From Red Auerbach to Greg Popovic to Steve Kerr, NBA coaches get a lot of credit for their teams winning championships irrespective of the fact that they were coaching players like Bill Russell, Tim Duncan, or Stephen Curry. LeBron James has proven over the years that the coaches have the least to do in big games if they have a player like him.
Advertisement
Be it Erik Spoelstra, Ty Lue, or Frank Vogel, all of them are NBA champions because they coached a team that had LeBron James, not the other way around. In fact, many teammates say nobody sees the game as good as James, not even the head coaches.
And who better than the players who have won championships when The King was handling the reigns of their teams to tell us the stories about his coaching skills?
JaVale McGee and Channing Free reveal some advantages of playing in a LeBron James team
As the former teammates of the 19x All-Star sat down with Taylor Rooks to break down the Clippers vs Suns game on NBA Twitter Live, they discussed the importance of player-coaches in teams and how it changes everything for a team.
“Bron did a lot of the coaching,” said McGee telling how when coaches would ask them to run a play James would straight up tell them, “No, we’re running this.”
“When we won with @KingJames, he did a lot of the coaching… Championship teams have to have good player-coaches” 👀
–@JaValeMcGee joins @TaylorRooks & @channingfrye on #NBATwitterLive pic.twitter.com/VDhJ2HPIkZ
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 17, 2023
Frye won the 2016 championship with the Cavaliers and JaVale McGee, the 2020 championship with the Lakers, both had LeBron James leading their front.
LeBron has led his teams to 10 NBA Finals in a 20-year career. How?
Both those players telling those stories have played in the league long enough to see James win 2 more championships, winning Finals MVP in all four of those runs.
And this is one thing in which neither Michael Jordan nor Kobe Bryant excelled at. Both the GOAT candidates didn’t have a lot to say about coaching because Phil Jackson wouldn’t listen to either of them, no matter how great they were. Although he did run almost all his plays through those guys, so they didn’t have much to complain about.
On the other hand, none of LeBron James’ coaches have been as dominating personalities as Phil (you know LeGM must have a huge say when a coach is being hired).
It might seem like reaching 6 or 7 finals and winning all or 5 of them makes somebody better than a man who made it to the Finals 10 times but lost 6. The latter clearly shows much clearer supremacy. And James achieved it because he dictates his team more than anyone else.
