The Ringer NBA Show - What If Kyrie Was Right (About Coaching)? | The Answer

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

Chris is joined by ESPN’s Kirk Goldsberry to discuss the shift in coaching style in the NBA during the player empowerment era, looking at Steve Nash’s role as head coach with the Nets as a prime example (04:00). Later, Chris is joined by Musa Okwonga of 'Stadio’ to discuss the difference in modern NBA coaching and the big coach energy that is still around in the Premier League (25:00). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Kirk Goldsberry and Musa Okwonga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They don't have guests. They have contestants. Ten Questions with Kyle Brandt is the perfect game show and talk show hybrid that you need. Check out 10 questions exclusively on Spotify. Hello and welcome to The Ringer NBA show. It's The Answer. I am your host, Chris Ryan. And this week we are asking the question,

What if Kyrie Irving was right? Parentheses about coaching. I think that we can still probably find some issues of Kyrie's takes in the past. But I was thinking about this Kyrie Irving. You guys remember in October when Kyrie were talking about, you know, maybe we don't need a coach. Maybe Steve Nash is going to be more of a collaborator with me and Kevin Durant. Maybe sometimes Jacques Vaughn will call plays. Maybe I'll call plays.

Maybe I'm the coach tonight. Maybe Katie's the coach tonight. And I was thinking about this with Ryan Saunders firing in Minnesota over the past weekend. Chris Finch took over for Ryan Saunders. And I think for, I would honestly say, like 80% of people, people who are basketball fans, maybe less. They don't know who either of those guys are. They've never heard of Ryan Saunders.

They've never heard of Chris Finch. No disrespect to either of their CVs, any of their accomplishments. It's not about that. It's really more about the personalities. And I kind of was combining those two stories. I was thinking back to what Kyrie was saying in October. I was thinking about what happened with Minnesota this week. And I started wondering whether or not we're exiting the era of the big name coach,

whether the era that I grew up in in the 90s, where it seemed like every other team had this sort of outsized, huge character who had been with the team for more than five years and who completely defined the style of play, whether it was Phil Jackson and the Triangle or Pat Riley and Hard Nose Defense, or Don Nelson and Nellie Ball. And there were all these different aesthetic varieties of basketball happening in the NBA. I feel like now more or less, you know,

A lot of teams play very similarly, especially on offense. They hunt for threes. They space the floor. They try to switch a lot. And in that, I feel like we're seeing a lot of the same kind of coaches. Not necessarily technocrats. Like, I don't want to color everybody with the same brush, but a lot of guys who are really good at installing and teaching and iterating on the same

style of offense that we're seeing all over the league. And so when that's the case and when you have Superstar Play, players who are increasingly taking shorter contracts to have more leverage over their teams, and what we kind of casually refer to as the player empowerment era, but I think it's just really like a sea change in the way the contracts are being structured. The coaches have less and less control over what you're seeing on the floor, how guys are conducting themselves, and really, like, they're along for the ride. And you see that across the league. You know, there are a few exceptions to this rule, whether it's Steve Kerr in Golden State, Greg Popovich in San Antonio,

Eric Spolstra in Miami, but you hear more rumblings now about a guy like Brad Stevens or somebody like Mike Budenholzer who's won like 120 games over the last two years than you normally would, I think, maybe in decades past. And I think part of that is down to the fact that coaches are more cog than they are wheel. At least that's the perception. And I wanted to talk to a couple of really smart people about whether or not I was onto something or not. And to explain the Ryan Saunders Chris Finch thing, but also to,

investigated whether Kyrie had a point about what the role of coaching is in the modern NBA. So I talked to ESPN's Kirk Goldsbury and Stadios, Musa Oquanga, from the Ringer FC podcast. And I wanted to talk to these two guys about the role of coaches both in the NBA, but also just the ideas that we have about coaching. And I talked to Musa about that. And we talked a lot about managers in the Premier League, because I think that there's a really interesting contrast right now between the NBA and the Premier League. So let's get into the answer this week.

All right, I'm joined by my old Grantland buddy, Kirk Goldsbury. from ESPN, Kirk has a new YouTube series called Signature Shots that you should watch. He's offering up, he's also like, you are a cartographer, are you not? I am a carthographer. I got a graduate degree studying in cartography as a matter of fact. And you're applying that deep well of knowledge of cartography to these beautiful maps that you're doing now where it's like, it looks like a map of the United States, but in fact is a map of basketball terminology and ideas, sent me one. I love it so much. People should check those out. They can find that on your Instagram, right?

