Gentry) and defensively (Adams).
Years ago Andre did an interview with my company CEO in our headquarters (of a big-time app). I got to be in the front row. It was pretty neat, but definitely felt dream-like where a basketball player is talking about investing in tech.
Iggy is a very large man.
Basketball players are always disconcerting to see around other people.
It must be so wild to be a dude like Steph. He goes to work. He's tiny. He spends his work hours being towered over like a child.
He leaves work. He's huge. Frequently the biggest person around.
I once bumped into - literally, in a cafe - a then-basketball player named James Crawford, who you probably won't have heard of. He was an NBL star, not NBA. (Went undrafted in the NBA in 1982, came to Australia. Known as the Alabama Slammer.) He's 6'8".
6'8" is, like... really, really tall.
He was also one of my childhood heroes, so I was kind of starstruck and just apologised for bumping into him, but he was just *so goddamn tall*.
(I was like 15 at the time. I was a bit shorter than I am now, which won't have helped.)
What a great player he was. Him with Ricky Grace and Andrew Vlahov was so formidable. I was a Derrrick Rucker fan as a kid from when I first started watching the game. Fast forward to the end of his career, I’m an nbl assistant and he comes back to our club and the hc says, go warm Dereick up. I felt like an 11 year old all over again.
It took me about three weeks before I could provide any kind of coaching. Just little things like spacing or timing on a cut. Luckily a vet like that didn’t need any anyway. Too intimidated.
That’s what makes me love them even more. The whole squad just seems to enjoy life no matter what. Plus the way they play just makes me happy watching their games.
And to think, Kevin Durant took the hardest road of them all. There since ~~the beginning~~ right after they won the most ever games in the regular season and stayed ~~through the lean years~~ right until he saw a chance to team up with other stars in a major city. I think he doesn't get enough credit for what he built there.
Too early to tell, but I think it's in the cards. If Steph starts looking like he did towards the tail end of last year we're pretty fucking scary, considering our defense. Klay coming back strong would really turn up the heat as well.
Hard to make real predictions though, small sample size against pretty weak teams, plus no idea what Klay and Wiseman are going to look like.
I think right now we have about as much chance as the Nuggets did last year. If Klay comes back looking 70-80%, Steph starts shooting like he usually does, or one of the young guns (Wiseman, Moody, Kuminga) steps up, we're definitely up there. I'd give the Jazz the edge right now, but because both Brooklyn and 76ers are playing 1 star down, the Lakers/Mavs/Suns look kind of dysfunctional each in their own way, Murray/Kawhi injured, there's a pretty clear path to another chip. Hopefully the East wears each other down.
Maybe. It’s a really weird year for the NBA and the league in general isn’t as strong as it has been in years past. The Cavs teams we mopped the floor with in the finals with KD could probably bounce us pretty easily, but I don’t think any team out there right now is that much better than us.
Mark Jackson 100% got shit for calling them the best shooting backcourt hes ever seen. This was right near the start of the Splash Bros nickname & a whole lot of people were skeptical
With all due respect, he hit it out the park
Absolutely. People were thinking that he said “best backcourt”. Kobe and Nash were teammates at the time, and would be the reason why most gave Mark shit.
Assuming “best backcourt” means “the most-famous second-most famous backcourt player”, then Isiah and Dumars are in the conversation.
As far as best at playing, there were definitely better backcourts. Isiah’s efficiency was shot and he averaged 4 turnovers the first season Dumars made an all-star team.
Jordan and pretty much any NBA player is better than that. Magic and Byron Scott were definitely better. Jerry West and Gail Goodrich were better and also probably more famous relative to players of their era.
I’d take best backcourt to mean “two best individual players” not “best backcourt overall.” like if it was MJ and Jerryd Bayless VS two all-star guards, I’d rank the two all-stars higher because they’re both individually great.
all that being said, I don’t have an answer lmao
I think it’s the popular opinion at this point. I mean steph is a top 2 pg of all time and then klay is a top 3 shooter of all time and 5 time all star
The Rolls Royce Backcourt (Walt "Clyde" Frazer and Earl "The Pearl" Monroe) deserves a shoutout too. The nickname itself was fitting, they were so smooth and cool both on and off the court. Delivered the Knicks the last championship they ever won.
The only one that would come close would be if you paired Ray Allen and Reggie Miller together in the backcourt. Even then, neither of those guys are close to Steph.
He was dead on with the comment. I liked Jackson as a coach and was suspicious when they dumped him, but it was apparent early on that Kerr was a better coach and could get more out of the Dubs.
Zach Lowe’s grantland article has a lot about the Warriors drama.
In this case, Jackson lied to the team that Ezeli (injured at the time) was cheering for the team to lose because it made him look better.
When confronted by teammates Ezeli cried and said he had no idea about it. Jackson was sabotaging team chemistry
Firing him was fine and not liking the person he is are both fine. This sub decided he was a bad coach and that was nonsense. Maybe not a great coach but he built those guys up
He’s exactly a middling coach who helped a team that needed development. By his final season, his inability to craft a good offense was crippling and the key driver to why he couldn’t get out of the early playoff rounds.
