That lineup of Reaves, Tucker,Monk, Melo and Dwight was terrible last night. Then we added Duke to the mix for some reason? What is the point of playing Ellington, if you don't run something to get him a couple of good looks? If Monk is struggling a bit from outside, why not run something to free him up? I had the same complaints about not even trying to run stuff for KCP last season. We just stick guys out there and let them work it out on their own. If that doesn't work, we simply replace them with someone else. SMH
Saw on Reddit that Chris Haynes mentioned he was hearing that if Vogel had gotten fired, contrary to popular belief, Handy would’ve got the interim head coach position rather than Fizdale. And you know what? I think I actually wish we would have pulled the trigger on that. Fizdale is terrible, but Handy is great in his development role and seems highly respected throughout the league. Feels like the kind of outside the box move that could be lighting in a bottle. And if not, do an extended search for a new head coach this off-season. I think that’s going to be in the cards for this summer anyways. Again, I don’t think Vogel deserves to be the fall guy. He’s not the singular cause of our problems. But I do think he is A problem. Even in a worst case scenario, I don’t think Handy could do that much worse than Vogel.
nba coaching his hard. hey, let's bring in someone with very little coaching experience--that's the ticket! i'm sure russell westbrook will play defense for that guy. and honestly, i half-expect them to fire vogel and hire dudley. and no, it won't work.
Well if Kyrie doesn't go down Steve Nash would have a Championship ring as a HC. Didn't Kidd retire and coach the Nets to the the semi finals in the next season? I think he was the first rookie to win a game 7 on the road or something. They ran into Lebron and Crew next and that was that but it's not all that crazy an idea as it seems. Now of course Russ and his defense is a minor issue compared to Lebron or AD not playing period IMO.
But so what’s the other end of the spectrum? NBA coaching is hard … so it only ever makes sense to make a coaching change if you’re retreading and bringing in one of the dozen or so mediocre to decent former head coaches that have been cycling through the league the past few decades? I would much prefer we do something bold with our next coaching hire, a former player or well respected assistant, rather than going for a Van Gundy or whatever biggest named/most experienced current head coach gets fired after the playoffs.
I gotta say I feel our offensive coaching is more than just a minor issue. We have the pieces but can’t get a top NBA caliber offense out of them. It’s puzzling we don’t run much PnR with our big 3 (contracts) and run secondary actions to get our shooters good looks. I mean we have Lebron James firing up over 8 three pointers a game at the low 30% mark. Last night we just threw the ball to AD at or near the 3 pt line and said get us a bucket against Embiid one of the best defenders in the post. We’ve taken the ball out of westbrooks hand (compared relative to his usage the last 10+ years) and told him to cut down on his turnovers and playmaking and not to shoot threes. I mean why aren’t we utilising him more in transition or pnr? Coaching on the offensive side leaves a lot to be desired.
Luke Walton drew up better end of game/out of bounds plays than Vogel. Well maybe that’s not accurate… I don’t know if Vogel even designs plays. Time after time our end of game plays are just iso ball from one of our stars.
playing a center and russ with basically one sniper is a tough proposition. see pioneer's and my discussion in one of these threads...there just aren't a lot of counters to teams roaming on/ignoring two players in the half court. also, i thought i read somewhere that we use AD in the pick and roll a whole lot, relatively speaking. which surprised me. i don't know why we always give him catches standing still 25ft from the basket, though--it's annoyed me the past two years. he's never been at his best playing that way. i think lebron's threes are on him. looks like he calls his own number on a lot of those bad ones. i've harped on this before, but it's not just us. most teams end quarters with this junk. too afraid of turnovers or off-ball holding blowing up actions to attempt real plays, imo.
I'm not entirely positive on this, however, I feel Houston trading away Capela made people think that Russ needed a 5 out offence to be effective and couldn't be played with a traditional center. When in reality, they did that to maximise his offensive scoring - he was averaging 30 a game there. The following season he played with traditional centers and got them plenty of looks and didn't really struggle scoring himself. Relatively speaking, we do. He has a bit over 4 possessions in the PnR as a roll man per game which is good for third most in the league. But it makes up less than 20% of his shots whereas everyone else in the top 10 has more of a roughly 30-35% shot selection as the roll man (apart from Jokic who is a point center). He isolates just as much from the three point line. That's just not the easy way to use AD, he can do it, but it just makes his life tougher. Both of these points annoy me to no end. We should be able to get get Lebron easier looks so he doesn't resort to launching threes pretending to be Steph Curry. We should also be able to finish a quarter or game with something better than a Hail Mary 3. That's why the offensive side of our coaching staff leaves a lot to be desired for me.
my latter point is that i'm not sure it's our specific coaching that does either of those things. i think our staff is on the hook for AD catching the ball outside the three point line. all coaching staffs choose iso ball to end quarters, so changing won't help there. i don't think lebron is being told or put in positions to just jack those long threes off the dribble. i think he's doing that off script, and that if his coach suggests a script, it's just that--a suggestion. i'm curious as to how people think russ can be used given our personnel. we can't play like we did in the second half last night with lebron and AD; it's less efficient, tbh. russ has had success with centers (e.g., adams), but to the tune of .500 records, basically. the only good teams that involved russ and a center also involved durant.
Maybe they are trying to trade Jordan, so they wanna show he is still healthy and able to play some minutes?
I don’t know what Vogel was thinking. Maybe they don’t have to claw back and possibly even win if he doesn’t start that lineup, just awful.
