Head Coach Discussion: Canned Ham, Who Is Our New Coach?

such limited options, it's not an impossibility

but he doesn't get rave reviews either, so I kind of doubt it. I hope not.

 

That's my honest concern. Certainly not an improvement or long term answer.

 

stotts and budenholzer are both available

 

both are preferable over Doc Rivers. The C Bags said they won in spite of Doc

 

Stotts and Bud hire them both

 

Can't see Bud taking the job given his relationship with Ham but maybe.

Just not really interested in Stotts.

 

None of the currently available former head coaches move me.

I also just can’t see bringing in a new veteran head coach, who would likely want a long term deal and want to implement new things, in January. It’s just too drastic of a shakeup.

Also, coaches are a close knit group. If Ham gets fired from a 4 year deal after only 1.5 years, there will be a lot of blow back from other coaching candidates in the media. Even coaches interested in our vacancy would likely be hesitant to rush into the job mid-season out of solidarity with Ham and for the sake of optics.

I still think the most likely scenario is Ham rides out this season and we fire him this off-season if the results are disappointing (first round exit or worse). If we turn things around and the team has any level of playoff success, I think there’s a chance the FO just sticks with Ham for now. Not advocating for this, just how I see the FO operating.

If things are truly so dire that Ham has lost the team and the FO feels the need to move on ASAP, I think we probably just give the reins to Handy as interim coach. You maintain some continuity for the sake of this current season, and then re-evaluate during the summer. At that point we likely have a larger pool of potential candidates, and any controversy amongst the coaches for firing Ham will have cooled down.

 

agree with all that. and i think ham admitting that he needs to return to the lineup that had success last year ASAP is maybe the first step in him realizing that his grace period is basically over.

but i think he's not fired this year, but has a good chance of being fired in the summer if things go anything like they look like they will.

i hope we get more creative in the next coaching search, too.

 

Man what an indictment on this coaching staff that if we do fire Ham, the best we can muster up is Handy. Ham really needed a former HC as his associate head coach.

 

Well this escalated quickly. Yesterday I thought the chances of Ham being fired midseason were basically zero, today you have to say its significantly higher than that but probably still unlikely.

I feel like there's a bit of revisionist history going on here that Ham has been bad from the jump. I don't think that's true. Early on last year everyone (me included) was frustrated with the super small, 3 or 4 guard lineups but I remember being surprised when I found out that some of those actually had pretty good net ratings. As the year progressed, I thought our offensive scheme and set plays improved, and I thought Ham did a pretty good job pulling together lineups/rotations on the fly after all the trades. In the playoffs I thought he ultimately pushed the correct buttons over the course of the Grizzlies and Warriors series, and we were frankly out of cards to play in the Nuggets series. I don't think he was an elite, big value-add coach last season but I thought he was fine.

This year has just been weird. I'm fine with experimenting in the regular season (more 5-out to juice the halfcourt offense which is a legit weakness, more switching to have that in our back pocket for a particular playoff matchup and best utilize Rui/Wood/Hayes on that end), but there's a difference between experimenting and undermining the identity/composition of the team. I thought it was evident from last season that, at this stage of the careers, LeBron and AD need additional size in the frontcourt and additional ball-handling in the backcourt. You can't ask LeBron to play the 2020 PG role with 4 other forwards/bigs anymore, and you can't ask AD to anchor the defense with 4 smalls. Now he's making excuses with the injuries, but you can blame this loss to the Heat on the DLo/Vincent/Rui injuries when those guys haven't had a clear role even when healthy this year.

 

ham learned most of his coaching from Bud n Bud got fired most likely for same issues ham is having, not good with timely time outs, personnel and his final yr in playoffs the bucks lost so many leads late into the 4th, similar to our issues now

 

handy is a development guy. he's not HC material at all

 

Same as the FO, which is why we are in this predicament instead of proven competence they went with the PR hire.

 

They had proven competence with Frank.

Also, I'm not sure how Ham was a PR hire. He was a veteran assistant coach who had more than paid his dues.

Darvin has already gotten the team as far as Stotts did in Portland - the conference finals. And to be honest, I don't think Stotts could have managed the locker room with Russ last year or gotten us to the conference finals.

Nothing personal against Stotts or anyone who likes him but I don't think he's our guy and supported the front office on that. Still do.

 

Basically the same from Shams that's in the article but if you'd rather watch instead of read...

 

or monty

 

Who the hell was supposed to start without D'Angelo and Rui available, that was going to make this big difference last night?
Folks yapping about losing to Miami without Butler, well they are 6-4 without Butler this season. One thing NOBODY seems to mention, is that Miami played without their 3 best Lebron defenders in Butler, Martin and Highsmith, but Lebron proceeded to drop a whooping 12pts, on a night missing two scorers.

The main thing remains the main thing IMO. If we are winning or losing, the first place I look, is at what Lebron and AD are doing. That's the barometer of the team. AD has been excellent.
The Kang hasn't been his usual self over these last 11 games. That's the biggest problem, but playing Austin Reaves for 5 an extra minutes ain't it. D'Angelo Russell has been f***ing up for weeks now, why is he excused? All the guys that signed a new extension this summer, have been a bit underwhelming this season overall. However Lebron has been coasting or struggling (take your pick) more than anyone else since Vegas.

Lebron, Austin and D'Angelo are pretty much traffic cones on defense, they offset that by scoring at a high clip. That hasn't been a consistent thing this season.

Now..I don't know why Rui or Wood haven't been more involved at times, but the fact that this Lebron, Austin, and D'Angelo trio's offense, hasn't overcome their mediocre defensive efforts, should be the subject of a lot more scrutiny.

 

When I see a 6'9 player with athletic ability not be able to handle making a layup on a fast break with no one in front of him or players that sit out because they have a bruise on their a** check, or can't play defense, etc etc, the talent is an issue.

Ham doesn't help but the talent is a big part of the issue as well. 4-30 from there isn't Ham's fault.