There is a lesson to be learned here, but it's about outthinking your opponent, not that NBA coaches are all idiots.
Out of curiosity, since I don't know anything about basketball, how do you beat a full-court press, and why isn't it a good idea to at least try to stop people from getting down the court?
That said, a team of good ball-handlers can beat a strong press if they stay calm and pass well. Patience and poise.
(Which is probably why the press is so effective in younger leagues: players at that age get frantic under pressure and just don't have the dexterity/skill to keep the ball under control)
One way to think of a full-court press is as a way of spreading resources thinly. You can beat it by handling and passing the ball well. On a thinly defended court, this leads to a lot of easy baskets because there's so much open space.
Are there any statistics on the effectiveness of a full-game full-court press done by a team that has conditioned itself to press for the entire game? I'd love to see some actual data on this.
The key here is that the data must be only from those (few) teams that have conditioned themselves appropriately. Otherwise, it's measuring the wrong thing.