Protecting America's Children from Unsound Arguments: Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski "Riley should support coach, not replace him"

For the most part, I enjoy reading Woj. I don't enjoy his work in the aspirational Kelly-Dwyer-is-the-fan-we-all-want-to-be sense which leaves me hunting furiously through the Ball Don't Lie archives but rather with a muted respect for his ability to get Eddy Curry-sized scoops (cf. steaks and Michael Jackson talk with Kobe to Dwyer's Jordan retrospectives).

Still, Woj has earned deserved criticism for valuing his earnest, fiercely held viewpoints over whatever the facts of the situation maybe as any poor soul who had the temerity to click through to his LeBron James mauling knows all too well. Here, in his column imploring Pat Riley to not make a coaching change, he abandons logic:

They’re holding this against Spoelstra too, now. Which is absurd. Somehow, great players need a coach with gravitas, someone who can command respect. Everyone always insists it has to be a former player. No simulators need apply. Only, that logic is forever flawed. Spoelstra worked his way up from a video guy, the way former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Brown had done. If James didn’t respect them, it had nothing to do with their playing résumé. James would never survive under Riley – the old one, anyway – unless he made some dramatic changes in his professionalism.

So here is the claim that Woj is trying to counter: "Great players (i.e. Mr. James) do not respect coaches who've never played the game. No simulators need apply."

Here is Woj's move: "That logic is forever flawed because Spoelstra and Brown (two coaches LeBron arguably respects as much as he respects Soulja Boi's DeShawn Stevenson tribute) worked their way up from being video guys."

Well, Mr. Woj, it's, in fact, your logic which is forever flawed. Take it from me, a man who once squeaked out of a state university with a B.A. in Phil, your logic is flawed forever, flawed eternally, flawed until time becomes an abstraction in the remnants of a post Helio-explosion solar system. Try as you might to bend the facts and the sentences to your will, Phil Jackson is right. Players do not generally respect simulators, that is coaches who are armchair dictators, assuming that videos and play-books tell them all they need to know about sweat, tears and Jacksonian "being in the moment."

Who I would want to coach an NBA team v Mephistopheles' All-Stars for my eternal, corrupt soul:

1. Phil Jackson
2. Larry Brown
3. Pat Riley
4. Hubie Brown
5. Red Holzman

Man, you know I don't need to spell out what 4 of these 5 coaches share. I also probably don't need to tell you Hubie Brown played professionally for 13 games and put up 13 a game while playing stifling defense.

If you've read this far, you are not a simulator.

The Greatest (A Brief Logical Treatise) Part 1

1. The Greatest has to be both aesthetically pleasing and overwhelm advanced statistical metrics.

2. Given premise 1.,  Michael Jordan is The Greatest.

3. Given Premise 1., Kobe Bryant is the best player in the game right now and will go down as the second best shooting guard of all time/Jordan's backup on the All-God team.

Premise 1. is justified via the Magic/Kareem example. Kareem's best Offensive Ratings would shame anybody ever. Yet, Magic is seen as the masthead of the Showtime Champions because even a dying Filipino child who had no intentional states directed towards the formal properties of Basketball could see that what Magic made was beauty. Thus, the man who put the ball in the basket more than anybody ever is neglected and abandoned to shape-up ads.

If you can't see a different vein of that same aesthetically satisfying movement running throughout Kobe and Michael's games, then you do not know Basketball as you should know it.

2. shouldn't need to be elaborated.

3. demands a bit more. We know Chris Paul leads in PER and adj. +/- and probably win-shares. LeBron is usually close behind while Kobe consistently makes it to the top 5 in above metrics, excepting the overrated win-shares when he 's healthy. Because of 1., we generally neglect big men so sorry Timmy, Pau-y and Dwight-y. Chris Paul if he had 3 more inches and made it to Jerry West height could be as visually satisfying as 00-11 Bryant but he isn't. If you can watch LeBron waddle duck footed up the floor, hoist a hideous, wounded jump shot and dribble in awkwardly syncopated patterns, then more power to you. Interestingly enough, Deron Williams comes closer than Dwayne Wade to being mentioned here. Deron's good enough to be Wade's shooting coach and then some.

Don't worry. This is only part 1. These types of things aren't meant to end.