Rick Carlisle is one of the few coaches in NBA history to have won a title as a universal underdog. When he and Dirk Nowitzki led the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA title, they did so against a Miami Heat team that had assembled one of the greatest collections of top-end talent in basketball history.
That one series changed how Carlisle was seen in the NBA. He was seen as a good coach, a great one even, but never one who could get a team over the hump.
Now, in a new era with the Indiana Pacers, Carlisle is facing the same difficulties he did before coming to Dallas. In fact, he is reliving many of the same talking points that he did when he was the coach of the Detroit Pistons, just before they won the title in 2004.
The Pistons and the Pacers, the Carlisle chronicles
The Pacers and Pistons similarly do not have a top-10 player on the roster. While nearly all NBA champions have had that, it is those infamous Pistons that every team has tried to emulate. Indiana will need to pull something off that no team has been able to do in 22 years.
Unfortunately, while Carlisle coached that collection of talent, he was not the one who led Detroit to the mountain top.
Carlisle was fired by the Pistons before the season; they finally won their ring. That led to his first stint with Indiana, which lasted just four years before he was fired as the Pacers "needed a new voice," by his own admission.
It was at that point that Carlisle rehabbed his image. He joined the Mavericks in 2008, where he worked under Don Nelson, one of the most imaginative minds in basketball history. When he won that ring in 2011, it was a rejection of what he had been framed as for nearly a decade.
Now, 15 years after he won that title, Carlisle is getting the same questions he did when he was with the Pistons and Pacers the first time around.
Is he good enough to take a team over the top again, or is he just good enough to make deep playoff runs off the talent of his roster?
When coaches win a title, they are infinitely referred to as "capable of winning a title" in a similar way that players are branded as stars when they make a singular All-Star team (shout out D'Angelo Russell). However, it seems truly likely that Carlisle is at that level.
Coaches are often misunderstood. They do not make many decisions that affect the game outside of substitutions and interpersonal relationships.
No coach is better at staggering minutes than Carlisle, who has managed to find a way to create an eight-man rotation that somehow gives a fair amount of rest to its participants. Additionally, it's hard to overstate how much internal support he has.
The Pacers are not looking for a new voice the way they did years ago. They are all in on their team, and that includes their head coach.
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