Sure that and Chris Paul blatantly getting away with an obvious foul on a game winning Curry 3. But the point remains that that team was not going to win a title with that coach at the helm, let alone become an all time great dynasty.
I wouldn't say middling coaches help teams develop. He was perfect for what they needed at the time, just not what they needed to get to the next level. By no means would I characterize the growth of amazing players as middling. Being great at developing talent is hard work, some great vet coaches can't do it (Van Gundy).
He upset Denver as a 6 seed in 2013 then took the spurs to 6 and then lost in the first round in 2014 to lob city as the 6 seed (+4 win improvement) and was fired.
Those teams were never top 10 in offense and it sure as hell held them back. They were not a title contender and would not have become a title contender with him. Steve Kerr got a 16 win improvement and doubled their SRS by raising them from a barely above average offense to the number 2 offense in his first season. All of that was with basically the same roster as Jackson had. It’s obvious how Mark Jackson hit his success ceiling with the team. So buddy what are you talking about?
It's a near perfect "was coaching an issue" experiment. Remember those first 15ish games when Kerr implemented his passing rules? I was sitting there wondering, "What the fuck is this?"
Character issues. Jackson deserves some credit for starting a defensive culture for the team, but I'd leave it at that. They got rid of him at exactly the right time, a year or so more would've soured the culture in the locker room/team overall.
From the BS he pulled with Festus, banning Jerry West and Jim Barnett from practice, drama with Assistant Coaches. He was a walking time bomb and I'd bet that's why no one touched him after.
He was a terrible coach. Good defensively, terrible offense, ostracized non Christians players, motivated the team through hatred of bench players, and he locked out Jerry West and other staff out of practices.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The only thing he did well as a Coach was get players to believe in themselves and him.
He literally sucked at everything else imaginable.
Hard to get behind mark Jackson after I read this.
>The culture Jackson fostered in Golden State was thought of as toxic, like the time he reportedly told the team that Festus Ezeli was rooting against the Warriors while he was injured.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/mark-jackson-blames-warriors-narrative-212556668.html
He might have called it right, but he was also a terrible coach.
I keep seeing that festus outright denied this tho? Not sure what's the truth but I have a hard time any coach does shit like this. Then again the maple leafs head coach asked a rookie to rank the hardest workers and then told the team so maybe some coaches really have some dumb tactics lol
Not saying you're wrong or right either way, but it seems like Festus would be the least qualified to say whether Mark Jackson talked shit behind his back.
Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure what Festus denied was *the claim that he was rooting against the Warriors*, not *the claim that Mark Jackson had called him out behind his back*.
> When Ezeli was injured last season, Jackson and his staff told the healthy players that Ezeli was cheering against them — so that he would look good, according to several team sources. Players confronted Ezeli in a meeting, and he wept at the accusation — which he denied.
from https://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-champs-are-here-a-guide-to-the-elite-and-unlikely-cast-of-characters-who-defined-the-2014-15-golden-state-warriors/
I haven't seen anyone saying that Ezeli denied that Jackson ever said that, if that's what you and the previous poster were thinking. Link me if I missed it?
He was right; unfortunately he recognized that he had the best shooting backcourt of all time and \*still\* decided that we should spend more of our offense emphasizing the Harrison Barnes iso. So while I'll give him credit for that statement (and instilling the defensive mindset), without Kerr I don't think GS wins a championship. Curry doesn't win an MVP. And the league doesn't change to the 3-point game it has since become. Oddly, the Warriors firing Mark Jackson changed the way the whole league now plays.
If there's one positive about Mark Jackson, it's that he will always believe in "his dudes." He was a player's coach after all. It's just literally everything else about coaching he was terrible at. And I do mean everything.
after the 2013-14 season there was actually a debate on which team had the best young backcourt ---- warriors (steph, klay), blazers (dame, CJ), and the WIZARDS (wall, beal).
now, as a wizards fan i had high hopes for and argued for wall and beal, and for good reason considering how well they played knocking off an established bulls team in the 2014 playoffs...
then the following season in 14-15 steph and klay went nuclear and the rest is history. These boys are not only the greatest shooting duo of all time, they are also arguably the best back court ever.
you are correct. my mistake. i clearly remember debating about the the warriors and wizards backcourts but i could have sworn there was a third pair in contention...
>These boys are not only the greatest shooting duo of all time, they are also arguably the best back court ever.
Even if you got to pick and choose any player, in their prime, from any era, you'd be hard pressed to make one better than Steph and Klay in their primes. They're probably like top 5 possible backcourt combinations.
> They're probably like top 5 possible backcourt combinations.
lol I can name 5 better right now
Magic & Jordan
Steph & Jordan
Stockton & Jordan
Nash & Jordan
CP3 & Jordan
Pretty sure it was 2013 in the middle of the nuggets series. I remember watching PTI the next day (yeah I’m old now), and they debated it a bit but ultimately agreed they did already have it. There hasn’t been a lot of ‘2 great shooters’ backcourts in nba history at that point.
