RHODEY wrote:HopelessKnick wrote:Sorry guys but you can't be watching these other playoff games and be thinking to yourself: "Well Thibs is doing a good job." When I look at the variety of defense, deployment etc. by a coach like Udoka....he completely blows Thibs out of the water.
First he establishes and plays all those Rockets young players so they have confidence and a deep bench today. Then he comes up with difference defensive strategies and line-ups...sometimes switching them multiple times in a quarter. Started man to man, mixed in some zone here and there, at times it looked a little box-and 1, then closes out the first half with Green-Eason-Smith-Sengun-Adams in an ultra big line-up that caused like 2-3 immediate deflections. Makes live as tough as humanly imaginable for Curry. This was just a coaching masterclass.
I have seen so many teams in these playoffs throw different looks and employ different strategies...I'm just stunned that guys can see this (I assume many watch these games) and still believe like Thibs is a good coach.
Yeah, although this is mitigated by the fact that our bench is weak and on top of that our first 2most dependable guard off the bench have been giving us close to nothing so far in the playoffs. So while he does have much less to work with compared to the Rockets, I think Thibs needs to grow a pair and give Shamut and maybe even Delon some burn versus the Celts.
The question will always be: Is our bench so bad, not confident and thin because all of them genuinely suck or because they have played so little and given so little confidence that they can't be expected to perform reasonably well. Look at that 1 hour video in the Thibs thread--it is a brilliant analysis. They say something along the lines of "Shooter like Shamet etc. are most vulnerable to changes in minutes and opportunities. These guys need to establish a rhythm. They can't do that under these types of circumstances." Shamet is someone that played close to 20 minutes on different teams during the postseason under different coaches. He is playing 5 minutes here in a series where we couldn't by a 3 pointer at times.
If Thibs was coaching the Rockets would he have gone so deep from the get go, playing all of them etc.? I highly doubt it.
I brought the example of the Cavs and Celtics bench: Would Thibs have played guys like Wade, Jerome, Niang, Hauser, Kornet, Pritchard big minutes before they established themselves as strong bench players? Jerome has a career average of like 6points per game. Pritchard was getting 7 points in his first 4 seasons in Boston. All the above guys weren't like automatic 6th man of the year candidates...some were journeymen, some had played very little. If you gave those same exact guys to Thibs, do you really believe he would have sacrificed minutes from Hart, Bridges, OG to build those guys up and possibly endure early season mistakes and losses? Highly, highly doubt it.
- MeLo
* We have a Brunson Burner™ * 
