Why I’m Less Concerned About Thibs Burnout Than I Otherwise Would

There is obviously some debate over whether Thibs’ “treat every game like it’s Game 7” strategy is a good one, and one of the best critiques of it is why I predicted more wins than most posters (not all, of course. Who could out-optimize swifty, for instance?), which is that we have seen this exact thing happen multiple times in NBA history, where a hard-nosed “do anything to win” coach comes in, turns the defense around, gets more than expected out of a team, then after a season or two, burnout sets in and everything collapses. A relatively recent example was the “Scott Skiles effect,” Skiles turned around Phoenix, Milwaukee and Chicago and burned out in each place. It got to the point where Orlando started burning out midway through his first season there (he was fighting with the GM and wanted to quit midway through that first seaon, but waited until the end of the season to quit). He hasn’t coached since.

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