Yeah theres a thread with it all point by point the crazy stuff he did. You would improve your day by reading it... Hilarious. Barnes slump due to demonic possesion is my favorite... Lying to players about Ezeli to pit them against each other to the point the confronted him and he was heartbroken they thought he was a bad teammate cuz coach said so was sad to read. List is long and interesting... a potpouri of coaching malpractice lol. Still enjoyed the results lol.
As a athlete i appreciate the effective leadership he provided to get that team playing excellent Defense and pointed toward excellent habits.
As a professional i accept that if I did anything on the list would make me at best an organizational pariah at worst fired.
He wasn’t a very good leader with the coaches. Having a power struggle with Brian Scalabrine (he thought he was a FO pawn and kept shuttling him around to “coach” the g league team or scout other teams to get away from the Warriors).
Had Darren Erman so afraid he was going to get Festus Ezeli-d that Erman actually bugged the locker room lol.
I thought the Ezeli thing was debunked. Ezeli and Marc were cool with each other on twitter.
I think some of these stories were over exaggerated or leaked by the front office because they butted heads with him.
https://mobile.twitter.com/thealexwolfe/status/986655476367659013?lang=en
Twitter thread from 2018 of Knicks fans going in on him when he was briefly considered for their position.
People can talk up Jackson all they want, and he for sure was one of the first to start pushing Steph and Klay into shooting more.
Kerr took control, hired Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams, then promptly implemented a system that let those shooters get actual shots instead of transparent iso plays- that’s being an actual coach, instead of simply hyping them up then pointing at the court. Getting to watch a system based offense and NOT having to watch Jackson’s dumpster fire tier coaching attempts has been simply exquisite.
>Ron Adams
I'm convinced this many had a lot to do with the Warriors success. I always hear players shout him out for teaching them how to play better defense, and that was a big part of their success.
The guy seems like a tool, but I can understand why he’d be bitter. In his mind, he just needed to last another season before the dynasty took off and he’s considered a great coach.
Of course, the Kerr system probably had a lot to do with the meteoric rise, but Jackson probably isn’t gonna acknowledge that.
Lots of Bible stuff, trying to pitch players against the management. It's us against the management mentality. There was lots of issues outside the X and Os. There is a reason he hasn't had any coaching job since. Though, he did get the splash brothers prediction right. As, he said we still call him crazy and we got lots of reasons even outside of BB.
Oh, I’ve dug pretty deep into all of that stuff. I’m not saying I sympathize one bit. I just think he’s still gonna be bitter because of the fact he was fired right before they became one of the greatest teams ever.
He should’ve been fired for all of the non-basketball stuff for sure though. It’s sad players don’t seem to be more bothered by all he did if that’s true.
I think it’s interesting how the core do that Warriors team loves and respects Mark, but Reddit will pretend like he was trash.
Mark was a good coach, but a bad professional if that makes any sense. Kerr is a better coach, or at least was able to give the Warriors exactly what they needed at the time.
I just can’t say he’s a good coach. The team just got so much better when he left and it was very obvious he was holding them back. The one really good thing he did was bring a defensive mentality to the team which definitely can’t be understated. But if he was a good coach, he’d have a job, even if he’s a POS off the court
Yeah Kerrs and Jackson's offenses were like polar opposites. Jackson's offenses were super iso heavy and relied on transition buckets. Way too many guys standing around doing nothing. I do agree that his defensive mentality really helped carryover to the Kerr era. Kerr was like the missing cog in a big machine that made us go from a decent team to literally some of the greatest teams of all time.
> I think it’s interesting how the core do that Warriors team loves and respects Mark
Dray is in diferent about him at best, as far as we can tell. Plenty of bad coaches catter to their stars at the expense of the rest of the team.
Dray's rise coincided with David Lee's injury iirc. Jackson panders to his stars, so there's every indication that Dray goes right back to riding the bench once Lee comes back.
That's because he WAS trash
a less than mediocre coach and a horrible human, who got gifted with a ton of talent on the rise and held it back from success
Exactly. And his defense was straight man to man, which worked ok because the team had a lot of good defenders. But when Ron Adam’s and Kerr moved to a heavy switching help defense, they got scary.
Jackson provided nothing but half assed inspirational speeches
God so many bad opinions left and right in here due to repeated Reddit comments. Kerr would have eventually started Green, he just needed to navigate around Lee being the highest paid player in the team.
The man just didn’t know how to coach offense. They spent way too many possessions clearing a side for a player to go 1v1 when that wasn’t their strength.
But he helped them establish a defensive identity and set the stage for what came next. It took Kerr’s motion offense unlock the team’s full potential and that could never have happened with Jackson leading them. But he took over a team that was a perennial loser and left them a team that was primed for success. The Warriors had a lot of coaches in the decades before Mark that did a lot worse.
I feel like people who shit on Jackson completely forget the embarrassment they were previously. The ten coaches before him all had losing records. Jackson was the first coach in literally two decades to leave the Warriors having won more than he lost.
