GT: Nets @ Bucks - Sunday, 05/02/21 | 3:30pm EST | ABC & Yes 2

[Prokorov]

Food for thought, hot out of the youtube oven:

jV4oJILSgYg

After listening to him open the v-blog with a deal of... brand-building I guess it was, I wasn't really too keen on his first point-- that Blake Griffin didn't play enough minutes. I mean yeah, that may be a decent argument I suppose, but not only has it been hashed out plenty in this very thread, but such arguments are amongst the most weak and watery of all sports critique, i.e. that 'someone either played too much or too little.' Just not a great opener for me. Bah.

Anyway, maybe I can still learn something here. Could you tell me what points of his you did agree with, Ecuhus?

TBH, I only catch every 2-3 games, and am simply not sharp enough to spot all the potential things Nash goofs on, aside from sometimes seeming to miss strategic timeout opportunities, especially late in games.

-Doesn't adjust to whats happening in the game. what other teams are doing well
-Doesnt take advantage of opponents weakness (i.e. exploting teams that dont defend pick and roll well, etc.)
-Doesnt challenge plays that require challenges (i.e. clear bad call that results in free throws + foul on a star)
-Doesnt disrupt the flow of players who are on a roll by doubling, trapping, not switching everything, etc...
-Inability to manage close/late games. horrific at something as simple as inbounding the ball
-Does value defensive possesion. will sub in offense for final possesions but not sub in defense for final possesions
-Doesnt adjust to teams defenses. lives and dies by our gameplan coming in. 0 creativity.
-Glues 1-way defenders to the bench, resists any lineup without 5 shooters, even when we are getting crushed on D
- too much rah-rah and nnot enough actual substance.

Mostly its awful/lack of use of timeouts, awful/lack of use of challenges, and 0 in-game adjustments

[gigantes]

-Doesn't adjust to whats happening in the game. what other teams are doing well
-Doesnt take advantage of opponents weakness (i.e. exploting teams that dont defend pick and roll well, etc.)
-Doesnt challenge plays that require challenges (i.e. clear bad call that results in free throws + foul on a star)
-Doesnt disrupt the flow of players who are on a roll by doubling, trapping, not switching everything, etc...
-Inability to manage close/late games. horrific at something as simple as inbounding the ball
-Does value defensive possesion. will sub in offense for final possesions but not sub in defense for final possesions
-Doesnt adjust to teams defenses. lives and dies by our gameplan coming in. 0 creativity.
-Glues 1-way defenders to the bench, resists any lineup without 5 shooters, even when we are getting crushed on D
- too much rah-rah and nnot enough actual substance.

Mostly its awful/lack of use of timeouts, awful/lack of use of challenges, and 0 in-game adjustments

Thanks Proky, and question-- do you have any theories about why this stuff is still an issue so late in the season?

Because it's really hard for me to believe that Nash isn't bright or experienced enough to handle this stuff (even as a rookie HC with no prior coaching experience), or that his coaching staff isn't pointing stuff like this out to him on the regular. I mean, how could this possibly be stuff that D'Antoni and Vaughn wouldn't be coming up with too? (assuming you're accurate in these critiques)

I guess some simple, obvious theories are: "chronic stubbornness" and "being overwhelmed," but those don't make a lot of sense to me either. Could it be he's deliberately taking more of a hands-off approach to see how the players respond, given the number of new faces and the lack of practice time? Could it also be that the staff are intentionally trying to keep more of their options veiled for playoff-time?

[HardenGoat]

I'll take a stab at this, my two cents. It's known that D'antoni is an offensive minded coach and Nash is a branch that literally fell from that tree. The defensive game plan is going to be pretty simple against this team, disrupt the best scorer from what they do best. Make Giannis beat you with lower percentage shots, and do your best to keep their wings from getting hot (Middleton etc). Nash is still going to focus on outscoring you. We actually did beat ourselves this game with careless turnovers and rusty play in general, something that needs to be cleaned up on the players end. Some of this is simply a lack of focus and communication. The other is we are missing our primary ball handler. I think Nash is trying to get looks at player matchups even if the sets look odd as a unit which brings me to the next point. There is no way the cards are being shown especially in late regular season games with our most likely second round matchup. Nash is putting out some lineups knowing our MVP guard is going to be filling a spot occupied by one of the role players. I know we want the first seed and to win every game, but the seeding is simply not the most important thing right now. I believe we would have won this game if we were more focused, and that is with Giannis having a 1 in 100 shooting game, and missing our MVP guard.

[MGrand15]

-Doesn't adjust to whats happening in the game. what other teams are doing well
-Doesnt take advantage of opponents weakness (i.e. exploting teams that dont defend pick and roll well, etc.)
-Doesnt challenge plays that require challenges (i.e. clear bad call that results in free throws + foul on a star)
-Doesnt disrupt the flow of players who are on a roll by doubling, trapping, not switching everything, etc...
-Inability to manage close/late games. horrific at something as simple as inbounding the ball
-Does value defensive possesion. will sub in offense for final possesions but not sub in defense for final possesions
-Doesnt adjust to teams defenses. lives and dies by our gameplan coming in. 0 creativity.
-Glues 1-way defenders to the bench, resists any lineup without 5 shooters, even when we are getting crushed on D
- too much rah-rah and nnot enough actual substance.

Mostly its awful/lack of use of timeouts, awful/lack of use of challenges, and 0 in-game adjustments

Thanks Proky, and question-- do you have any theories about why this stuff is still an issue so late in the season?