They can find it on my Instagram, but the golden hexagon.com is the best place to look at. But it's a map of the basketball court, and I annotated about 500 or 1,000 place names like Jordan shot over Russell or Ray Allen shot in 2013 are marked, their geographic locations, which they are Chris in my head. It is. Kirk, I wanted to have you on today because I wanted to talk to you about coaches, because I know you used to work for the San Antonio Spurs. you had the pleasure of working for one of the most iconic coaches in NBA history and Greg Popovich. And, you know, as I discussed in my intro to the pod this week, I'm noticing that we are kind of exiting the era of the big coach. I feel like, you know, if you and I, we're roughly the same age, if we go back, say that like just to pick a season at random, like the 95-96 season, a season from our youth,

here are some of the coaches patrolling the sidelines back then. Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Larry Brown, Lenny Wilkins, Jerry Sloan, Rick Adelman, Mike Fratello, and Rudy Tom Johnovich. And I don't know about you, but if I remember back to that era, those guys seem larger than life. And that's not to say that Chris Finch won't become a larger-than-life figure in the NBA or that Mark Daniels won't become a huge figure in the NBA. in the NBA coaching sphere. But it does feel like big coach energy is having a crisis right now. What do you think of that idea?

I love it. I wish I would have come up with it. But I think we do have a sort of big coach energy crisis. And I've written extensively about the way the league has changed, as you know. But this is something I haven't really touched on. So I'm very eager to talk about it with you and get your thoughts. But I think I want to get weird with my answer right off the bat. It's pretty cool with that.

Absolutely. Okay. So just as a. life reflects art, Chris, I think basketball reflects our culture. I think you would agree with that. And I think a lot of what you're talking about can be explained by broader changes in the world, particularly the shifting sort of ethos around what leadership looks like as you and I have gone from young kids to grownups. The idea is like father knows best isn't quite as popular. Yeah. The patriarchy is taken a bit of a hit, if you haven't noticed. It's not dead, but it's

taken a hit. And some people, one of my fair writers is George Laykoff, who wrote a book called Moral Politics, and he uses these contrasting models of parenting. I promise you I'd get weird. I'm going to bring it back. On the one hand, he says we have this stern father model of parenting, which values discipline.

It argues that children learn through reward and punishment. Remember running suicides in like basketball practice. And he has famously argued that, say, conservative politics correspond to that strict father. their model. He says, like, Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love. And that's where we go on the other hand, the nurturing parent model, which values children's autonomy, thoughts, and feelings,

and parents with that model sort of engage in open dialogue with their own kids. And he argues that progressive politics, which I would say the NBA has adopted largely. Superficially. Yeah. Yeah. Correspond to the nurturing parent model. So in short, I think the player empowerment era has coincided with this general shift around the league and how it views leadership and authority. And I think there's a general big power structure change. And long story short, let me illustrate it using another example from our youth of a coach you didn't bring up. That's because he coached college basketball. This week marked, I think, the 36th anniversary of when Bobby Knight melted down and threw the chair across the court. And for those of us of a certain age,

You can picture his red face and his rage and throwing the chair across the court. And I think his demise is sort of symbolic of what we're talking about. I think at some point the sports world sort of soured on this guy. Yeah. The guy we called the general with the militaristic rage and the obedient and that strictness, that that archetype of coach is gone. And I think that's sort of the best example I can sort of give of where we used to be as a basketball community with coaches.

And then, as you pointed out, today's coaches don't do that. I think they generally have more empathy and are better listeners than the old guys you're citing. One of the most interesting ways to illustrate what Kirk is talking about, I think, is to think about the transition from Pat Riley to Eric's bolstra. Right?

Like, Pat Riley, despite being known, obviously, for being the architect of the Showtime offense in Los Angeles, I think spent the second half of his first. coaching career being associated with really physical, at times, violent levels of defensive intensity from his teams in New York and Miami. And what was it? 08, when the heat kind of cratered and he retired and Spowe took over. And Spow was this guy who I think was, nobody knew who he was, but was obviously a grinder,

was somebody who had kind of risen through the coaching ranks in a way that was maybe non-traditional at the time, but is now, I think, become kind of the paradigm. You know, where you see guys who come from an advanced analytics background, a video scouting background, doing everything they need to do on a coaching assistant coaches benches.

And Spoh got placed in that position. And I think that there was a degree to which people perceived that as like a puppet master thing. Like Pat was controlling Spow, but was like turning over the day-to-day stuff to him. But in the years since, Spoh has kind of to himself developed a little bit of a mystique. It's just one that's much different than the Pat Riley one.

Would you agree with that? For sure. I think Spoh was sort of a nice college player who never played in the NBA. And I think Pat Riley and some of the other guys you coached, or you said it earlier as coaches in the 90s, we were really good NBA players, including Riley himself, Phil Jackson, obviously. Don Nelson, you know, these guys were players.