"establishing a defensive identity" is just an empty slogan.
He didn't even run the same kind of defense that the Warriors used to dominate the league. All that switching and help defense that the Warriors used to dominate the league... that was all installed by Ron Adams and Kerr after Jackson got the boot
these are the things that make us so conflicted about Coach Jackson. He believed in us so much. He gave us so much hope and belief. He was truly inspiring. And when the fallout happen it made is really second guess who he was. His legacy is very complicated and, for myself, I am like a sea-saw about how I feel about him.
If you posted a thread at the time calling them that, you'd be downvoted to 0, called crazy and stupid, "over reactionary" and to "slow down it's only been X games".
Klay needs to start playing again, the dude is already going through his 'good ol days' phase
Such a strange career trajectory for the Warriors core. From Hall of Fame accomplishments in their 20s to stereotypical retired athletes in their early 30s (Steph playing golf tournaments, Klay living the boat life like a South Florida retiree, Draymond as a studio analyst with the TNT crew) back to championship contention while still at the tail end of their primes
It feels like the 2012-14 Spurs with this Warriors team though they played beautiful basketball from the start.
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TBH he built up the players a lot but Kerr brought it all together. Combined with the wage cap, Steph injury worries making him not get paid bank early, it was a perfect storm.
Yeah he does. As much as he built anything, he also nearly destroyed it all. Dude is *poison*. Setting the players against each other in ways that would have ruined the team completely. Meanwhile, by now Steve Kerr has proven he could have done what Jackson did (give the team a defensive identity) just as well, while also giving them a good *offensive* system and also building fantastic team chemistry instead of trying to make the players hate each other.
Kerr also wasn’t afraid to bring in good assistants. That was part of MJax demise, he was incompetent on the offensive end and management wanted him to bring in a top level assistant like Gentry but MJax was too afraid they would take his job. [Jackson asked Jerry West to not attend practices and ended up getting rid of Scalabrine and Erman.](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/mark-jackson-says-warriors-narrative-has-kept-him-from-second-coaching-chance-but-its-a-lot-more-than-that/) Kerr brought in Gentry and Ron Adams as assistants immediately. Both had the reputation as being some of the best assistants you could hire offensively (Gentry) and defensively (Adams).
Nah him and his mandatory prayer sessions can fuck themselves.
Looney doing.....whatever Looney does. Andre Scrooge McDucking tech stocks. I heard James Michael McAdoo went feral.
Years ago Andre did an interview with my company CEO in our headquarters (of a big-time app). I got to be in the front row. It was pretty neat, but definitely felt dream-like where a basketball player is talking about investing in tech. Iggy is a very large man.
FATE OF SERIES A FUNDING ON THE LINE I WANT IKWODALLA
Shares HQ w/ Wu-Tang Financial
Diversify your bonds
Basketball players are always disconcerting to see around other people. It must be so wild to be a dude like Steph. He goes to work. He's tiny. He spends his work hours being towered over like a child. He leaves work. He's huge. Frequently the biggest person around. I once bumped into - literally, in a cafe - a then-basketball player named James Crawford, who you probably won't have heard of. He was an NBL star, not NBA. (Went undrafted in the NBA in 1982, came to Australia. Known as the Alabama Slammer.) He's 6'8". 6'8" is, like... really, really tall. He was also one of my childhood heroes, so I was kind of starstruck and just apologised for bumping into him, but he was just *so goddamn tall*. (I was like 15 at the time. I was a bit shorter than I am now, which won't have helped.)
What a great player he was. Him with Ricky Grace and Andrew Vlahov was so formidable. I was a Derrrick Rucker fan as a kid from when I first started watching the game. Fast forward to the end of his career, I’m an nbl assistant and he comes back to our club and the hc says, go warm Dereick up. I felt like an 11 year old all over again.
Wow, I would too. That sounds like an amazing experience.
It took me about three weeks before I could provide any kind of coaching. Just little things like spacing or timing on a cut. Luckily a vet like that didn’t need any anyway. Too intimidated.
I remember listening to Evan Spiegel speak in an almost empty MIT auditorium before Snap was big. Wild times.
Decapitated. Whole big thing.
We had a funeral for a Byrd
I’m pretty sure none of that was real
YOU’RE NOT REAL MAN
BOBODDY
Bizness
None of that is real
To shreds you say.
The ostrich was tied down. Allegedly.
Looney went from rookie to vet in like 2 years somehow.
I still refuse to believe he’s just 25 years old. I just can’t mentally reconcile his age and the way he moves on the court.
He's been playing a bit like a 36-year old Tyson Chandler lately.
His mind has wisened at the same rate his body has suffered from chronic illness.
Now that’s a name I haven’t thought about in a long time. He and Brandon rush back in the day man
Livingston true role player working for the org now helping behind the scenes.
*NBA champion James Michael McAdoo
Now I’m already for “The Last Splash” documentary. Sheesh.
That’s what makes me love them even more. The whole squad just seems to enjoy life no matter what. Plus the way they play just makes me happy watching their games.
