There are thankless jobs and then there is being a professional sports head coach. It’s a job that will turn your hair gray and your face red. It is a career with fleeting job security and intense scrutiny. It’s high pay for even higher stress.
As a coach, the first instinct of fans, media, and even your employer is to second-guess your decisions and your employment status. Just ask Terry Francona. Successes are soon forgotten. Failures are recalled with regularity.
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You ignore Jerry York at BC, the hockey coach with the most wins in NCAA history and a Boston area native.
Interestingly Christopher, your column today makes no mention of how the "doyenne" was outcoached against Baltimore in the title game and makes absolutely no mention of how "Doc" failed to get his team ready (on any level) in game 6 against the Heat last year AT HOME. Except for the Bruins coach they are all "valedictorians of summer school". It might be nice to have you hold them to a higher standard with your next use of a prime Sunday feature.
Every Sunday we are once again thrown "unto the breach" with the 5 cent version of the 25 cents on the dollar Doyon of Hacks Ryan, who now, hopefully will continue to type nothing interseting about a sport no one even follows anymore. Ah, but I digress. The research challenged Gasper made the ridiculous comparison between Coach Belichick and the beloved (and I mean that sincerely), Doc Rivers. I will not waste (as Gasper has interminably) a lengthy case, disposing his absurdly specious argument, but will ask you to consider a few salient facts: Hoodie: 166-57 record (75% winning record) with 3, count'm 3 World Championships. Doc Rivers: 375-277 (57% winning record, just a few clicks above 500), one World Championship.Doc has 12 men to coach, with an assitant for each man, it seems. Bill has 53 and may even have less assistants than Doc. And, Bill has never coached a team with the worst record for a season and one of the worst records in Celtics history. That would never happen to Bill, even if you gave him the Bad News Bears of football to work with. You want to compare Bill with a truly great basketball coach, start with George Popovich, 70% winning record, 4 World championships and doesn't waste half his energy whinning at officials. You give Greg and Doc the same twelve men to face each other and it would be an embarrassment.
Oh and the In Bill We Trust department: If Bill was an investment advisor and had Gasper's retirement account to manage, over the past ten years Bill would have yielded the best returns on average of any investment counselor alive, and three times Bill would have produced the very best record in investmants, making Gasper's portfoilio the best on avarage in the country. Would Gasper trust that man? Evidently not. Bill has given us the greatest sustained success and GREATEST Number of THRILLS AND EXCITEMENT OF ANY PRPO TEAM in the past fifty years. Good Lord, what has the Globe sports section come to? I'll tell you....the thinnest paper, almost invisible during the weekday deliveries, with typists masquerading as Leigh Montville, Bud Collins, Ray Fitzgerald, whose collective eyes must be rolling in digust, ad nauseum.
ibkjj is right. Jerry York's friend Jack Parker deserves notice too.
2008-2010 were great years for Boston hockey. There were others, but that streak was most memorable.
We'll really see what Jay Heaps is worth this year, having had more time to really pick a roster. If his tactics don't improve, though (closing out games, defending set pieces, losing patience in the attack when they fall behind), then there's enough talent on the field to maybe think the coach is the problem.
Bill is the best, but I just love Doc Rivers and the way he moves the Celtics to win.