And I think, you know, we've migrated away from that a little bit. I know that's, I don't want to step on one of your ideas. But I'm glad you brought up Spolstra because I think he is arguably, they're sort of the quintessential coach right now. He's very successful. He manages the locker room with superstar egos. He's proven he's been able to do that, which some coaches just can't do that, let's face it. And then he's also a good tactician. And when I think a contemporary coach, Chris, I think he's a great example because I see it show up in two places the most in the NBA. I think the difference between great coaches and bad coaches

and staffs in the league right now shows up in player development and in defense. And I think these non-glamorous sort of endeavors that often are sort of born behind closed doors. You don't see this. But if you look at the Duncan Robinson's of the world of Tyler Heroes, the band's, sure. And then Nick Nurse, I got to mention too,

really creative defensive coach, but also one of the best player development guys in the league right now and helps people like Pascal Seaccombe or Fred Van Fleet really come from sort of relative obscurity as drafts or undrafted players and become really good rotation players, if not superstars. And so it's less about, I think, what you see on the sidelines right now, as it is about sort of building this culture of development in the practice facility. When Pop would walk into a room, and I know that you really are limited in your experience to, like, the guy you worked for is Greg Popper, which is maybe you maybe don't have a comparison point. But from your experience, like when Pop would walk into a room, was that, did the temperature change?

Was it different? Did he carry an aura? Did he wield a certain amount of influence that is, if not singular, like very rare among coaches because I feel like one of the things he's got going for him is he's got tenure. Like he's got the ultimate job security. He's the one who's going to probably

call it a day on his career. It's not going to be anybody else. And for even the best coaches, like a guy like Bud, who's probably got to consider this a do-or-die season, you know, I don't know that job security

is really that certain for those guys. So I wonder how much that plays into the lack of authority, the lack of bigness to their sort of like, like their, personalities because they're like, I got to kind of kind of stay in between the lines here because what's really important is that Yadis is happy, not that I'm getting my way. Well, I love Coach Popphe's done a lot for me and my family, and I love to talk about him. But yeah, if he needed the temperature of the room to change, Chris, he could do that in an heartbeat. If you wanted it to go up or down, if he wanted to, if there was a stressful moment,

and that's what his genius is, is legitimate evidence. And that's what I talked about earlier. And what I think is interesting about Coach Popp to some degree is he arrived as this guy nobody knew about. But they sort of called it the flat top era, those early Spurs years with David Robinson, Avery. I hate him. And so David Robinson and Greg Popvich in those early years are both military folks. Both military guys and they bring this sort of militaristic flat top vibe to the Spur. Coach Bob doesn't really have that vibe anymore.

He's developed much more of an empathetic sort of view, and I think he puts his arms around guys. He'll still light you up, but then he'll put his arm in range it and let you know that he cares about you. But, you know, another thing that's not lost on me here, and you brought job security, two of the most sort of politically outspoken coaches

in the league are arguably the ones with the safest jobs. Per of Bob, yeah. It's pretty easy to rag on Ted Cruz when you've got five trophies and banners in the rafters. And some of these younger guys feel the same way, but they're not going to stick their necks out there. And I just think that's human nature. But I think you're exactly right.

Coach Pop has lasted this long because he has metamorphosed throughout his career, from that militaristic guy to sort of the empathy guy. And I think that it also, like the transition he cited from Riley to Sproul. within himself, his transition, I think, embodies some of the big themes we're talking about here. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, both aesthetically, you know, from going from that, like, smash it into the post,

really hard-nosed defense. And just like I remember growing up in the 90s and the early 2000s, it's just sort of dreading the spurs getting far into the playoffs because I just didn't want to watch them, you know? And then to go from that to basically the greatest show on Hardwood by the mid-2010s, and be one of the most creative, expressive basketball teams that we've ever seen is quite a, quite a shift. Do you describe that entirely to pop, or do you think that there was a degree of influence coming from his assistance? Like, where do you think that came from? You know, his best skill is surrounding himself with great people.

And I'd be remiss if I said he wouldn't be the first to say he's who he is because of Tim Duncan. He raises a class at these famous dinners every time to Tim Duncan, whether Tim's there or not. Because he knows without Tim, he's not who he is. And I think having a superstar player is necessary but not sufficient to becoming a legendary NBA coach. There's very few that have gotten there without the help of the players on the court, if any. So I think he knows that. And he surrounded himself with great people in every department, including obviously R.C. Newford, who was finding people like Monu Ginov and Tony Parker and turning those late picks in drafts again,

through that development corridor that we're talking about, Pop was the first to really, I think, build that awesome contemporary player development corridor that turns, not just Manu and Tony, but guys like Corey Joseph into rotation players when on other teams that might not have turned out that way. So I think he surrounded himself with great people, but he had the luxury of being granted, Tim Duncan, arguably the greatest power forward of all time. and certainly one of the most dominant, consistent forces in basketball over the last 25 years. So one of the things I was thinking about going into this podcast, one of the premises of the pod this week,

is basically about whether or not Kyrie was right back in October, about they're not really needing a head coach or that they don't have a head coach in Brooklyn. And that the idea is that Steve Nash relates to these guys as human beings, understands their priorities as human beings, and that, yes, he has a degree of control over the team as this Kyrie. as does Kevin, as does now Harden, as might Jacques Vaughn on any given night. And that there is a little bit more of a, I don't know, it seems like almost a boardroom, not to take anything from Kevin Durant's media properties, but it has a little bit more of