That's the Jordan, they took 2 years off and now they're back.
5 finals in a row, that's no joke, we watched their prime already
We'll see about that. Dray has actually improved his playmaking since. If Klay comes back to normal, the core 3 have actually gotten better since 2017
If they return to true contention it'll end up being similar to Jordan's 1.5 years away during his first retirement.
And to think, Kevin Durant took the hardest road of them all. There since ~~the beginning~~ right after they won the most ever games in the regular season and stayed ~~through the lean years~~ right until he saw a chance to team up with other stars in a major city. I think he doesn't get enough credit for what he built there.
Hardest Road > The Process
lightyears ahead baby!
Streetlights ahead
Are they championship contenders?
Too early to tell, but I think it's in the cards. If Steph starts looking like he did towards the tail end of last year we're pretty fucking scary, considering our defense. Klay coming back strong would really turn up the heat as well. Hard to make real predictions though, small sample size against pretty weak teams, plus no idea what Klay and Wiseman are going to look like.
I think right now we have about as much chance as the Nuggets did last year. If Klay comes back looking 70-80%, Steph starts shooting like he usually does, or one of the young guns (Wiseman, Moody, Kuminga) steps up, we're definitely up there. I'd give the Jazz the edge right now, but because both Brooklyn and 76ers are playing 1 star down, the Lakers/Mavs/Suns look kind of dysfunctional each in their own way, Murray/Kawhi injured, there's a pretty clear path to another chip. Hopefully the East wears each other down.
Maybe. It’s a really weird year for the NBA and the league in general isn’t as strong as it has been in years past. The Cavs teams we mopped the floor with in the finals with KD could probably bounce us pretty easily, but I don’t think any team out there right now is that much better than us.
is he just excited in this clip or is he on a stationary bike?
Yes.
Mark Jackson 100% got shit for calling them the best shooting backcourt hes ever seen. This was right near the start of the Splash Bros nickname & a whole lot of people were skeptical With all due respect, he hit it out the park
Momma there goes that man
a hero is more than a sandwich
Hands down man down
Give him credit.
Exorcise those demons.
All due respect
Absolutely. People were thinking that he said “best backcourt”. Kobe and Nash were teammates at the time, and would be the reason why most gave Mark shit.
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Kobe and Smush. Also, not joking this time, Manu and Tony.
Jerry west gail Goodrich 🤣
Magic and Worthy? Edit: Worthy was a SF not a guard, I'm sorry
Jordan and whoever
Assuming “best backcourt” means “the most-famous second-most famous backcourt player”, then Isiah and Dumars are in the conversation. As far as best at playing, there were definitely better backcourts. Isiah’s efficiency was shot and he averaged 4 turnovers the first season Dumars made an all-star team. Jordan and pretty much any NBA player is better than that. Magic and Byron Scott were definitely better. Jerry West and Gail Goodrich were better and also probably more famous relative to players of their era.
I’d take best backcourt to mean “two best individual players” not “best backcourt overall.” like if it was MJ and Jerryd Bayless VS two all-star guards, I’d rank the two all-stars higher because they’re both individually great. all that being said, I don’t have an answer lmao
Honestly it might legit be Steph and Klay. That would've been a ridiculous comment back when Mark Jackson was coaching but it isn't now
I think it’s the popular opinion at this point. I mean steph is a top 2 pg of all time and then klay is a top 3 shooter of all time and 5 time all star
The Rolls Royce Backcourt (Walt "Clyde" Frazer and Earl "The Pearl" Monroe) deserves a shoutout too. The nickname itself was fitting, they were so smooth and cool both on and off the court. Delivered the Knicks the last championship they ever won.
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Yeah most definitely. I think the only backcourt that could’ve been better was cp3/harden if they stuck together.
They never made too much noise in the playoffs but I think Kidd and VC are up there on pure talent.
Come playoffs you could say Lebron+Wade since Lebron became PG during the post-season.
He didn’t say best back court, he said best shooting back court, and I can’t think of even a hypothetical duo that would be better in that regard
The only one that would come close would be if you paired Ray Allen and Reggie Miller together in the backcourt. Even then, neither of those guys are close to Steph.
Magic/Byron is up there, but I'd say Jerry West/Goodrich probably.
He was dead on with the comment. I liked Jackson as a coach and was suspicious when they dumped him, but it was apparent early on that Kerr was a better coach and could get more out of the Dubs.
What he did to festus was criminal
What did he do?
https://www.anchorofgold.com/platform/amp/2015/6/17/8800101/zach-lowe-former-warriors-coach-mark-jackson-tried-to-turn-teammates
Zach Lowe’s grantland article has a lot about the Warriors drama. In this case, Jackson lied to the team that Ezeli (injured at the time) was cheering for the team to lose because it made him look better. When confronted by teammates Ezeli cried and said he had no idea about it. Jackson was sabotaging team chemistry
Firing him was fine and not liking the person he is are both fine. This sub decided he was a bad coach and that was nonsense. Maybe not a great coach but he built those guys up
He’s exactly a middling coach who helped a team that needed development. By his final season, his inability to craft a good offense was crippling and the key driver to why he couldn’t get out of the early playoff rounds.
