LeBron throws coach under bus - then throws 21-footer into basket

^
The Cavaliers would be better off with no coach at all. The same might be true for the Rockets. As for my old Marquette classmate Glenn Rivers (we didn't call him "Doc" back then), he is showing why he is one of the most respected basketball coaches on the planet.

For me, one of the most interesting things about the NBA playoffs is watching the coaches. How do they handle the stress? Are they good punchers and counterpunchers? Can they deal with the egos around them?

Here's some of what I'm seeing ...

DAVID BLATT

He is in so far over his head that he might as well be operating from the bottom of a grave --  which is where his Cavs would be had he not been saved from himself twice in the final 10 seconds of Sunday's victory over the Bulls.

With 9.4 seconds left, Derrick Rose scored on a drive to tie the game for the Bulls. Blatt immediately signaled for a time-out, which is normal procedure -- except that the Cavs had no time-outs remaining. Had the nearest referee seen Blatt's signal, the Cavs would have gotten slapped with a technical foul that very well would have delivered the game to the Bulls. Fortunately for Cleveland, alert assistant coach Tyronn Lue grabbed Blatt and reminded him of the situation before the ref saw the time-out call.

"Yeah," Blatt later admitted, "I almost blew it."

And then he almost blew it again.

LeBron James drove the length of the court for a layup but missed and the ball went out of bounds with 1.5 seconds left. As the refs watched the replay to make sure they were right in awarding the ball to the Cavs, Blatt drew up a play that had the world's best player inbounding the ball to somebody else.

"I told coach there was no way I'm taking the ball out," James said. "The play that was drawn up, I scratched it. I just told coach, 'Just give me the ball.'"

Matthew Dellavadova threw it in to James, who had worked himself free in the left corner. LeBron caught the pass, rose high over Jimmy Butler and drilled a 21-footer as the horn sounded.

Blatt almost surely will be fired if the Cavs don't win the NBA title. You don't bring in a Ferrari and let Mr. Magoo drive it.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the unlikely event that the Cavs do win the title, though. The guess here is that he'd still be canned, and for good reason. The coach can't lose his head when the game matters most. And when the best player totally and publicly disrespects the coach, the coach has got to go.

KEVIN McHALE

The Rockets' coach has turned the Clippers series into a farce with his Hack-a-Jordan strategy.

Did DeAndre Jordan miss 20 of his 34 free throws? Yes. But the Clippers still won by a zillion points because the strategy made McHale have to use his mediocre bench too much, gave injured Clippers point guard Chris Paul ample time to rest and ruined the flow of the game.

McHale said he wanted to "muck up" the game because the Clippers are an athletic, fast-breaking team. But the Rockets like to play with a certain flow, too, one that includes a lot of transition 3-pointers. The mucked-up game ended up hurting them.

The Clippers are 19-2 when teams try the Hack-A-Jordan. The strategy didn't work back in Shaquille O'Neal's day with the Lakers, either.

What the strategy does is make a game un-watchable. I'd be stunned -- and disappointed -- if the rules aren't changed to make it illegal before next season.

DOC RIVERS

Some coaches might have panicked and taken Jordan out of the game when he was missing free throws, especially when the Rockets took an early lead while using the hack strategy.

But Rivers just let the situation take care of itself. For one thing, he knows the strategy almost always eventually fails. For another, he knows Jordan is the league's best interior defender and the Clippers are better with him on the court.

All series long, Rivers' Clippers have been the more physical, more hustling and more prepared team. And hey ... Rivers even gets bonus points for having fathered -- and traded for -- his son Austin, who has come up huge with Paul being banged up.

TOM THIBODEAU

The Bulls coach always looks as though his dad just told him he can't borrow the car.

I guess I don't blame him for being permanently perturbed.

Despite wringing a fine season out of an injury-prone team, despite coaxing Pau Gasol into his best performance in years, despite helping turn Jimmy Butler into an All-Star, despite his team always playing hard and never giving up, Thibodeau is viewed by many as the guy who is holding the Bulls back from true greatness.

It's widely believed he will be fired unless the Bulls win the championship or at least advance to the Finals.

Maybe it would be best for both sides. Thibodeau certainly will get another job -- Cleveland could do a lot worse. And maybe the Bulls need a new voice in the locker room because NBA players do tend to tune out the coach after awhile.

