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Outside of game management, player development, and defensive schemes, coaches determine lineups which has a huge impact on team victory. This is especially true in basketball, since many players thrive only in a specific role that might not be the one they were drafted for and some player combinations can have strongly negative (or positive) compounding effects. IIRC people did studies on this and while most coaches had very little impact, the very best and very worst could lead to very significant swings in wins per year (Popovich and Phil Jackson had superstar level impact during their peaks).

Just wanna point out that Adam Silver’s love of basketball is so genuine and the exact opposite of how other sports commissioners talk about their sport in such robotic lawyer talk. Im not even sure Roger Goodell is actually a human, or that Rob Manfred even likes baseball

A lot. Rotations and timeouts are so important when coaching a basketball team.

I totally agree with Silver, NBA media cover so little strategies and actual aspects of the game and are more interested on drama or making rankings or tier lists, and it's a shame cause there's so much strategy on a single basketball game.

Basketball coaches have a lot of impact on trying to figure out the best lineup to counter the opponent and find the right schemes before a single game and then adjust in real time. Sometimes tho, especially in NBA, when you have a team with 3-4 "stars" and mediocre players, coaches have to find a compromise between managing their ego and playing "the right way", and sometimes it's a game of individuals trying to put the ball inside the basketball.

Idk about the NFL, but basketball coaches have way more impact than soccer coaches, mostly because there are more pauses during the game and it's more difficult to manage 11 players in a bigger field in real time and also because basketball games are mostly about two phases (offense and defense) which repeat themselves for like 100 times really similar between each other and it's easier to make adjustments

Silver is correct in his assessment of the commenters. During the Miami/Lakers game they brought on Udonis Haslem for a feel-good type segment and Haslem started getting into defensive schemes and commenting on what he expected to happen in the game. Unfortunately the regular commenters pretty much ignored those remarks and tried to get back to ignoring the game.

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.

Coaching matters. For sure.

Pure talent matters more in the NBA than in say football or baseball because there are fewer players on the playing surface and the players plan offense and defense.

Take Coach Spo. He won two titles when LeBron and Wade were around. He sure as hell isn't winning one with his current roster. Did he become a worse coach? No. Hell, he's probably a much better coach now. He maximizes the potential of his guys. His team just lacks the talent now.

On the flip side, you have a team like Boston. Very talented, but you just feel like they will be outcoached in the playoffs versus teams they can't just out-talent.

Just look at the Sixers rn

Euroleague is for the ingenious coaching, NBA is for the athleticism

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.

It’s far more important for a basketball coach to simply have their players fully bought into whatever systems they are running, than it is to make the right tactical calls through the course of a game.

The fewer players on the pitch / court, the bigger their individual impact is. In sports with more players out there, the coaching / teamwork / tactics get more important than individual ability.

So, Basketball < Hockey < Soccer < American Football, in terms of a coach’s importance. On average, that is.

In Football its 11 vs 11 so tactics are more important because a single player is less important.

If you take Doncic and put 4 scrubs around him, you will still win games.

If you take Haaland and put 10 scrubs around him, you will have a problem.