NBA Season 16-17: General Thread

[spreedom]

Originally Posted by Bryan_Wilson

He's not breaking ground this year by playing at a pace faster than everyone else. The entire NBA has incorporated this run and gun faster pace philosophy when it suits them. And he's certainly not coaching the rockets to a top 10 defense. This is the guy who benched Gasol for some scrub(earl clark) in LA because he wanted to play faster. Instead of adjusting the offense to help one of his best players(maybe the best once Kobe was hurt) he benched him because he wanted the offense to go faster. That's not a genius, thats a guy who doesn't know how to get the most out of his players, loser ball IMO. We all give RC crap for some of his rotation choices but he gets the best(most of if not all the time) from his players. He makes adjustments to the offense to cater to a guys strengths. He tries to mix in some zone schemes and such to make the defense better than what it is. He's coaching winning basketball and getting the most out of some pretty shit rosters around here. Dantoni may have laid groundwork as you say but other teams are doing what he did better and they are coaching while they are at it. Adding a guy like Harden to this just makes it worse IMO.

The D'Antoni hire for the Lakers was a disaster from the beginning. I agree that he could have done a better job, but to pin that failure solely on how he used Pau Gasol is strange.

And if we're talking about getting the most out of players (which I agree should be the majority basis by which we measure coaches) let's do an exercise with these Rockets. What do you think their ceiling is with D'Antoni? How about if they had a good-but-not-great coach (Steve Clifford, Scott Brooks, someone like that) instead? How about with Carlisle? I think the absolute ceiling for this team is about 48-50 wins. Want to bet against them getting pretty close to or exceeding that?

Instead of talking about what D'Antoni doesn't do well, acknowledge what he does do well.

Originally Posted by DevinHarriswillstart

Problem is that the rest of the league has caught up. D'Antoni can coach an offense, but he can also let lesser offenses go to town on his non existent defense.

FWIW, the 7 seconds or less Suns were generally a top 12-18 offensive team in terms of defensive efficiency... with THAT personnel. People talk about their struggles because back then, what we all (myself included) looked at was PPG yielded. D'Antoni isn't going to change the world defensively, but let's not act like his Suns were a bottom 5 defense.

[Bryan_Wilson]

Originally Posted by spreedom

The D'Antoni hire for the Lakers was a disaster from the beginning. I agree that he could have done a better job, but to pin that failure solely on how he used Pau Gasol is strange.

I brought up the Pau thing because it was the most memorable. And because it highlights a major problem Dantoni has. He sacrificed his best player arguably(kobe out) being on the floor so he could put clark in, a career scrub, and his reasoning he gave was he wanted to "go faster". Taking your best player and bringing him off the bench for an inferior player to simply run faster isn't winning basketball imo. That would be like if the bulls had butler come off the bench because they wanted to go faster with a guy like nate robinson. I don't necessarily hold him accountable for the lakers win/loss as a whole because they have been a mess for a long time now but he's not without blame.

And if we're talking about getting the most out of players (which I agree should be the majority basis by which we measure coaches) let's do an exercise with these Rockets. What do you think their ceiling is with D'Antoni? How about if they had a good-but-not-great coach (Steve Clifford, Scott Brooks, someone like that) instead? How about with Carlisle? I think the absolute ceiling for this team is about 48-50 wins. Want to bet against them getting pretty close to or exceeding that?

Instead of talking about what D'Antoni doesn't do well, acknowledge what he does do well.

I'm not saying they wont win regular season games, just like Harden will win games without dantoni because many nights great offense will prevail. But what I term "loser ball"(my fault) is to the fact that they will not win when it counts. Last night I watched probably less than half of the game but most of the 4th quarter. And it was clear as day that Capela is their best Center. Yet who did dantoni play? Nene. And that's not some type of matchup play on defense because Capela is miles ahead of Nene at this point. He did that because Nene can shoot a face up jumper and Capela cannot. He also played Ryan anderson with Nene making their front court maybe the worst rebounding/defensive front court ever. Decisions like that, and I'm sure there were more but I did not watch the whole game, are why I say "loser ball". And Harden is no different. As long as a coach is going to allow him to lead the league in Turnovers by not holding him accountable for sloppy play, and allowing him to play literally 0 defense at times when he wants to catch his breath, not to mention the fact that in the playoffs the refs will make it harder to get ft's like they always do and he has to actually make shots conisistently... all of those reasons are why he also is a loser brand of basketball. So to answer the question about another coach? As long as that GM and Owner hold presser's like the one they had this summer basically saying "he carried us, its not his job to also play defense" and the Coach does not or will not hold Harden accountable then the coach won't matter they won't win. But no, I've seen nothing personally from Dantoni with any team that would indicate they would win in the playoffs.