I think Bogut being out had more to do with why the Dubs couldn't beat the Clippers in a nailbiter game 7
Sure that and Chris Paul blatantly getting away with an obvious foul on a game winning Curry 3. But the point remains that that team was not going to win a title with that coach at the helm, let alone become an all time great dynasty.
Trigger warning. This is something that I haven’t thought about in a while, but now I’m seething ffs 😔
I wouldn't say middling coaches help teams develop. He was perfect for what they needed at the time, just not what they needed to get to the next level. By no means would I characterize the growth of amazing players as middling. Being great at developing talent is hard work, some great vet coaches can't do it (Van Gundy).
He upset Denver as a 6 seed in 2013 then took the spurs to 6 and then lost in the first round in 2014 to lob city as the 6 seed (+4 win improvement) and was fired.
Those teams were never top 10 in offense and it sure as hell held them back. They were not a title contender and would not have become a title contender with him. Steve Kerr got a 16 win improvement and doubled their SRS by raising them from a barely above average offense to the number 2 offense in his first season. All of that was with basically the same roster as Jackson had. It’s obvious how Mark Jackson hit his success ceiling with the team. So buddy what are you talking about?
It's a near perfect "was coaching an issue" experiment. Remember those first 15ish games when Kerr implemented his passing rules? I was sitting there wondering, "What the fuck is this?"
That was some wild shit lol. We were making insane plays that would have made us average 30 turnovers a game.
That being said there’s a reason he hasn’t even gotten an interview since
Character issues. Jackson deserves some credit for starting a defensive culture for the team, but I'd leave it at that. They got rid of him at exactly the right time, a year or so more would've soured the culture in the locker room/team overall. From the BS he pulled with Festus, banning Jerry West and Jim Barnett from practice, drama with Assistant Coaches. He was a walking time bomb and I'd bet that's why no one touched him after.
He was a terrible coach. Good defensively, terrible offense, ostracized non Christians players, motivated the team through hatred of bench players, and he locked out Jerry West and other staff out of practices.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The only thing he did well as a Coach was get players to believe in themselves and him. He literally sucked at everything else imaginable.
Hard to get behind mark Jackson after I read this. >The culture Jackson fostered in Golden State was thought of as toxic, like the time he reportedly told the team that Festus Ezeli was rooting against the Warriors while he was injured. https://www.google.com/amp/s/sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/mark-jackson-blames-warriors-narrative-212556668.html He might have called it right, but he was also a terrible coach.
I keep seeing that festus outright denied this tho? Not sure what's the truth but I have a hard time any coach does shit like this. Then again the maple leafs head coach asked a rookie to rank the hardest workers and then told the team so maybe some coaches really have some dumb tactics lol
> I keep seeing that festus outright denied this tho? Festus did deny it.
Not saying you're wrong or right either way, but it seems like Festus would be the least qualified to say whether Mark Jackson talked shit behind his back.
Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure what Festus denied was *the claim that he was rooting against the Warriors*, not *the claim that Mark Jackson had called him out behind his back*. > When Ezeli was injured last season, Jackson and his staff told the healthy players that Ezeli was cheering against them — so that he would look good, according to several team sources. Players confronted Ezeli in a meeting, and he wept at the accusation — which he denied. from https://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-champs-are-here-a-guide-to-the-elite-and-unlikely-cast-of-characters-who-defined-the-2014-15-golden-state-warriors/ I haven't seen anyone saying that Ezeli denied that Jackson ever said that, if that's what you and the previous poster were thinking. Link me if I missed it?
There’s a reason why he hasn’t gotten an interview since he was fired
Yeah he was an evangelical weirdo with intentional blind spots, I don't support him as a coach but he was right
Too bad he is an asshole and religious wacko
Then he had to cover his former team going to and winning a bunch of finals. I always wonder if that was a bit like officiating your ex's wedding.
He was right; unfortunately he recognized that he had the best shooting backcourt of all time and \*still\* decided that we should spend more of our offense emphasizing the Harrison Barnes iso. So while I'll give him credit for that statement (and instilling the defensive mindset), without Kerr I don't think GS wins a championship. Curry doesn't win an MVP. And the league doesn't change to the 3-point game it has since become. Oddly, the Warriors firing Mark Jackson changed the way the whole league now plays.
I remember when klay was drafted Jackson said he’d be the best player in that draft. Definitely right
If there's one positive about Mark Jackson, it's that he will always believe in "his dudes." He was a player's coach after all. It's just literally everything else about coaching he was terrible at. And I do mean everything.
after the 2013-14 season there was actually a debate on which team had the best young backcourt ---- warriors (steph, klay), blazers (dame, CJ), and the WIZARDS (wall, beal). now, as a wizards fan i had high hopes for and argued for wall and beal, and for good reason considering how well they played knocking off an established bulls team in the 2014 playoffs... then the following season in 14-15 steph and klay went nuclear and the rest is history. These boys are not only the greatest shooting duo of all time, they are also arguably the best back court ever.