a collective feel than a, this is sort of the pyramid and everything runs through Nash. And the team itself, I would almost say like Nash seems more like a vibes merchant than he does like a tactician, which might be unfair to Nash, but when you watch their offense, you're like, so much of this just seems dictated by the basketball personalities of the guys who were on the floor. I couldn't agree more, and that's why I say it shows up on defense. Coaching shows up on defense. And if we're picking apart the Sons or Mike Dantone, who I adore as an innovator, they just

have never had the defense to get over the top. And we'll see once again if their defense can come around. But I think Kyrie is on to something important, Chris. You know, NBA players have never been this professional or this skill as they are in 2021. And, you know, that stern father model just rings hollow when, you know, you have people like LeBron James and James Harden, Kevin Durant, who are stevants out there and know everything about every pick and roll. coverage in the NBA, it just doesn't, and oh, by the way, like, if payroll is a fair proxy

for how we value people and organizations in this country, then, you know, even the best coach in the NBA is like a mid-level, exception level salary. Most coaches, I think, seem to take, like, slightly longer deals, but, like, I think Brad makes, like, what? Brad seems to be like three million a year or something like, right? Yeah, I don't know what the exact salaries are. I think some of them make upwards of $10, $12 million at this point. You know, we're talking about superstars.

We're making 30, 40, 45. And again, if the dollar is capitalism's ultimate currency, then we legitimately value the guys in the New Jersey's more than the guys in the golf streets in these environments. And as an analyst, I'm not mad at that. I'm not mad at that. Give me LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and I'll have a much better chance

than if you give me, you know, two replacement level players off the street. So I think those are important concepts. And again, Kyrie is, he's a different cat. But I think, to be fair, I think he's on to something here. It might not work. We'll watch the defense. The Nash hiring is interesting because I think that he, I can imagine Steve Nash having a lot of different leadership books on his shelf.

Let me put it that way. Like, I feel like he just probably thought a lot about how he would coach, were he to be a coach and how he would, and he's learned from Kerr, he's learned from Dan Tony. He's had his experience. But I was curious what you might think about, why doesn't like Jerry Stackhouse, Chauncey Billups, Sam Cassell, some of the ex-players, gotten a shot? And do you think it might have something to do with the fact that those guys are of our generation? Growing up,

playing for guys like Larry Brown and Greg Popovich in his militaristic days and maybe Phil Jackson where he would just be like, you know, the best ISO players in the world have to play in the triangle and it's about, you know, the ball finding energy. You know, Do those guys, do you think, have a kind of outmoded view of the way NBA teams are supposed to function? And might that be like a problem when they look to get the head coaching job? No, I don't think so. And I think we're going to see Stack and Kassel get jobs. And Joanne Howard's another guy on my list in terms of people I watched play at a very high level that could come back and sort of be really effective contemporary coaches.

Joanne's proving he's a great coach right now at the University of Michigan. But I would say, Joanne is God in Michigan. You know, like that... I'm not saying he'll leave, but he is... Here's my thing. He is Michigan, right?

Like, the same way Jay Wright is Villanova, the same way Tom Izzo is Michigan State or K is Duke. There are very few NBA teams where the team is the coach, where the coach is the person that you think of when you think of the team. Yeah.

And San Antonio is probably the only one right now because of, you know, where he is in his arc and what happened before we got here and who's not there anymore. But, you know, I think you're totally on to something. I don't know if Kyrie really wants, you know, it's interesting. I kept thinking about this when you told me we were going to talk about this. You have a player coach.

It's not novel. In fact, it's antiquated. But are we going? Kyrie, could one of these guys in theory, like LeBron James, you know, he could theoretically be a coached. I don't think they will. they have enough on their plate. I think they recognize that that now. But yeah, I still think it's very useful to have one person who's in charge of engineering

the schemes and teaching the schemes and like things like a player development, like I said, identifying talent on the G League roster and bringing in deciding rotations. These are really fundamental tasks that you don't want a player using and you don't really want to be collaborative. It still requires this natural hierarchy if somebody in charge. who can make that decision, essentially write the batting order down in the dugout, and that's who's going to bat third, guys. Deal with it. Yeah. I mean, I also think that there's something to be said for the fact that in the last 10 years or so,

GMs have also really become the non-player stars of a lot of teams. So whether it's Darry, even somebody like Polenko, who I don't think a lot of people knew about before he became the Lakers GM, but given his press conference, and given honestly the results that he got out of that team, I think you know, you think about him, you think about Presti, you think about Sean Marks, any number of guys. Do you think that the Mori Ball, money ballification of the way we talk about sports

and constantly thinking about transactions and thinking about roster building and relation to a salary cap has diminished the way we celebrate coaching? Yes, I do. And that's a well-said version of it. I think Moneyball has many legacies among them being one of the best sports books ever, but certainly one of the most definitive of the early part of the century in 2003 it came out. But it sort of deified the Billy Bean, the character of the savvy, financially minded GM,

who dehumanizes his assets and talks about things in financial terms. It's like flipping guys. Like that was like... Yeah, like we talk about flipping houses or flipping like shooting guards. Yeah. I think that's almost run its course to a degree, to be honest. But I think it was something that really dominated American. Yeah, the Astros killed that, I think.

