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?
HS basketball coach here. The most critical things we do as coaches in my opinion are: pre-game strategic planning, mid-game adjustments, clock management, player rotations.
We have the same role conductors do in an orchestra. We don't play any of the notes, but we have vision over the entire game and can see the court better than each individual player. When they fall into a trap, we can explain what happened to them. If the offense or defense switches their scheme, we might notice it before the players, we strategize during timeouts to try and counter adjustments the other team is likely to make. Some coaches were legendary for wanting to control every aspect of their team's offense, as much as an OC in football.
Coaches are undervalued for their impact, but it's still up to the players to be able to execute the plan and there are more mid-play adjustments the players have to make on their own than football players since they don't have as many stoppages.
Of all those other sports, I'd say hockey is the closest, since it's live and relies on movement to generate scoring opportunities.