Former NBA head coach Stan Van Gundy had a fair bit of success in his 10+ years as a head honcho in the league, with the 2008-09 season being the best of his career. Van Gundy led the Orlando Magic to the 2009 NBA Finals and had to go up against two of the greatest players of all time in LeBron James and Kobe Bryant during that run.
Van Gundy took down James’ Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals, but then lost to Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals. With the 66-year-old having had to strategize against the two icons, he was asked who was harder to game plan for during an appearance on Run It Back on FanDuel TV.
“Well, Kobe was, but because Kobe had more around him,” Van Gundy said. “I mean, he had Pau Gasol. I mean, they had a good team around Kobe. LeBron really was carrying that team in Cleveland. In fact, the guy we had the most trouble with other than LeBron was [Wally] Szczerbiak. I mean, no knock on Wally Szczerbiak, but he’s not Pau Gasol. So LeBron had to do a lot.”
Bryant definitely had the better team. Pau Gasol was an All-Star that year and made the All-NBA Third Team. Along with him in the frontcourt was Andrew Bynum, who had emerged as one of the best young centers in the NBA at that point. The Lakers also had Lamar Odom, who was in the running for Sixth Man of the Year.
The Cavaliers, meanwhile, had very little around James. Mo Williams did make the All-Star team in 2009, but that was the first and only time in his career he pulled that off. Williams wasn’t actually supposed to make it either, as he was the second injury replacement. James basically had some good defensive pieces around him and was carrying that team on offense.
“LeBron had a great series the year we beat him in the finals,” Van Gundy stated. “I think it might still be LeBron’s highest scoring series he’s ever had in his playoff career. He averaged 36 against us, I think. But our plan going in was we want him to score and not create easy shots for other guys.
“And we would live with Hedo Turkoglu and other guys playing him one-on-one,” Van Gundy added. “Tried not to foul him a lot. And if he makes jump shots, he makes jump shots, and we’ll live with it. And it ended up working out for us. So it wasn’t because I would say that Kobe was necessarily better than LeBron. He just had more around him, and that always makes things tougher.”
James averaged 38.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, 8.0 assists, 1.2 steals, and 1.2 blocks per game against the Magic while shooting 48.7% from the field. Van Gundy correctly pointed out that this is still today his highest scoring average in a single playoff series.
Unfortunately for James, his “co-star” Williams was nowhere near his best against the Magic. He did average a respectable 18.3 points per game, but shot just 37.1% from the field.
Van Gundy wanted to limit the easy opportunities James would create for his teammates, and the game plan worked. The Magic also rained down threes on the Cavaliers (shooting 40.8% as a team from deep) and knocked them out in six games.
The Lakers, though, would prove to be a different animal, as they took down the Magic in five games. Bryant gave them all sorts of problems, as he put up 32.4 points, 5.6 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.4 steals, and 1.4 blocks per game while shooting 43.0% from the field.
Bryant was deservedly named MVP, but unlike with James, his reliable supporting cast ably backed him up, too. Most notably, Gasol put up 18.6 points per game in the Finals while shooting an excellent 60.0% from the field.
As Van Gundy stated, it is a lot harder to game plan for someone when you know there are other quality pieces you have to worry about. The Lakers had them, the Cavaliers did not.
That year would prove to be the closest Van Gundy got to winning a championship. He’d be a head coach for eight more seasons, but never made the NBA Finals again.