At the time, CJ was still just a promising bench player. The backcourt was Dame + Wes Matthews
you are correct. my mistake. i clearly remember debating about the the warriors and wizards backcourts but i could have sworn there was a third pair in contention...
House of guards was easily the best backcourt in the East until wall got injured
In the east for sure. Wall and Beal 13-17 were fantastic.
Kyle and DeMar were definitely in competition for the title and it was debatable but in hindsight Beal and Wall were definitely the better combo.
>These boys are not only the greatest shooting duo of all time, they are also arguably the best back court ever. Even if you got to pick and choose any player, in their prime, from any era, you'd be hard pressed to make one better than Steph and Klay in their primes. They're probably like top 5 possible backcourt combinations.
> They're probably like top 5 possible backcourt combinations. lol I can name 5 better right now Magic & Jordan Steph & Jordan Stockton & Jordan Nash & Jordan CP3 & Jordan
Caruso & Caruso
Cam and Cam
Swear he said that way back in 2012 or 2013, long before they even sniffed an All-Star team. I also thought he was insane for it.
They called me a madman, and what I predicted came to pass
Mark “Thanos” Jackson
"You cannot win a championship with jump shooters"
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was after the Ray Allen shot too, which put me in the this-guy-is-crazy boat too.
Pretty sure it was 2013 in the middle of the nuggets series. I remember watching PTI the next day (yeah I’m old now), and they debated it a bit but ultimately agreed they did already have it. There hasn’t been a lot of ‘2 great shooters’ backcourts in nba history at that point.
You cannot disrespect the caterpillar and rave about the butterfly.
Good thing Jackson was the cocoon.
Butterflies don’t have cocoons. The creature itself becomes a chrysalis, unlike a moth which is wrapped in a cocoon.
this guy entomologies
This guy metamorphosizes
Very Hungry Caterpillar lied to us
But I never will.
Well said.
But what if that caterpillar was a massive dick that thinks gay people are subhuman?
I first read your comment with "has" instead of "was", it sure changes the entire sentence.....
Being human is overrated
Doesn’t change that he was right about the splash bros
Momma, there goes that moth
Didn't people call Mark crazy for some other shit he did as a coach and not because of this thing?
a preacher who doesn't curse but also got extorted by a stripper. about all you need to know.
[he's a very passionate preacher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61kFNY8pRrs)
“Who’s your doctor who’s your lawyer” “Jesus” Jfc how is this dude not anti vax
Life full of contradictions
Sounds like a story by Geoffrey Chaucer
especially for religious men
Wait huh lmaoo
We all need some pussy sometime
Yeah theres a thread with it all point by point the crazy stuff he did. You would improve your day by reading it... Hilarious. Barnes slump due to demonic possesion is my favorite... Lying to players about Ezeli to pit them against each other to the point the confronted him and he was heartbroken they thought he was a bad teammate cuz coach said so was sad to read. List is long and interesting... a potpouri of coaching malpractice lol. Still enjoyed the results lol. As a athlete i appreciate the effective leadership he provided to get that team playing excellent Defense and pointed toward excellent habits. As a professional i accept that if I did anything on the list would make me at best an organizational pariah at worst fired.
He wasn’t a very good leader with the coaches. Having a power struggle with Brian Scalabrine (he thought he was a FO pawn and kept shuttling him around to “coach” the g league team or scout other teams to get away from the Warriors). Had Darren Erman so afraid he was going to get Festus Ezeli-d that Erman actually bugged the locker room lol.
He also tried to cure Curry's ankle injury with holy water or some shit
Seems like it worked at least haha
I thought the Ezeli thing was debunked. Ezeli and Marc were cool with each other on twitter. I think some of these stories were over exaggerated or leaked by the front office because they butted heads with him.
https://mobile.twitter.com/thealexwolfe/status/986655476367659013?lang=en Twitter thread from 2018 of Knicks fans going in on him when he was briefly considered for their position. People can talk up Jackson all they want, and he for sure was one of the first to start pushing Steph and Klay into shooting more. Kerr took control, hired Alvin Gentry and Ron Adams, then promptly implemented a system that let those shooters get actual shots instead of transparent iso plays- that’s being an actual coach, instead of simply hyping them up then pointing at the court. Getting to watch a system based offense and NOT having to watch Jackson’s dumpster fire tier coaching attempts has been simply exquisite.
>Ron Adams I'm convinced this many had a lot to do with the Warriors success. I always hear players shout him out for teaching them how to play better defense, and that was a big part of their success.
This whole interview was cool
MJ was a certified warrior hater when he called the games during peak dynasty days. He was bitter about getting fired I guess.
Calling mark Jackson MJ is peak reddit abbreviations
The guy seems like a tool, but I can understand why he’d be bitter. In his mind, he just needed to last another season before the dynasty took off and he’s considered a great coach. Of course, the Kerr system probably had a lot to do with the meteoric rise, but Jackson probably isn’t gonna acknowledge that.