Still, it's hard to say the scenario has been fair to Thibodeau, who repeatedly has overcome major obstacles to keep the Bulls in contention. And it's hard to envision the Bulls hiring anybody better.
^

Thunder, no ... Blue Thunder, yes!

^
Just a little before the Spurs took care of the Thunder to go up 2-0 in the Western Conference finals, the Blue Thunder -- the 45-and-over softball team on which I play -- took care of business to post our second win of the year.

We actually had played pretty darn well our previous couple of games, including a heartbreaking, come-from-ahead loss to an unbeaten squad just last week.

Our team's dynamic changed earlier this month when two of our players were suspended for the rest of the season for fighting ... with each other. Yep, we were kinda like the Charley Finley A's and the Bronx Zoo Yankees -- except we weren't too slick at the winning part of the equation.

Anyhoo, Joey and Tom, the two gentlemen who replaced the not-so-dearly departed, are very nice guys. Very good players, too. They have formed one heck of a keystone combo, with Tom and his laser arm at short and Joey looking like a natural at second. Both also are fine hitters.

Tuesday night, pretty much everybody in the lineup hit the cover off the ball and played sound defense. We ended up winning by the mercy rule after 5 innings. I even had my season high with 3 hits -- although the lone time I didn't come through happened with the bases loaded, when I reached for a short pitch and barely got my bat on the ball. I guess Joey, who was on third base, didn't get the sign for the suicide squeeze.

We already were missing a few players; a couple more guys tweaked leg injuries during the game. You know things are getting bad when I become the young, speedy pinch-runner!

Every team makes the double-elimination playoffs, and I truly believe our new, improved club will be dangerous.

And by dangerous, I mean to our opponents and not to each other. What a zany concept!
^

Not calling 'em like they see 'em

^
The Rapture didn't work for me. I got all the way to Heaven and was done in by my allergies to harps and wings. So I'm back, baby ...

Those who dislike NBA basketball often talk about the refs' refusal to call traveling, but here are the five calls/non-calls that really drive me nuts:

5. Offensive guys jumping into defenders but still getting to go to the free-throw line. What ever happened to the principle of verticality?

4. Three-second violation. It's called so infrequently, the NBA might as well just change it to a 12-second violation.

3. Palming. These guys take 2, 3, 5 steps between dribbles. And then the refs call a foul on the defender. Where's the justice?

2. Lane violations on free throws. It's gotten to the point where I half expect the refs to call a violation on the one guy who doesn't enter the lane before the shot is released.

1. Moving screens. This is my personal pet peeve because every time a player is allowed to set one, it creates an enormous, unfair advantage for the offense. And this isn't just a problem in pro hoops. The year Illinois went to the NCAA title game, I counted 17 uncalled moving screens on James Augustine in one game. Given his "production" at that facet of play, I'm surprised he didn't make it in the NBA!

Despite all of this, I still enjoy the NBA playoffs. And I still respect NBA refs, who probably have the most difficult officiating job in all of sports but seem to get the most important calls right about 95 percent of the time.
^

Winning legacy assured, Phil Jackson goes out a big loser

^
Were Phil Jackson a lesser coach with a thinner resume, he might not have had the chance to retire after his team's showing in the NBA playoffs. He might have been fired at the final buzzer of his final game.

His Lakers had the look of an unprepared, out-of-control, uncoachable group of quitters and thugs.

Knowing Jackson as well as I do, it's hard to believe he mailed it in for Game 4 of the Dallas series. Having said that, what evidence was there that the Lakers were coached at all before or during that game?

It wasn't bad enough that they played with no heart? They also had to take cheap shots at the Mavericks, who deserve to be healthy going into the Western Conference finals?

If David Stern is as tough a commissioner as he claims to be, he will suspend Andrew Bynum for next season's first 20 games and Lamar Odom for at least 5. (If there is a next season, that is.)

As for Jackson, his legacy already was secure well before this debacle. He is the best coach I ever covered, better than anybody I've seen at getting selfish, spoiled millionaires to buy into a team concept. Yes, he was lucky enough to coach some of the greatest basketball players ever. That he turned that talent into 11 titles remains a remarkable achievement.

High schools, colleges and the NBA are filled with good X-and-O strategists. The best coaches are wizards at managing oversized egos. Nobody in the history of sports was better at it than Phil Jackson.

It's a shame he had to go out looking like a powerless loser.
^