Pop coached like 3/4 of a season where they were already boned from a bad start, had no Robinson (played six games) and no Elliott (played less than half the year) and basically no players other than the corpse of Dominique Wilkins.

The Lakers qualified for the playoffs with D'Antoni, losing to Pop. So that manages to weaken your argument in a couple ways. The Pop-Duncan thing is just an impossible statement, as every full season he has coached the team, Duncan has been there. Someone out there probably thought Auerbach couldn't win without Russell either, yet he managed to be the GM of five more title teams in two different decades with entirely different centerpieces and rosters.