I’ve always been dubious of the real impact that a manager has on a baseball team’s success.
There, I said it. It’s the players who make the biggest difference anyway, right? The tactics employed by a football coach seem self-evident; a creative offensive scheme or a stifling pass rush can make a huge impact. I think about Pete Carroll employing tall, lanky cornerbacks and a simple two-safety setup to wreak havoc for the better part of a decade.
If you shift to basketball, sure, you can design an offense or get creative with your ballhandlers. You can tweak your system to allow for your stars to get the ball more, and to put them in positions to succeed.