The Astros killed Muddy Ball. Kirkman, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Your insight is always really, really valued here. So thanks a lot, man. Always great to see you, Chris. Thanks for having me on. Take care, brother.

Now it's my pleasure to be joined by Musa Cuangu from the Stadio podcast over on the Ringer FC feed. He's also a frequent guest on Ritey's House, also on the Ringer FC feed. And he is the author of a new book that I need everybody to keep an eye out for. It's called In The End, It Was All About Love. And you can find it on Rough Trade Books, the Rough Trade Books website. But Musa, is that available in the States yet, officially? Yeah, it is. It's got as far as Oregon.

It's got as far as Oregon. Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah, it's in the wild. The book is in the wild. Thank you so much for that. Coincidentally, or not, you also wrote a book called Will You? manage the necessary skills to be a great gaffer, which makes you just an absolute expert on the role of the coach and the manager in modern sports. That's what I'm telling them anyway.

That's what I tell them. And he's a huge basketball fan, and he's a huge, obviously, he's a football scholar. And I wanted to talk to you, Musa, because whereas in the NBA, I feel like we're at a little bit of a deficit of big coach swagger, of big coach energy, that some of the major characters that maybe you and I grew up watching in our youth have kind of. of receded into the background and we don't really have any replacements. In the Premier League, I would say we almost have an overabundance of big coach energy. Right. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting.

So, yeah, currently, just to give people a sense of what I'm talking about, in the Premier League, I count five historically significant managers. Yergan Klopp over Liverpool, Pep Cordiola at Man City, Carlo Ancelotti at Everton, Marcelo Biela at Leeds and Joseo-Marino at Tottenham. And then below them, there's just a grip of pretty good to great managers in Brendan Rogers, Thomas Tuchel, Nuno at Wolves, Hazen-Hoodle, like even though Southampton are struggling is quite a character. And then you got to give it up to David Moise, who has West Ham and the Champions League places. So I guess my question is, is it possible to have too many good managers in a league?

Too many good coaches in a league? Does it almost overshadow the play when we're so concerned with what? Jose is doing on a week-to-week basis, what PEP is doing on a week-to-week basis, whether Klop can write the ship at Liverpool? No, I think it's amazing, actually. I think it's really amazing. I love how football has, you know, all these sports are cyclical, right? So basketball was a player's league, then it was a coach's league. Now it's a players league again. Players are putting their own teams together. And football's the same. Like football for a long time, you had, for example, Chelsea's a good example of a club that seemed to be a players team for a long time,

because the players had so much control over who was sacked, who came and who went. And right now, because frankly, the Premier League has his astonishing financial resources, it can attract historically great managers, which is why they're kind of concentrates it. The Premier League now is almost like, this is almost an atypical example. Like, I can't remember another time in football history where you've had such a collection of astonishing coaches in one place. So this is almost like, yeah, it's almost like an exception that proves the rule, I think. Yeah, I remember a couple of years ago, Ryan O'Hanlon, who,

used to work at the ringer and now has this great substack called No Grass in the Clouds. We were getting ready for the Premier League season, and I can't remember who had just arrived. Maybe it was Ancelotti, but we were just sort of, and this is when Mauritio Pocino was still the coach of Tottenham, probably. But we were just overwhelmed by the amount of managerial talent. And I think part of the reason why we associate these guys, because when I think of city now, I don't think of DeBroyne. I don't think of Rodham Sterling.

I think of PEP. You know, like, these managers are sort of the avatars for their team. Do you think that is down to the fact that they're pretty much the spokesman for their clubs? No, I don't think it is, actually. I think it's because,

and there's a great book by Rinas Mikals, the Dutch coach and great, called Team Building. He talked about why football was so addictive. And he said it's because the amount of interactions you have on a football pitch it's much harder for an individual player to dominate the action.

You know, basketball, a player can take control. Like, Luca Donchus the other night, just takes control it into Celtics, right? That's the thing you can do. It's much harder in a team of 11 to take control. It's easier for a coach to impose order than it is for player. That's why they're revered. That's why Guardiola is revered at Manchester City because that level of attacking coordination, sophistication, it's basically an orchestra.