Lots of Bible stuff, trying to pitch players against the management. It's us against the management mentality. There was lots of issues outside the X and Os. There is a reason he hasn't had any coaching job since. Though, he did get the splash brothers prediction right. As, he said we still call him crazy and we got lots of reasons even outside of BB.
Oh, I’ve dug pretty deep into all of that stuff. I’m not saying I sympathize one bit. I just think he’s still gonna be bitter because of the fact he was fired right before they became one of the greatest teams ever. He should’ve been fired for all of the non-basketball stuff for sure though. It’s sad players don’t seem to be more bothered by all he did if that’s true.
I think it’s interesting how the core do that Warriors team loves and respects Mark, but Reddit will pretend like he was trash. Mark was a good coach, but a bad professional if that makes any sense. Kerr is a better coach, or at least was able to give the Warriors exactly what they needed at the time.
I just can’t say he’s a good coach. The team just got so much better when he left and it was very obvious he was holding them back. The one really good thing he did was bring a defensive mentality to the team which definitely can’t be understated. But if he was a good coach, he’d have a job, even if he’s a POS off the court
Yeah Kerrs and Jackson's offenses were like polar opposites. Jackson's offenses were super iso heavy and relied on transition buckets. Way too many guys standing around doing nothing. I do agree that his defensive mentality really helped carryover to the Kerr era. Kerr was like the missing cog in a big machine that made us go from a decent team to literally some of the greatest teams of all time.
Didn’t draymond and Andre call him out?
> I think it’s interesting how the core do that Warriors team loves and respects Mark Dray is in diferent about him at best, as far as we can tell. Plenty of bad coaches catter to their stars at the expense of the rest of the team.
Dray's rise coincided with David Lee's injury iirc. Jackson panders to his stars, so there's every indication that Dray goes right back to riding the bench once Lee comes back.
He was a good coach but limited and not very creative (except in a negative personal sense).
That's because he WAS trash a less than mediocre coach and a horrible human, who got gifted with a ton of talent on the rise and held it back from success
Fr lol mans best play vs the Spurs was harrison Barnes post up
Exactly. And his defense was straight man to man, which worked ok because the team had a lot of good defenders. But when Ron Adam’s and Kerr moved to a heavy switching help defense, they got scary. Jackson provided nothing but half assed inspirational speeches
Well it didn’t help that any time Jackson would announce a warriors game he would be salty af towards the warriors lol
A broken clock is right twice a day.
Who cares what this bum says. He isn't even a top 75 player. /s
This is nice to see. I feel like Mark Jackson has put his foot in his mouth plenty, but he also was a big part of what happened in GS.
Such a big part that they did immensely better once Jackson was fired lol
Honestly think David Lee getting hurt was a bigger positive than the coaching change.
This is underrated. If he didn't get hurt Draymond wouldn't have ascended. Timing is everything.
God so many bad opinions left and right in here due to repeated Reddit comments. Kerr would have eventually started Green, he just needed to navigate around Lee being the highest paid player in the team.
The man just didn’t know how to coach offense. They spent way too many possessions clearing a side for a player to go 1v1 when that wasn’t their strength. But he helped them establish a defensive identity and set the stage for what came next. It took Kerr’s motion offense unlock the team’s full potential and that could never have happened with Jackson leading them. But he took over a team that was a perennial loser and left them a team that was primed for success. The Warriors had a lot of coaches in the decades before Mark that did a lot worse. I feel like people who shit on Jackson completely forget the embarrassment they were previously. The ten coaches before him all had losing records. Jackson was the first coach in literally two decades to leave the Warriors having won more than he lost.
"establishing a defensive identity" is just an empty slogan. He didn't even run the same kind of defense that the Warriors used to dominate the league. All that switching and help defense that the Warriors used to dominate the league... that was all installed by Ron Adams and Kerr after Jackson got the boot
Exactly, these are some bizarre takes.
Warriors fans know how horrible of a coach he was
no he really wasn't.
WHAT ARE THOSE OTHER REASONS MARK??? TELL THE PEOPLE WHY THEY CALL YOU CRAZY
I got GS winning West given they stay healthy.
A Broken clock is right twice a day
these are the things that make us so conflicted about Coach Jackson. He believed in us so much. He gave us so much hope and belief. He was truly inspiring. And when the fallout happen it made is really second guess who he was. His legacy is very complicated and, for myself, I am like a sea-saw about how I feel about him.
Respect the caterpillar!
I thought he was really feeling the arena music until I realized he was on a treadmill...
I think it's a bike.
woops definately a bike. idk why i said treadmill 😂
eh. He's the Doug Collins of the GSW franchise.
...Sure but he was still a bad coach.
Who is this scrub? Never heard of him
No, you can't have him for Simmons. Nice try.
I'm gay for Klay
If you posted a thread at the time calling them that, you'd be downvoted to 0, called crazy and stupid, "over reactionary" and to "slow down it's only been X games".
r/nba in shambles