While you’re certainly not wrong, I do have a few counter points:
- AD was certainly a malcontent, but he wasn’t too much of a problem for the Jazz prior to Karl Malone’s arrival. He was threatened by Karl and probably had zero issues with giving the young player some bad advice. I put a lot of this on Layden for not hammering home a “Me and Karl” type of attitude with AD as opposed to “Me or Karl”. For what it’s worth, I don’t think AD’s advice about not playing defense was going to effect a guy who had one of the best work ethics in professional sports history.
- I think AD is one of the first examples of the Larry Miller philosophy of trying to field a team of 12 boy scouts. Larry had a lot of issues with AD, as evidenced by how long he held out before finally giving in and retiring AD’s number. Simply put, Larry didn’t like AD and the second the Jazz knew what they had in Karl, he was out the door.
I think what made Phil Jackson one of the winningest coaches is NBA history was his ability to manage egos and personalities inside his locker room. He was an absolute master at it. If Layden had a little bit of that in him, I think he could have gotten more buy-in from AD and the team woulda been an juggernaut.
From what I’ve heard, AD was a flat out ******* and maybe he was too much of a malcontent in the locker room but he did manage to carve out a 15 year NBA career while playing on some pretty good teams. I’d love to have seen what the Jazz could have been had they kept him.