Byron Scott Discussion 2015-16 - FIRED!!! (PAGE 172)

Wow, I never thought Byron would be this bad honestly. I'm very disappointed in this guy.

So of the last three coaching hires, we had one guy who had zero offense in Brown. Then we went the complete opposite direction with a guy with no defense in D' Antoni. And now we have Scott who doesn't seem to have either. I can't see any kind of functional offense or defense thus far this season. It's just a complete mess out there.

 

Yeah, I got some heat for predicting 32 wins, but really that looks way too optimistic right now. So sad that we are proving all the critics and haters right now.

 

Ok, I'm going to whine some more. With this squad Byron should at least be entertaining the idea of winning half of his games. That's realistic. And right now, once again, this is the EASY part of our schedule. We're getting trashed by the worst teams in the West not even the playoff bound ones. Bottom line, there's no way we should look this bad. And the truly concerning thing to me is the cluelessness on his part. It looks like he doesn't know how where to even begin to right the ship.

Now I expected the starting unit to have some real growing pains because you've got three super young guys, two of whom are rooks. On top of it Kobe's healthy but he's chucking and that's hurting them. But all of that should get better as the season goes on and if Kobe continues to suck and ball hog he can always be played less minutes.

It's the second unit and the substitutions that are really alarming me right now. They look more disorganized and out of sorts than the starters which shouldn't be considering it's full of vets. Scott has enough good players at each position to make this work.

The Kelly and Bass experiment needs to STOP, right now. It clearly doesn't work. Our defense is atrocious with both in at the same time. We are getting destroyed in that regard. It's not rocket science. Put Black in at Center and split minutes with Bass and Kelly who play the same position. We're getting outworked every time those two are in together. Also if you want some more defense you should play MWP at least spot minutes at the 3 instead of Kobe. He's a former defensive player of the year. Yes, he's not what he used to be . . . but neither is Kobe and he's playing out of position!

This is all pretty fixable and obvious. The offense and integrating Russell more should be fairly simple as well. This is basketball not brain surgery. Come on Byron. If you can't get these things together, you don't deserve to be here.

 

So I'll say this: he's not wrong about the way we're starting games. Literally the only guy showing real life out there is Julius Randle. Russell just isn't confident yet. Clarkson is finding his role. Kobe is chucking shots left and right. Hibbert needs more confidence out there, but I think he is what he is and this is what we're going to see all year. The team starts off in a huge hole as no one attacks the paint, we miss long shots, and we don't play defense. Then we're in a huge hole for our bench unit to dig out of. It's not conducive to winning.

The problem is a large part of that is Byron's fault. The guys look unfocused? They look confused? Is that because our guys are stupid or is it because they're unprepared? Is it because there's no scheme in place offensively? Is it because guys don't know their role or aren't being put in positions to succeed?

There's no offensive rhythm out there. Every day I see them play, I see them take a step back. It seems to me when things get rough, the guys look to the bench for guidance and all they get is "go make a play". What does that mean? The weird thing is, when Byron needs to design a play he's done a decent job. Last night Kobe kicked out to D'Angelo who kicked to Lou who was wide open. It was a great design and well executed, Lou just missed the shot. When we needed a play to win the game against Minny, Lou got a wide open layup he just missed. So why can't he help more during the game? I don't understand.

The answer isn't just "work harder". These are professionals, they all seem bright and eager, and they all deserve more. They deserve a smarter rotation. I mean why is Huertas barely playing but Kelly gets 25 minutes a game? Are we trying to build up a trade value here? That's all I can think of that makes any sense whatsoever. Otherwise we're getting nothing at all out of him and he's quickly digging us even further holes than our starters.

Byron needs to go. This is not a tanking season. We have almost no shot at keeping our pick. A bad team doesn't appeal to FAs. Byron was good for us when we sucked, but this team actually has a lot of talent. We're ready for the next step a lot quicker than I thought we'd be and the next step is moving on from Byron.