Because it's really hard for me to believe that Nash isn't bright or experienced enough to handle this stuff (even as a rookie HC with no prior coaching experience), or that his coaching staff isn't pointing stuff like this out to him on the regular. I mean, how could this possibly be stuff that D'Antoni and Vaughn wouldn't be coming up with too? (assuming you're accurate in these critiques)

I guess some simple, obvious theories are: "chronic stubbornness" and "being overwhelmed," but those don't make a lot of sense to me either. Could it be he's deliberately taking more of a hands-off approach to see how the players respond, given the number of new faces and the lack of practice time? Could it also be that the staff are intentionally trying to keep more of their options veiled for playoff-time?

The simple answer is that all these critiques are exaggerated. We're battling for the 1 seed with constant lineup changes, we have an amazing record in close games, we don't get blown out unless we sit all of our players. We've crushed playoff teams and elite teams.

It's like you said - we have an incredibly experienced coaching staff. You might not agree with all the decisions or they might come slightly later than you want them to - but we're not missing obvious stuff here.

[MrDollarBills]

Being able to field a healthy team is a way bigger concern than Nash's shortcomings.

[Prokorov]

Thanks Proky, and question-- do you have any theories about why this stuff is still an issue so late in the season?

Hard to see. the ignorant hot-headed loud mouth in me wants to say he is a moron bum coach who has no business on the bench. but more realistically he is probably just trying to channel some phil jackson zen-master thing combined with belicheck where you makes guys play through adversity and give no one credit but the opponent and laugh that you have any flaws.

problem is, he has 0 clout to really do that. I also think they are just over valuaing analytics and undervaluing adjustments. D'antoni by his side probably enables him to go overboard on smallball and shooting and never play 1-way defenders

Because it's really hard for me to believe that Nash isn't bright or experienced enough to handle this stuff (even as a rookie HC with no prior coaching experience), or that his coaching staff isn't pointing stuff like this out to him on the regular. I mean, how could this possibly be stuff that D'Antoni and Vaughn wouldn't be coming up with too? (assuming you're accurate in these critiques)

Yea, I mean, Kidd was pretty bad as a coach too despite being a savant during his playing days. maybe the view from the sideline is different. I think D'antoni has his own coaching flaws that similarly Harden has helped cover up. I think nets fans now appreciate this, but harden is probably the 3rd best floor raiser of the past 20 years outside maybe peak lebron/shaq.

I guess some simple, obvious theories are: "chronic stubbornness" and "being overwhelmed," but those don't make a lot of sense to me either. Could it be he's deliberately taking more of a hands-off approach to see how the players respond, given the number of new faces and the lack of practice time? Could it also be that the staff are intentionally trying to keep more of their options veiled for playoff-time?

I think having super mega stars and knowing you out talent everyone makes it easy to just be a rah-rah guy.

[Prokorov]

Being able to field a healthy team is a way bigger concern than Nash's shortcomings.

yeah, i mean we all agree on that.

but outside of health, our biggest weakness is coaching.

[gigantes]

Being able to field a healthy team is a way bigger concern than Nash's shortcomings.

yeah, i mean we all agree on that.

but outside of health, our biggest weakness is coaching.

TBF, this season has especially punished teams like ours trying to bring in so many new faces, i.e. not just the chronic lack of practice time, but the basic challenge of fitting all the new Tetris blocks together.

Because outside of a few stalwarts, almost everything has changed recently. From the owner right on down the line. Whatever the real-world impact, at least it must have some impact, no?


Btw, here's a question for y'all-- would we be better off at this point if we still had Kenny running things?

[ecuhus1981]

Food for thought, hot out of the youtube oven:

jV4oJILSgYg

After listening to him open the v-blog with a deal of... brand-building I guess it was, I wasn't really too keen on his first point-- that Blake Griffin didn't play enough minutes. I mean yeah, that may be a decent argument I suppose, but not only has it been hashed out plenty in this very thread, but such arguments are amongst the most weak and watery of all sports critique, i.e. that 'someone either played too much or too little.' Just not a great opener for me. Bah.

Anyway, maybe I can still learn something here. Could you tell me what points of his you did agree with, Ecuhus?

TBH, I only catch every 2-3 games, and am simply not sharp enough to spot all the potential things Nash goofs on, aside from sometimes seeming to miss strategic timeout opportunities, especially late in games.

I agree, g. His opener about Blake playing too little and DJ too much was pretty shallow. I completely understand treating Blake with kid gloves, he's got a ton of mileage on those knees. Nash's approach there was spot-on.

Where AJ and I align are in the assessment of Steve as a strategist, especially from the beginning of the season until now. He has progressed in so many other areas, it doesn't seem to add up that tactically we have looked less sophisticated now than at the beginning of the season. You could argue injuries and overall wherein tear on the players, but everyone around the NBA is tired this time of year. Other teams are looking sharper than they did in December, and we are looking duller. You could also argue the constant turnover of starting lineup and rotation has something to do with it, but again I would say that that's a leaguewide trend.

My best guess is that someone else was calling the plays at the beginning of the season, and now Nash is calling his own plays at the end of games. Either that, or as you charitably offered in a subsequent post, he might be purposely watering down our play execution now, so that he can unleash the rest of the playbook in the playoffs. Hope springs eternal.

There are many paths to greatness, and there is no single blueprint for coaching excellence. My big thing is, as a leader, you need to be vocal about your own shortcomings, and your own need to improve, so that your criticism of the people below you doesn't ring hollow when it matters most.