Ex-Coach Luke Walton Discussion

Brad Stevens spent 12 seasons coaching at Butler University before the C bags hired him. 6 as a head coach and 6 as an assistant coach. Luke only spent 2 seasons as an assistant for the Warriors before we hired him. So it's going to be awhile before Luke catches up with Stevens.

For a coach who only has 4 seasons of coaching experience, I dare you to find another coach who has done a better job with a team consisting mostly of 20-23 year olds and zero all-stars.

 

Sure they're all good points.

But over that same time frame, Luke spent 10 years playing professionally in the NBA. During that time he was under arguably one of the greatest coaches of all time in Phil Jackson - who spent time directly mentoring him in coaching while he was injured.

Then he was the main assistant for Steve Kerr (who also learned from Phil as well as Pop) who is presiding over one of the most successful units in NBA history. Luke also coached them for half a season.

It's arguable that Walton was put in a better situation to succeed from his mentors than Brad Stevens ever got coaching at Butler. I think it's pretty clear that Brad Stevens is one of the best coaches in the NBA right now.

 

If it's fair to compare our team to the C-bags, a playoff team and now contender, then it's fair to compare them to GSW. So compare Brad's first head coach gig to Luke's.

Luke went 24-0 to start and set an all-time NBA record of 39-4. I'm not even looking up Brad's.

How you like him now?

 

I thinks there’s a difference between coaching level and level of players. Some great coaches get the most out of their players like pop or brad Stevens has so far.

Walton no doubt did a good job with the warriors but it’s a different level of player.

Steph vs Rozier
Klay vs Tatum
Draymond vs Horford

I think a lot of people would say our teams are more comparable in a 5 vs 5:

Lonzo vs Rozier
Ingram vs Brown
Kuzma vs Tatum
Randle vs Morris
Lopez vs Horford

Everyone here seems to rate our young guys as star level prospects so I think the question at least merits a discussion?

 

I gave the GSW comparison to show what a bad comparison coaching the C-Bags now vs our team is.

So many ways to pick apart this comparison. "Prospects" is a key word, They ain't stars yet. And then there is conferences. No mention of those. And you haven't given Luke comparable time. Saying Luke has a long way to go when comparing them 2nd year in, is off imo. Stevens went 25 wins his first year with the Celts remember, and though it increased to 40 his second year, that's the eastern conference ffs. You think we couldn't have peeled off 5 more wins this year in the east? Please. And they brought in a healthy Isiah Thomas and had vets like Jeff Green and Rondo, Tayshaun Prince, Jameer Nelson, again, in the east. They made the playoffs with a losing record (east) and they got swept in the first round. Now they they have Kyrie, Horford and an awesome roster in the crap East not to mention they've had more high picks then almost anyone. You can't compare coaching these rosters right now. Steven's win increases coincide with better and better rosters. We don't have a Kyrie, super star yet, just possible future stars. He raised everyone's level of play this year. So, so far, in his first 2 years he's been at least comparable to Stevens first 2 years.

Brad's done well, but the implication that he's blowing Luke out the water here doesn't hold up at all imo.

 

You can only mentor someone so far, real coaching experience > mentoring.

Not that I disagree with your assessment that Stevens > Walton right now.

Just feels like a reach to put one down for no reason.

 

Except it’s not a bad comparison. They’re doing great in the playoffs with no Kyrie and no Hayward. It’s Horford and a bunch of young guys. How isn’t that comparable to Lopez and a bunch of young guys?

Rondo got traded beginning of the second season. I don’t see vets like Jeff Green or Tayshun Prince and Jameer Nelson as some kind of game changers. Unless you wanna call KCP, Metta World Peace and Corey Brewer the same.

Isaiah wasn’t anything special until he got in Stevens’ system and everyone keeps saying he is a product of that system anyway.

Then everyone says our young guys are better than their young guys.

So what is it actually? Do they have better young guys? Or do they have a better coach? We can’t keep flipping the story when it’s good for us.

I didn’t say much bad about Luke, he has been decent. I just said he has a long way to go before he can be put in that elite category. I just think Stevens has shown that elite coaching ability from his second season onwards.

 

Being a player on a championship team doesn't mean you can coach. Don't believe me? Ask Magic Johnson. He discovered he was much better as a business executive than trying to coach a team or host a talk show.

Having Phil Jackson as a mentor is a plus, but I don't believe it replaces real experience or real talent. Derek Fisher was mentored by and played for Phil too, and he's working as a TV analyst after Phil fired him. B-Shaw was mentored by Phil, and the best he's been able to do is assistant gigs. His stint as a head coach with the Nuggets was a disaster. The entire team turned on him. One of the important parts of being a head coach is salesmanship. The team has to buy in to what you're selling, and Luke does it better than either of them.