You're basically writing the sheet music in real time and handing it out in real time. That's why there's a mystique around great coaches, because everyone knows instinctively just how harder it is to get those 11 players moving in sync. It's an almost unprecedented skill set that those people have had, if that makes sense. Well, I almost feel like we ascribe a level of authorship to the matches to those managers. I think we should, though. I know it sounds a bit like, I'm not trying to buy into the populist thing, but what Guardiola does in particular, we haven't seen a lot of this before. We haven't seen it. you know, I can't draw an analogy.

It's almost like, it would almost be like, you know, the innovation of playing Magic as a centre, right? It's that level. It's that level. Like when magic was, everyone still talks about that game in 1980, like the 42-15 game. I think it was. Everyone talks about that because to do that was just such a revolutionary thing. Pep does that, like once a season.

Pep has an innovation like that once a season. That's why he's mind-blowing. And I think we almost need to. there is an authorship because he does things that we've never seen before. God, I sound irreverential now, don't I'm not? No, I mean, I... The cool age. No, I think that...

I think I started to really notice that during the Jose Inter Milan teams that played against PEPs Barcelona teams. And the idea that what I was watching in those Champions League matches, and when was that? Like, 2010, that I was watching a clash of sensibilities and that I was, almost watching a clash of philosophies. And I remember just, even though the football was incredibly tense, and I think maybe some people might think, you know, that Jose Parked the bus, and he was playing very defensively against this offensive juggernaut.

I still felt like what I was watching was this amazing chess match. Where sometimes when I think I watch basketball, especially now, I was talking with Kirk a little bit about this. There's a degree of stylistic tactical and hegemony going. on where there's everybody's shooting threes, everybody is playing pace and space and kind of a free-flowing style. So you don't get those juxtapositions. You don't get those contrasts as much in basketball right now. They say in basketball, great offense beats great defense, right? That's just a given. It's not true in football. It's not true in football. Great defense can be great offense.

And we saw that in 2010. There's an incredible breakdown on YouTube when Marino goes through the tactics for that game. And it's absolutely mind-blowing the two games against the Barcelona for Inter, the breakdown. It's on YouTube, and he's basically standing over a table, like moving all the pieces around. And I don't know if he prepared for it, but it was almost like watching a grandmaster chess player who's like, I'll set up the board and show you exactly what happened.

Absolutely. And here's the thing. When Kevin Durant said, I'm Kevin Durant, he could say that because he knows the hegemonic exists. He knows that. Kevin Durant, all things, you know, equal, plays at his best. He's going to demolish statistically one of the best defenses. There's a sirens going off again. I think it's a great cameo for Berlin Sirens.

Kevin Durant is coming. Durant is coming. Durant knows when he sounds the siren. He knows when he sounds the siren. It's over. You can't do that in football. You can't guarantee because there's too many random elements, which is why that game was so compelling

because PEP at one point with Barcelona was as close as you could get to a sure thing in football. It's much harder to get a sure thing in football than a short thing in basketball just because of the difficulty of an issue. individual player taking over proceedings? There's an interesting thing where I think that we, every time I watch Liverpool, I think about Klopp, I think about the adjustments that he needs to make this season, particularly because the injuries that he's had to deal with on his side. But when you think about it,

a manager can make three changes. He can make three substitutions in a game. He gives a, maybe he does his prep work and he does a halftime team talk. And as we've seen from the all or nothing documentaries. Sometimes that halftime team talk might just be play harder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We,

you know, yet we, I think of football managers as these, as these artists working at canvas that is the, the football pitch. Whereas, you know, in basketball, Steve Kerr can do 50, 60.

He can call every play. He can, he can take guys, output guys in, make these adjustments on the fly. But ultimately, what we think in a basketball game is the Warriors are going to win if Steph plays this well and Andrew Wiggins plays

this well and Draymond Green plays this well. Why do you think there's that difference even though basketball coaches nominally have so much more, if not control, at least they have so many more choices. I think there's maybe first of all people don't give basketball coaches enough credit. That's a strong possibility. Sure. And secondly as well, the sheer number of scoring opportunities in basketball mean that the best collection of players are more likely to win the best collection of players in a football match because the scoring, you know, scoring opportunities in basketball, you know, one team scores 114, one's games 100, like, the better team's going to win. You can watch a game of football and the worst team could win 2-1.

Like, that could actually be a thing that happens. And because it's harder to score in football, it's hard to get the ball in the goal, it therefore means that like the element of randomness allows more room for a coach to work their magic. So a great basketball coach is able to have less effect on a game's outcome than a great football coach. It's not saying it's just the way the games are structured and designed. A better analog is almost like hockey, for example, I would say, ice hockey than basketball. Because basketball is like you're hostage to the pieces that you have much more than in football. Yeah.

