So recently, I read this from Adam Silver. He complained about the NBA media not talking enough about tactical aspects of the game:
“I think where we can all do a better job, and again I’m not just pointing to the media here, is talking more about the game. My frustration a bit, I think sometimes the color commentary in our games gets reduced to, ‘this team wanted it more’ or ‘this team tried harder.'”
[…]
Said Silver: “There’s really complex defenses, what is the offense like? Why is this team losing the way they are? Why is this team successful? Explain what the pick and roll is … explain what’s happening on the court.”
Reductive analysis reinforces the idea that basketball is just a game of individuals and athletic feats. Silver believes that in order to raise interest in every team every night, the discussion needs to be more granular and more celebratory.
“There is this sense (in football) where the coaches are viewed as these field generals, going out there with these complex schemes,” Silver told Redick, who works as an NBA analyst at ESPN. “Then in basketball, it’s just about athleticism. That somehow the coach’s job is just to get the guys to play hard. Rather than … these incredibly sophisticated defenses and offenses.”
That leads me to the question: How much is the success in Basketball really about tactics/strategy and how much is it about individual quality? Can coaches in the NFL (or in other sports) on average do more to win their team games primarily on good tactics and good coaching than coaches in NBA? Or are those sports similar in terms of how much influence a coach can have?
Is the NFL more about collective strategy and the NBA more about individual athleticism/skills?
Basing this discussion on both how big the field is or how many players are on it are reductive. I agree the the impact of any agent is always in realation with time/space context but those views just counts out how much micro management is needed in basketball coaching. The space, the time of the game and the number of players might be smaller compared to other games but they are actually extended by many rules, restrictions, regulations. I mean, no coach in football (soccer) needs to think on seconds and decide spesific lineups for those seconds. A basketball coach has to focus on every inch and every second and they are expected to draw plays for those while deciding which player will be on the court or of the court throughout all of those. And i am not even talking about getting the rotation right not for a game but doing that in line with a general strategy for a season. Micro management on time, plays and rotation makes it more interactive, so much that one man can’t take it all and the other coaching stuff are usually more active in a game compared to the other sports. I don’t necessarily “one single headcoach” is more important compared to the other sports, but I agree with Silver here is coaching (and gameplay) in general is underrated among NBA fans and media.