Steve Kerr became a successful coach after failing as a GM. Like Luke and Magic, he found his calling.

Luke only retired from playing ball 5 years ago, and he's lucky to have found another career path that he's actually very good at doing. Stevens found that path much earlier than Luke and has experience that will take Luke many years to acquire. Nobody wakes out of bed and becomes an elite coach.

 

I wonder what Luke would think of this...

 

But it is a bad comparison. You keep saying they have young guys and so do we. So everything is the same. You keep comparing the coaches but Luke in his 2nd year and Brad is in his 5th. He's had 5 years with his team that has been collecting the some of the best assets in the NBA and which has landed them a super star.

Lets see how your age comparison holds up under actual scrutiny by looking at who produces for each team:

Average age

C Bags: 27.25
Lakers: 25.5

Which to start with is a ridiculous stat comparison because we had guys like Deng, Bogut, Fry, Andre Ingram, Williams who really didn't play for us but skew the stat. Removed and they make the avg age 23.9 much more realistic. Actually Bogut and Fry played a little (366 minutes combined) so leave them in and make it 24.7 average age. Deng, Ingram and Williams account for less games than you can show on one hand and played a couple of minutes total.

But let's see where the actual production came from in order of top producers on each team:

Lakers:

Points:
Kyle Kuzma (1st year Rookie)
Brandon Ingraham (2nd year)
Randle (4th year, played 3 seasons.)

Boards:
Randle (4th year, played 3 seasons)
Ball (1st year rookie)
Kuzma (1st year rookie)

Assists:
Ball (1st year rookie)
Thomas (6th year)
Ingram (2nd year)

Steals:
Lonzo Ball (1st year rookie)

Blocks:
Ingram (2nd year)

C-Bags:

Points:
Irving (7th year man)
Horford (11th year man)
Brown (2nd year man)

Rebounds:
Horford (11th year)
Monroe (8th year)
Morris (7th year)

You have to go down 5 slots to even find a youngster in the boarding column and our top 3 is nothing BUT youngsters. I actually love this stat comparison.

Assists:
Irving (7th year)
Smart (4th year)
Horford (11th year)

Steals:
Smart (4th year)

Blocks:
Horford (11th year)


I'm just gonna end the comparisons there because there are none. The Bags have preformed admirably in the playoffs so far and they should. They are hyped up to be there and loving the underdog tag. But they got there with Kyrie, make no mistake and they got there in the stinking East which you keep repeatedly dodging. Luke is second year, Brad is 5th with this same team. Their first couple years are very comparable especially factoring conferences.

If you were to say Luke has a way to go to having 5 years with the same team and a front office that made some major moves in that period. I'd agree. But let's see where we are in 3 more years compared to where the Bags end up this season and playoffs so it's a fair 5 year coaching comparison. Because comparing Luke to anything other than Brad's 2nd season with the Bags isn't fair. I already did it and I think Luke comes out peachy when comparing conferences.

 

I don't think you did any real actual scrutiny above but just limited old players who didn't play on the lakers only. Let's compare average age by looking at players who only played 20+ games:

C's: 24.7
Lakers: 24.3

That means, no Jonathan Gibson (30), Xavier Silas (30), Jarell Edie (26) or Gordon Hayward (27) for Boston. There is no Channing Frye (34), A. Ingram (32), Derrick Williams (26), Isaiah Thomas (28) or Travis Wear (27), included for the Lakers - all of which would have raised our average age.

Or maybe you want to go by mins played? Let's count all players who played over >500 mins?

C's: 24.8
Lakers: 24.2

Not really a big difference in team age at all. We're both two young teams.

Once again let's compare top 5 by total points; because this takes some of the points per game stats out for players who didn't play all that much:

1 - Julius Randle 1323
2 - Kyle Kuzma 1242
3 - Kentavious Caldwell-Pope 992
4 - Brook Lopez 961
5 - Brandon Ingram 949

We had 3 young guys and 2 vets make up the bulk of our scoring.

1 - Kyrie Irving 1466
2 - Jayson Tatum 1112
3 - Jaylen Brown 1017
4 - Al Horford 927
5 - Terry Rozier 900

Boston had 3 young guys and 2 vets make up the bulk of their scoring.

In fact, it's eerily similar how comparable the scoring load was shared between our top 5 and theirs for total points; 5467 vs 5422.

If you really want to go by PT's per game?

