PRESEASON GAME 1: DAL @ OKC | 98-96 win

[KillerLeft]

When coaches want to win a game, I don't really think they consider how much a player is making.  It's irrelevant to achieving their primary goal.

I think this is true, in a sense. 

However, if that coach is "deciding" to sit their highest paid players during crucial stretches too often, they'll soon have problems in the locker room and probably with the front office decision makers, too, since they clearly won't be playing the team in the way the GM intended. That's politically generated pressure from multiple directions, and it calls into question the reality of what a coach's authority actually is. 

The best teams, of course, are the ones with good communication and synergy between the two "realms" you describe. 

Example: I used to marvel at folks around here who would roast Carlisle for leaning so heavily on Jason Terry, as if he simply agreed to coach in Dallas, then examined his roster and finally decided how to approach the team. The reality is that some version of "How would you design an offense around our cornerstone players, Dirk and JET" doubtlessly came up during the interview/decision process while the job was open. Ditto for Josh Howard, who was going through some trouble at the time and whose quality of play was diminishing rapidly. That's why Carlisle had a couple of meetings with Howard right away - because part of his mandate was some version of "we've got to get Howard balling again." Later, all involved decided this was a lost cause and traded Howard to Washington.

Another example: the entire world knew KP wasn't working in Dallas. going into last summer. It's difficult for me to imagine how it could have been more obvious. But, Kidd wasted the better part of a season trying like hell to make it work. Why? Was it because he thought he could? If so, he was way wrong. But I suspect the real answer is that it was a HUGE topic of conversation between the Mavs and potential coaching hires..."how can we get Luka and Porzingis playing well together?"

An extreme and public example of this is playing out right now in LA, where a coach was literally just fired for mishandling Westbrook despite being as justified as possible to sit his ass. He doesn't fit there at all, but rather than admit that they put together a dumb roster, they scapegoated the coach and now you hear nothing but praise for Westbrook coming from the new coach who knows in no uncertain terms what management expects him to do.