Nivek wrote:Illmatic21 wrote:
We have players and coaches who understand the game, so what gives? It really makes me question the quality of the coaching, and instruction guys are receiving in practice.
This isn't making sense to me. If the players understand the game, then the quality of coaching and instruction they get would seem to be at least adequate. Which would not be something to cause question about the quality of the coaching.
Wittman couldn't draw up a play like that in a million years.
Apparently someone on the Wizards coaching staff can draw up a play like that because they run that set -- exactly. Every NBA team runs some version of that play. They don't get the same results, perhaps because Beal/Webster/Ariza aren't as experience or skilled as Ginobili or some of the other Spurs.
Now that the Wiz are mostly healthy I hope everyone can see that the real problem with this team has been exposed.. it's the coaching
They're 7 deep (counting Beal, who's been producing at a solidly below average rate so far this season), and 2 of the 7 are on minutes limits. That wouldn't qualify as "mostly healthy" to me.
I don't think coaching is The Problem with this team. It's NBA standard coaching -- maybe a little on the "below" side of average. But, not outstanding and not terrible. That said, I'm in favor of replacing Wittman. I never would have hired him in the first place. But, a) the team's Real Problem is insufficient talent, and that's a front office issue, and b) I don't want Wittman replaced NOW because that would mean Grunfeld was picking the next coach and it would give Leonsis yet another excuse to keep Grunfeld in place.
What I meant was, we have players who are 'coachable'.. I guess "understand the game" was the wrong phrase. We don't have many selfish players on the team, but for some reason the team tends to play selfishly far too often. Which leads me to question the quality or depth of coaching they are receiving.
This team does not have average NBA coaching, the roster is severly underachieving. An average coach would make adjustments when his offensive gameplan consistently fails to produce results, Wittman doesn't do that.
Obviously Grunfeld needs to go, but in the meantime it's irritating having to witness the poor coaching job Wittman is doing. Do we have a supremely talented roster? No. Did I expect this team to win 50 games? No. But even still we aren't the Bucks, we should not be getting shellacked by every decent team we play. Every above average team has basically toyed with us for 48 minutes. 1-13 record against winning teams is a terrible mark for what should be a competitive, playoff team. And in most of those losses, Wittman's offensive schemes were neutralized rather easily and he had no counter. I blame EG as much as the next guy, but at the same time let's not pretend that Wittman is doing anything close to an average coaching job with this team.