1 - Brandon Ingram 16.1
2 - Kyle Kuzma 16.1
3 - Julius Randle 16.1
4 - Isaiah Thomas 15.6
5 - Jordan Clarkson 14.5
6 - Kentavious Caldwell-Pope 13.4
7 - Brook Lopez 13.0

The majority of our scoring - 104.8 came from 4 young guys and 3 vets.

vs

1 Kyrie Irving 24.4
2 Jaylen Brown 14.5
3 Jayson Tatum 13.9
4 Marcus Morris 13.6
5 Al Horford 12.9
6 Terry Rozier 11.3
7 Marcus Smart 10.2

The majority of their scoring - 100.8 came from 4 young guys and 3 vets.

I wrote a much longer version where I broke down each category like I did for points and showed that the majority of the rebounds, assists, steals and blocks were spread across the team and were quite a similar split between vets and young guys comparable between the two teams. But I don't want to make this unnecessarily long and I find the comparison method of looking at single player stats to paint a team picture kind of silly.

Also our block leader was Lopez not Ingram - which you actually meant to be Andre Ingram not Brandon, but he only played 2 games.

You still haven't convinced me we can't make any comparison between the two teams. They have Rozier, Tatum, Brown and Smart playing a bulk of the mins. We have Lonzo, Ingram, Kuzma and Randle. They have Morris, Horford, Baynes and Irving (played a little over half of their games this season when including the playoffs). While we have Lopez, Brewer, Bogut and Thomas.

Also, the C-Bags might have gotten their RS record because of Kyrie's 60 games. With him, they were 41/60 - 68% win percentage. But without him, they are still performing admirably well winning 21/31 - a 67% win percentage. That includes in the playoffs where the game gets tougher.

Does the West/East conference different hold a lot of sway? Yes it does. But the difference between regular season and post season play bridges the quality gap. They've shown they can win in the post season.

I don't care where Luke could be in 3 years or 5 years or 10 years right now, none of that is guaranteed - I'll look at his progress then. I'm comparing him to other elite coaches presently. I think other coaches could of gotten more out of our group this year. But I do think he has been pretty decent and I'm happy to see the growth on defence.

There is no shame in saying other coaches are better than Luke, including Stevens. It's the reality of the situation.

 

Luke will never reach Stevens level , it's not about experience . His ceiling is probably more around Spo/Snyder level which is more than enough if he has elite players in the future.

Their young players are also one step ahead of ours , mainly defensively and only Ingram has a shot at ending up a better player than Tatum .

 

I only checked one of your stats for accuracy because I'm bored of this but it's off. You have the stat for average for players over 500 mins as only a 6 month difference between the 2 teams and it's a full year. And that is to the decimal point taking into account years months and days old as of today's date which doesn't matter as we are establishing a difference in age not the actual age.

The fact is I posted correct info and the top average producers on the Bag's have that many years over the top producers on the Lakers. They rely more on vets. You've dodged the Eastern vs Western conference point now everytime to the point were I'm sorry I'm just bored carrying on here.

That is true. Thought it was BI.

It's not AA bro. I've been tough on Luke all year but when I hear exaggeration I call it for what it is. It's another thing you keep dodging and has been pointed out several times now is that Luke is a second year guy and Brad wasn't tearing it up either 2nd year. I think we would have done better last season in the East than Brad did his 2nd year. As it was we were 5 wins off in a nasty west from his 40 wins in his 2nd year.

 

I'm sorry Alcindor, I didn't quite understand the first part, it's been a bit of a big day at work and I'm a bit burnt out. I used Basketball Reference and just went off current age and mins played. If it is off in some way, I'm not sure how, but a difference of less than a year is hardly much age difference between teams.

EDIT: I went and checked my stats above again, I can't see anywhere they are off - I got the same results a second time. So once again, the average age of our teams is less than a year difference.

I agree with you on the difference between the East and West. But I'm not really judging based off win/loss records. I'm also not trying to compare years between coaches. My point was Luke has a long way to go to get to Stevens level.

Saying that we could have won 40 games and therefore Luke is on a comparable growth to Stevens isn't right. Stevens is a better coach and there is no guarantee Luke will ever get there. Also, since you're so intent on comparing their second-year performance, Stevens team had a starting 5 of (with a lot of injuries, trades and tinkering all year):

Marcus Smart
Avery Bradley
Evan Turner
Jared Sullinger
Tyler Zeller

Today, Smart is a 6th man, Bradley is the leading candidate for looked good in Steven's system, Turner is terrible, Sullinger isn't in the league anymore at 25 and Zeller is in street clothes behind Thon Maker in Milwaukee. Our starting 5 blows them out of the water this year:

Ball
KCP
Ingram
Randle
Lopez

My initial point still stands, there is an elite tier of coaches in the NBA. Carlisle, Pop, Snyder and Stevens are the best over the last few seasons, McMillan, Casey and D'Antoni all had a great year too. Luke has a long way to go to get there.

 

Nicely and succinctly said!

 

I actually said he has been decent but has quite a way to go to become elite.