Coaching Mount Rushmore

[loslakersss]

NBA has Phil

NFL has Bill

How about the MLB? NHL?

Who ya got to round out the 4? Are you replacing Phil or Bill with anyone else? IMO the fact that they have been able to win so many with entirely different teams (Tom is the only guy remaining from 15 years ago) is incredible.

[adkindo]

baseball is tough....depends on how you value achievements in more recent years compared to the long history of baseball. On the Mount Rushmore that you are building which has a modern flavor, I would probably go with Joe Torre or Tony La Russa. I may include Sparky Anderson if I broadened out a few more decades....and then guys like Joe McCarthy, Walter Alston, and Casey Stengel have to be in the conversation if we are looking over the last 100 years.

I think baseball is difficult because it has always been very competitive, and I am not sure how the majority view the different era's.....in contrast I think we mostly agree that it is much more difficult to win the NBA Finals or a Super Bowl today than it was in the 1950's because the level of competition and popularity of the sports is so much greater today.

[Aeneas Hunter]

Scottie Bowman for hockey.

For baseball, you can take your pick of Yankee managers or go with someone like McGraw or LaRussa. My personal pick would be Martin, because he succeeded with so many teams.

[ChickenStu]

NBA--Phil, Auberbach, Popovich, Riley. Pretty firm with those 4.

NHL--Bowman (undisputed), Blake (8 Cups) are givens. I would give the last 2 spots to Joel Quenneville (3 Cups and a strong point %) and Al Arbour (4 Cups during that great run with the Islanders). Note that Mike Babcock is only 55 and already the 10th-winningest coach in NHL history and has a strong Toronto team. If he can bag another Cup or two, he could pass Arbour for sure; his point % is stronger than that of Quenneville and considerably higher than that of Arbour.

NFL--I'm pretty firm with my first 3 of Belichick, Halas, and Shula. I would give the 4th spot to Lambeau, beating out other coaching legends like Tom Landry, Paul Brown, and Vince Lombardi. Lombardi's 6 titles and remarkable .728 regular season winning % and 9-1 postseason record made me strongly consider him, but I think you have to give it to Lambeau, ultimately. Like Lombardi, Lambeau won 6 titles, but he won over 200 games and although his winning % wasn't as high (only John Madden's is higher than that of Lombardi), it was still a strong .623 overall.

MLB--I agree that it is very hard to come up with a baseball list. For example, I think you have to have Joe McCarthy, who won 7 titles and whose winning % is a stellar .615; he's also 8th all-time in wins and 1st in Yankees history for wins. Some might say that any idiot could've filled out the lineup card for some of those Yankees teams, but the record of winning is something that I just can't ignore. I think John McGraw has to be in. He has 3 titles, the 2nd-most wins ever, and a stellar .586 winning %. Next up, I'm going with Walter Alston. He has 4 titles, he has the 9th-most wins ever, he managed the same team in two different cities in an uninterrupted run, and his .558 winning % is 20 points better than Torre and 22 better than LaRussa. Here's where it gets tough for me for the final spot. Connie Mack? I'm ruling him out, because even though he has the most wins ever and 5 World Series titles, he also had a losing record, and I'm imposing the Bill Fitch rule here and eliminating him for that. Casey Stengel? He has 7 titles (tying him with McCarthy for most ever), but his .508 winning % is relatively lackluster, so I'm going to eliminate him. I think you can make very strong cases for Torre, LaRussa, Sparky Anderson, and Bobby Cox. This is just my opinion, but I think Torre made the least difference of the 4, so I'm ruling him out. If Cox's teams won more than 1 World Series, I think he would've been the pick, but I simply can't ignore that. If we're talking about a Mount Rushmore, I just think you have to have won more than 1 title. So that leaves LaRussa and Anderson. Sparky's winning % is better, and they both won 3 titles. LaRussa has more wins; having managed for 33 years, he's 3rd all-time in wins while Sparky is 6th. Sparky's postseason winning % is considerably higher than LaRussa's. It's like splitting hairs, so screw it, I'm giving it to Sparky, because LaRussa is a prick.

[Aeneas Hunter]

I wouldn’t put Shula in the top 4. I put him behind Lombardi, Landry, Noll, and Walsh. Lambesu is an interesting pick, but that era was so long ago that he’s hard to assess. After his initial flurry of success, I thought Shula was an underachiever. I know that a lot of people feel differently, though.

As for baseball, I think you underrate Stengel. Remember that over 400 of his losses were with the expansion Mets. He also coached some bad teams with the Braves and Dodgers. I really don’t have strong feelings about how to rank the baseball managers. When you have someone like Connie Mack in the mix with Billy Martin, we’re talking about apples and oranges.

