Assistant Coach Discussion: McMillan And Brooks

I see you have missed my posts about Reddick, and misunderstand my humorous jabs at "quota" situations in general. Everything I have posted in the past is based upon fact, and I just mused that it seemed like the large market teams like LA had to maintain a quota of 2 white guys on the main roster at all times. When you dig into the roster construction for the past 20+ years, it's pretty dang accurate. When we fall below that on the team, you can predict moves are coming hahahaahaha.

Of course there are always exceptions.

But back to coaching, I think it's fair to say that besides Phil, we can't really say our white coaches have been any better than their counterparts.



We've had a rough stretch of coaches since Phil. We knew it would be tough to fill his shoes, but 20+ years? Dang.

So while I'm aware of the perception that less athletic white players make better coaches because they had to be more "cerebral" to compete while they were players, I just don't see it. So while do jest about our "token white guys" from time to time, make no mistake I want the best possible coach for the job. If that's Adelman, great. If it's Ty Lue, that's great too.

 

I think he's far better than Ham, but the student definitely didn't surpass the teacher. If he was accused at being terrible at making adjustments in game, I 100% believe it based only on what we saw with Ham.

 

Bud won 1 title with Giannis who's a beast. They didn't became a force in the East in Giannis' prime, who's healthy most of the time, plus Middleton and Jrue who are amazing fits alongside him.
I think he fell way short of expectations and seemed out of ideas when teams' found a way to stop Giannis (Giannis' wall).

I'm not very excited with him. I'm more in JJ, not because I think it will be better but I'm more curious with how it would work out

We are signing LeBron for 3 years as it seems so our title window is not our main interest at the moment

 

i'm upset by our poor coaches in general, but i wonder how many franchises could put up a similar graphic (without phil)? almost all teams can put up a long list of fired coaches whom everyone agrees sucked, right? that's just...kind of the business.

unless you're miami or san antonio, you've been cycling. i think the reason is that there are really only a handful of truly valuable coaches out there. we haven't found one since phil, but almost nobody else has, either. brad stevens was supposed to be that guy, then he kinda ducked the smoke and we saw two other guys with limited experience just replicate and extend his success (iow, it's the roster, dummies).

who's the new guy, malone? the twice-fired malone? chris finch? who was probably nearly fired last year for vastly underperforming his talent?

anyway, one luxury other teams have more than us is patience. we can't really let guys grow into the job. when we hired walton, i think that was the main idea. and even with a team of young players with fairly limited expectations, both fans and the front office were like...checking watches.

bud did some good things with atlanta before milwaukee. he's more creative on offense than vogel, so if phx just pivots a bit and tries to amp up the offense (leaning into their strengths), it can work. i don't think anyone will be able to solve that beal makes 50+ million and is probably only worth half that on a good day now.

 

Phoenix has set just about anyone up for failure who comes in.

 

the never ending cash helps solve problems.

for example, they just blew through the luxury tax to pay grayson allen. so now in addition to their three maxes (super maxes, really), they have two guys over 15 per (nurkic and allen). they can (and i'm guessing will) use bird rights to pay royce oneale rather than lose the salary slot. that will come out at 8-10 per is my guess.

now, they can't aggregate salaries to trade anymore, but they have 7 legit rotation players. all they need is one veteran to take less for a big role (like gordon did last year), and they're in business. their payroll is going to be well over 200 million, though. only a couple teams will venture there. but it's an advantage to those who will.

 

JJ as our coach goes either really, really bad or really good. I don't think there is a middle ground here. I'm not sure im willing to take that gamble though.

 

They very rarely were all healthy. Adding one year to the mix doesn't make that type of roster construction much better. And on top of that, they just threw their coach under the bus and were highly disrespectful in the process. Unfortunately nobody is waiving a 50 mi a year malcontent, so it is what it is. I don't expect that they will put together a healthy enough run to be a legit contender.

 

what's the nightmare scenario? that we have a bad coach again? we've been there. a fair amount. it's not like we have a prime superstar who could walk in free agency or something. it might be a bigger tragedy to waste a good coach on the last years of lebron, lol.

 

Agree first two sentences. And after failing with rookie Ham who had years and years as an assistant under his belt the mocking of the Lakers, Rob, Jeanie and certainly LeBron is going to make Rob is Scrambling look like favorable press with Ballmer’s money buying it in comparison to now hire Reddick because James wants him. It will be brutal. It will take huge balls from everyone involved and THEN comes the likelihood it all gets torpedoed by one or both the Big 2 having nowhere near the health they had this season and what if either gets hurt in their Olympics participation? But in honor of her father, if JJ is truly the guy Bron wants to get into the foxhole with …. Jeanie needs big balls that she can do the dance with.

 

Suns pick is officially in




Definitely wouldn't want to pay the $10m+ a year for a suped up Ham

 

the upside case for redick is steve kerr. similar player profile (college superstar, succesful nba role player for many years). known as hard-working, high hoop iq guys. what kerr had on jj at the time of his hire was some time working in a front office, so there was a better read on how he worked with others within a professional organization. he was 39 when he started there, same age as jj now, fwiw.

i've gradually warmed to jj. i've long been an atkinson proponent, but i could see the same issues that caused him problems in bkn to surface here. plus there's the lebron stamp of approval, which just casts a giant shadow over the whole proceedings.

 

Is there any reason to believe he’s more likely to blow off JJ than any of the other candidates?

Atkinson did a great job in Brooklyn, only to be shown the door half a season after acquiring KD and Kyrie. I like Atkinson, but there’s evidence to be concerned over his ability to manage stars.

Do we really think any of the Assistant candidates are sure to get Lebron’s respect? Nori and Adelman could be great, but there’s no guarantee they’ll command a Lebron-led locker room.

I’m not suggesting JJ is a no brainer hire and there are a few candidates I’d be perfectly fine with, but the arguments against him aren’t any stronger than the arguments against the rest of the candidate pool.

 

Well there's the argument that we've never seen him coach a basketball team at any level before lol.

There's just no way to know how these first0time candidates with no assistant experience is going to work. Kerr and Fisher were the two hottest names in 2015, the former ended up being great and the latter was awful. Billups was in high demand a couple of years ago and hasn't really shown anything even considering the bad rosters. It's a pure crapshoot.

In order of preference at the moment, I think I want:

1. Nori
2. Adelman
3. Lue
4. Redick

Not interested in Atkinson

 

no, and like it does now? but:

this is where i land. i'm coming to prefer jj if only because i see this as a playing-out-the-string hire.

adelman sounds great. nori sounds great. atkinson has done well historically, imo, and is a perfectly suitable hire.

i feel a bit like i felt when we were looking at vogel/lue/williams. i slightly preferred williams, but any of them would have been basically the same, imo.

 

Bingo! I think people are expecting too much from a new coach. Being a coach on a Lebron led team, at this point in his career, is a more limited coaching job. You are basically running your ideas through Lebron and seeing if he likes them. If he doesn't, then you ask what he thinks and you adapt your coaching to make those ideas central to yours. If you naturally align, then you could be in a good situation and if you make good rotations, even better. If you aren't quite up to it, you and Lebron will ride off into the sunset together. If you are miraculously great, then you likely leave on your own volition as Lebron retires.

The worst scenario is, we bring someone in who has zero experience, Lebron walks and the new coach is forced to coach a completely crappy team that will need to pivot and start rebuilding.

 

Agreed.

I’m open to Atkinson though. I’d prefer him to JJ.