That makes sense. No, that totally makes sense. And I think also with the managers that we were talking about with a few exceptions of say BEL, so like, the managers that we're talking about have quite a bit of money to play with in terms of filling out the back end of their rosters. Whereas as we're seeing in the NBA season, especially with COVID, you know, teams are playing with eight, nine healthy guys some nights. You know, and they're not going 11 deep and they don't have unending amounts of players coming in from academies or from, you know, from on loan system. Also, yeah, we have a historically great arrangement

of coaches. This is like, imagine you've got all the best NBA coaches of one generation in one league at one time, which you don't have NAMB just because it's just not that era that you're in that cycle of them. But this is, I can't even, I can't even name who those, it'd be like having a close to peak Phil Jackson, a close to peak Popovich with stacked squads as well, with stacked squads. Like, it's different. You know, a peak, his base is still, no, Steve Kerr is still in his peak. Like, you know, it'd be like having six of those guys in one. configuration at once. Right. And then a Don Nelson figure

who's like, Bielsa, who's just, you know, doing all this wild, wild stuff. That's why we're enjoying it because we're living in it now. We have to just take, and a Chuck Daly as well. Chuck Daly too. I've been struck by the lack of X players, or especially big name X players who are becoming coaches in the NBA these days. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that.

Part of one of them might be that, you know, there is so much NBA media out there right now that you can have a much more comfortable less demanding lifestyle, but also be paid very well for your opinions on basketball. But I do notice that in football, it still seems to be a pipeline from the field, from players to the coaching dugout. And I was wondering why you thought that there was that difference. I have a thought about this. I wonder if the fact that a lot of basketball players have been to college gives them options beyond football, like having a college education or being around

people, college educations and having a black front office and seeing executives like yourself in these roles, in business roles, your mind is already open to many of the possibilities. A lot of footballers come out with football and they didn't have that system of like you go to college, NCAA for a couple of years, you don't have a degree. So a lot of it is like your education, your skill sets don't feel transferable because you go into another field. You may not be as confident in another field because all you know is football, whereas NBA players, a lot of them have had, you know, look at them, a lot of them in

investors, they're already in other things because they've just been exposed to a different world. It's not a judgment on football. It's more like the pipeline. We don't take care. NCAA has a lot of criticism, and I get that. I know that LeBron's not a fan and I'm not the biggest fan of the way they treat their athletes. What I would say is the college degree just gives you a view of a life after basketball in a way that footballers don't have. Footballers don't have that. I remember John Amici, he's actually a friend of mine, John Amateur, he played the NBA. he would talk about the flights to and from games and the things they would discuss on planes, business, politics, there's such a worldliness to it and, like, you know, stock portfolios.

And I'm not saying the footballers don't have that or this generation don't have that. But I'm saying that that is a fairly new thing. And I think basketball players, just because of the way they are, they come through the system, their minds are more open to other fields than footballers. Can you foresee a time when football can no longer, sort of support the more domineering characters in management. Of course, yes. Players start to tune guys like Marino out.

Yeah, I think so. And look, that happens every three years. So for Marino, yeah, it does. But it comes from player leverage. You know, you see with James Harden, the last time he spoke, actually, Harden was engineering a trade and now he's engineered it. We see that player power there. Like, that leverage, that kind of domineering manager only works.

when the player doesn't have as much power. I think what's happened as well, the freak occurrence we're seeing in basketball right now with players managing clubs, a lot of those clubs are trying to restore prestige. So Andrea Pierlo at Juventus, for instance. Absolutely. Frank Lampard at Chelsea. There's a prestige project there.

So that could be a thing that happens again. Now, in basketball, with a respect, with the franchise model, this obsession with restoring prestige, it's not as great. It's not as great. There's not a sense, you know, the Lakers are the Lakers, right?

You can't restore prestige to the Lakers, but a club that's moved city, you can't restore prestige to a franchise that's moved city because it's been there for like 10, 15 years. And so it's not that doesn't have value, it's more the club's, the franchise's relationship with the city is bigger

than having some random person coming to pull the strings, which I think is actually, frankly, much healthier. Right. That makes sense. It's much healthier. Do you feel like the up and down

sort of results of a peer, obviously Frank Lampard lost his job at Chelsea. Tieri-R-A-R-A-Ree seems to be having a tough time catching on and really blossoming as a manager. Is that a case where those guys are going into management so close after their playing career that they're having a tough time executing their ideas because maybe they're frustrated by the habits or the play styles

or even just the skill level of some of the players around them and it's causing like friction in the clubhouse, in the changing room? I think there's something else going on. I think that a lot of them don't understand. A lot of these footballers, when they were playing football, they only took after their game.

Not they were selfish, but they were only really aware of the Danix one part of the pitch. It'd be interesting to look at which managers become successful based on which positions they played on the pitch. So it's not a direct correlation, but one thing I have noticed is,

generally speaking, midfielers who tend to have an overview of the entire game tend to fare better because they always saw the big picture. Strikers seem to struggle because strikers ultimately, you're preoccupied with the final third, not being offside, making the right cuts and right runs. It's much more unusual, I think, for a great strike to be a great manager because a lot of them never saw the full game.

