I really haven't weighed in on Spo one way or the other on this sub, but this one really has me thinking.

Can you imagine a coach like Greg Popovich a). drawing up a play for his franchise player because franchise player (which is kind of the implication in all of this).

and b). a coach like Pop rationalizing away a totally low percentage shot with "well, he's done it before"

I'm gonna preface this all by saying that I think Spo is a great coach. He and his staff's ability to develop young talent is unparalleled (see: Wade, Whiteside, Richardson, Johnson) and Spo's typically one of the better tacticians out of timeouts. That being said, I think one of his few flaws is his loyalty to Wade at times.

Before Bosh went down and we were forced to switch to this higher-tempo offense, Dragic was somewhat neutered playing mostly in the half-court off of Wade. After Bosh's injury at the all-star break, everything changed with Deng's move to the PF and Whiteside coming off the bench. With Deng stretching the floor and rebounding & running at the four, Dragic was finally able to realize his full potential in the offense.

Does Spo deserve credit for bringing Whiteside off the bench and moving Deng to PF? Absolutely. But by the same token, I think there's something to be said for the fact that the offense has really only taken this step forward almost by accident. Had Bosh not been injured, do you think Spo would have benched Whiteside and unleashed this fast-paced offense with Dragic at the helm? Because I don't.

I think Spo has come up in this organization almost conditioned to believe that everything needs to run through Wade, and it's hard to blame him because it worked for like a decade. But it seems painstakingly obvious that he favors Wade, at times at a detriment to the team.