[lakersken80]

Not sure about Mount Rushmore but I thought Bruce Bochy did an excellent job even though he manages the hated ones in the Giants. Managed the Padres to a World Series and broke the Giants curse of no WS championships as a Bay Area team to getting 3.

[adkindo]

I find it difficult with baseball because I consider a modern guy like Torre. He had great rosters, but I sure as heck could not manage them to a World Series....but then I look at Stengal's roster with the Yankees compared to the competition, and dang, I think I might just have a chance at being a World Series manager. That said, my perception of 1950's baseball may not be very accurate, but at some point how hard to you have to manage Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. Yogi Berra, Gil McDougald, Hank Bauer? Just hit it hard guys! Follow that up with some wise words to Whitey Ford and Don Larson like...."let's get some outs".

[Aeneas Hunter]

The Stengel era Yankees are tricky to analyze because of the halo effect that attaches to all of them. Gil McDouglad was a utility infielder with a career OPS of .766. Yet he was an all-star who popped up in the MVP voting a few times. Why? Because he was part of the Yankee machine. Make no mistake -- he was a good player. But he's like some of the guys on the Russell era Celtics in terms of the halo effect, though he didn't make the Hall of Fame like many of the Celtics.

Don Larsen had a losing record for his career. The most games he ever won in a season was 11. Again, he was not a bad pitcher. But if not for Game 6 of the World Series in 1956, you would never have heard of him, even though he was a Yankee. In fact, it says something about the Yankees that they sent Don Larsen to the mound down 3-2 in the World Series. Other than Whitey Ford, the top starters that year were the immortal Johnny Kucks and Tom Sturdivant. Neither Kucks nor Sturdivant had 60 career wins in the majors. The Yankees also had Bob Turley, but he had an ERA over 5 that year.

So how did they win? In a nutshell, the American League was weak in the '50s, The Red Sox had been destroyed by Tom Yawkey and Joe Cronin. Among other things, they refused to cross the color line and would not sign a kid named Willie Mays. The A's and Senators had been destroyed by Connie Mack and Clark Griffith, respectively. Neither of them would build a farm system. The Brown and Tigers were usually poor in those days. The Yankees' competition was usually Cleveland and the White Sox. The Indians broke through once, then faded (another bad GM story), and the White Sox always fell short until the end of the decade.

Yet we are left with the fact that Stengel won 10 pennants in 12 years, and won the World Series 7 times. He had some great players, for sure. No one wins anything without great players. Mickey Mantle had some huge years. Yogi Berra was great. Whitey Ford was consistent. They did a good job of snagging guys like Enos Slaughter, who were at the end of their careers. Some years they had a good pitching staff aside from Ford (who spent two years in the military, by the way).

But if you look at the rosters critically, you'll scratch your head and wonder how they won that many pennants and how they beat so many stacked National League teams in the World Series. Stengel was a big part of the reason.

[Heartburn]

Why not open it up a bit?

For basketball, throw in Wooden.
For football, Bear Bryant and Nick Saban.
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You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously. - Richard Feynman

[Aeneas Hunter]

[unleasHell]

Walter Alston, and Casey Stengel
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“Always remember... Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, and accepted by idiots.”

[ChickenStu]

[Huskers]

[adkindo]

In my opinion....Bob Knight was/is a true POS as a human being....but he still belongs in the discussion in regards to coaching success...at the end of the day he still has more wins and National Championships than Dean Smith.

It is interesting comparing two guys like Tom Osborne and Bobby Bowden. Their resumes are very similar. Osborne has a better winning %, but Bowden has around 50% more wins in total. The one blemish on Osborne's resume is the overall losing bowl record. Osborne has 3 National Championships while Bowden only has 2, but that leads to another interesting question.

How do we view National Championships that come very close together as compared to those that are split apart? I have seen some people in the past discuss this topic as it relates to Billy Donovan who won back to back National Championships compared to coaches like Bob Knights who are spread out over 2 decades. Did Donovan just hit gold with a recruiting class one time....hence it is basically the same players and he was unable to repeat that success with other classes? In Osbornes case, he coached Nebraska for 24 years (?), but all 3 National Championships were within 4 years.....the '94 & '95 teams being very similar per roster.....and the '97 team still having a decent amount of guys from the '95 team on roster.

[DrWolf]

MLB - Joe torre (IMO, won several rings with the yankees)

NCAAF - Nick Saban (that'll probably go in the air due to that clemson loss)

NCAAB - John Wooden, Coach K, Geno Auriema, Bob knight (Debatable)

NHL - (cant really say, alot of variability in terms of who wins championships)
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KOBE BRYANT
1978-2020
BLACK MAMBA RIP
2020 WORLD CHAMPION LAKERS!
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[ChickenStu]

^
Auriemma is an inspired pick. Obviously, we can get into the whole men's vs. women's sports, but I won't knock you for that selection. You could consider Pat Summitt as well.

[DrWolf]