A great coach is important. A great builder is more important.
An average coach can win a championship with a great roster, one constructed by a general manager with an eye for talent, a sense for chemistry and a vision for where the league is headed.
A great coach can sometimes will and guide a team with even modest talent or dysfunction in the locker room to overachievement. But far more often than not, the season will not end with a title run.
I bring this up now because the Hawks are two offseasons into the post-Danny Ferry front-office regime of coach/president Mike Budenholzer and general manager Wes Wilcox, and the jury is clearly out.