And there's also the other aspect, which I call sort of existential management. Some people are managing just to feel something. I bet. They have the buzz of playing in front of 80,000 people. And I spoke to actually Gianluca Viali about this. this, he went into management at Chelson. He said, look, the thing was, people are chanting your name, you go and become manager, and you're kind of like trying to get the buzz, but actually, you're not a player.

And a lot of these managers forget that they're not players, right? And it's not just from the frustration. It's almost like they're almost unaware. They didn't have enough of a break from the game to come to with fresh eyes, if that makes sense. Of course it does, yeah, yeah. So I feel that's a big factor as well, yeah. There's also, it's worth noting that to become a manager in Europe, you have to do something called your coaching. You have to get your coaching badges. You essentially have to take courses to

be certified, essentially to coach football. That's not the case in the NBA. Steve Nash can be a consultant with the Warriors. He can be kind of like a tertiary assistant coach and then find himself coaching the Brooklyn Nets and coaching Kyrie, Kevin Duray and Hardin. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. There's the flip side of that where I wonder whether or not, you know, and in the NBA right now, as I was just discussing, there is a kind of rise of this technocrat coach. It's also almost like babies born in the Matrix, guys who are almost born to be NBA coaches

because they've spent tons of time crushing tape. They're fluent in advanced analytics. Can you see something like that happening in football where you start seeing the 39-year-old guy who is fluent in all the opta stats and just watches tons and tons of tape? Is too cool like that? Can you give me?

kind of a court, like an analog there. Yeah, Julian Narklesman, Arby Leipzig. Yeah, Nargelsman, he's like, what, 30, early, mid-30s, 32, 33, 34 at Arby Leipzig. And he's a genius. He's a genius. And he has the authority to run one of the kind of wealthiest new clubs in football, in European football. He's incredible.

It's the same thing. So I think, like, sports are copycat sports. Money follows money. So we can't forget the technocrat that's, seems faceless now, that was inspired by people like Eric Spolstra, who couldn't get respect. Eric Spolstra, when he started out, people like, oh, no, Spoh's not that good, but now they're like, oh, my goodness, he's a genius. Well, he was like, he was lucky, and now, you know, he got to coach these amazing players,

but now it's almost like, whoa, Spoh has mystique. Yes, but then also look at like a Nick Nurse, the Raptors. That was a big step to put him in charge, because they got rid of a popular coach, right? They got rid of a coach of the year. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And he came from the D-League or whatever. He came in and like just blew everyone away. So that, you know, those people, those technocrats won't get the credit they deserve for being pioneers, actually.

Because what they were doing was really difficult. You know, we can look at baseball to a different extent. I know it's a different position. But Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein is a GM at the Red Sox and then the Cubs. I mean, absolutely incredible what he did. And I remember when he got a point at the Red Sox, people were like, whoa, like, what the hell is this 31-year-old kid? This guy who likes Pearl Jam is now like running the Red Sox.

Yeah. But they were actually revolutionary and actually weird enough, they might get caricatured a bit. I think they might quietly be a bit frustrated because they're not dull people. They're super smart. And they had to rely on, you know, they're probably very charismatic people. But because we have this kind of obsession with the alpha male, spolster and nurse don't look like alphas to us, but they're just different. You know what it is. We've been brought up on the apex predator being.

a T-Rex, then all of a sudden, along comes like, along comes a shark. We're like, oh, that's not as scary as a T-Rex. And I'll wait until it bites you, you know. That's right. I'm going to ask you a silly question to end this off here, which is of the great players we have right now, and I think we could probably peg Messi and Ronaldo coming towards the end of their careers in some ways. Who of our great football players could you imagine going into management?

Oh my goodness. I love that question. If he wanted to be Luca Modrich, Luca Modrich against Atlanta in the Champions League, 35 years old, with half his team missing, ran the midfield, shut down the entire midfield. Lukamodic also, he has mistake, he has gravitas, he's respected by everybody. When he won the Ballon Door, universal acclaim. Everyone got it. Yeah, I think he's, I think Luca Muldridge is the guy. That's an incredible shout. Moussa, thank you so much for joining me on the answer this week. It's always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Take care, man. Everybody check out Stadio and Ritey's House, both on Ringer FC. Thanks to Musa and Kirk for joining me this week

on the answer. I guess the question is, do we answer ourselves here? Do we answer the question about whether Kyrie was right? I think that there's definitely something has changed. I definitely think something has changed in the NBA. It's hard to imagine a time where a Pat Riley figure will be patrolling the sidelines again and benching guys and exiling guys and trading guys and, you know, installing a very personalized style of play into the team. I mean, you're seeing that, but it feels more sunny. It feels more affirmative. It feels more collaborative. It feels more collaborative. And I can't imagine once you've turned that page, I can't imagine going back. So maybe Kyrie had a point.