Charles in Charge: The Charles Lee Thread

[Walt Cronkite]

I literally don't know how it is even possible to play at one of the worse paces in the league when LaMelo is your main guy.

This is a good point. Pace currently sitting tied for 21st worst. It is not exactly pace, but is there any sense to be made from LaMelo's lineup FGA data per 100 here? https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/ballla01/lineups/2025

FGA here is actually the difference from opponent FGA, so from two man pairings, LaMelo is +8.2 in 349 mp with Moussa, who seems to not be paired with other bigs (https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/diabamo01/lineups/2025) and would make sense the team is higher paced when Moussa Is doing his thing. IDK.

I think YB or someone posted a stat where the pace was up over some time period but I haven't personally discovered some splits that show pace info.

[yosemiteben]

we're basically at the point where the argument is "you can't fire him because...well...what if he's better next year?"
there aren't many actual tangible good things to point at but hey, i guess anything is possible!

We have had a complete dumpster fire of a forced rotation for most of the season, yet our defense is better relative to the rest of the league than at any point in the last 7 years. Explain why Lee doesn't get any credit for that.

[yosemiteben]

I literally don't know how it is even possible to play at one of the worse paces in the league when LaMelo is your main guy.

...

I think YB or someone posted a stat where the pace was up over some time period but I haven't personally discovered some splits that show pace info.

Post-ASB, we are ranked top 10 in pace.

[Walt Cronkite]

I literally don't know how it is even possible to play at one of the worse paces in the league when LaMelo is your main guy.

...

I think YB or someone posted a stat where the pace was up over some time period but I haven't personally discovered some splits that show pace info.

Post-ASB, we are ranked top 10 in pace.

Clean looking data, where is that from?

[yosemiteben]

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/advanced

Use filters to sort by season segment.

[EmpireFalls]

Pace is not a good indicator of transition though. Pace is just number of possessions divided by time.

https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/fastbreak-points-per-game

We remain in the doldrums in fast break rate and efficiency. That sounds like an absolutely indefensible catastrophe - except when you compare it to Boston, Milwaukee, and Phoenix all hovering around us.

Worst transition teams in the NBA are led by Charles Lee and Lee coaching mentors. Oh god, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Oh god, it might be by design.

[fatlever]

this is my fave post asb view

[Walt Cronkite]

this is my fave post asb view

Oof, brutal. Player data post ASB has Miles and NSJ taking a lot of shots, not sure those two will lead our Hornets to the promised land.

[KembaWalker]

we're basically at the point where the argument is "you can't fire him because...well...what if he's better next year?"
there aren't many actual tangible good things to point at but hey, i guess anything is possible!

We have had a complete dumpster fire of a forced rotation for most of the season, yet our defense is better relative to the rest of the league than at any point in the last 7 years. Explain why Lee doesn't get any credit for that.

to me this style of defending the trash this franchise is doing is so funny. its the same thing JMAC does with Salaun, sift through all the obvious signs of complete garbage to identify some one singular thing, 60% Defensive EPM percentile or whatever for Salaun or league average DRTG for the team for Lee and be like, "aha if X is so bad then explain THIS (insert one somewhat acceptable thing) like its some master debate winning royal flush hand"

ok, the DRTG of a garbage roster playing meaningless basketball games every night and even more meaningless garbage time taking up huge chunks of those minutes that needs to swap out all but like 3-4 players has a singular stat that is close to league average in one category. am i supposed to care about this and ignore the giant pile of turd all around me because someone dug up something that someone could argue kind of looks like a pearl from one of them?

[EmpireFalls]

this is my fave post asb view

48% true shooting is almost impossible in today’s NBA. Just disgusting stuff. Since Miller went down it feels like every shot that isn’t LaMelo or Seth is a brick. And yes I get Miles makes them occasionally, but every single one of his shots feel like bricks too.

[yosemiteben]

we're basically at the point where the argument is "you can't fire him because...well...what if he's better next year?"
there aren't many actual tangible good things to point at but hey, i guess anything is possible!

We have had a complete dumpster fire of a forced rotation for most of the season, yet our defense is better relative to the rest of the league than at any point in the last 7 years. Explain why Lee doesn't get any credit for that.

to me this style of defending the trash this franchise is doing is so funny. its the same thing JMAC does with Salaun, sift through all the obvious signs of complete garbage to identify some one singular thing, 60% Defensive EPM percentile or whatever for Salaun or league average DRTG for the team for Lee and be like, "aha if X is so bad then explain THIS (insert one somewhat acceptable thing) like its some master debate winning royal flush hand"

ok, the DRTG of a garbage roster playing meaningless basketball games every night and even more meaningless garbage time taking up huge chunks of those minutes that needs to swap out all but like 3-4 players has a singular stat that is close to league average in one category.

I don't care to engage in your seemingly endless desire to characterize me as engaging in bad faith discussion. I'll just point out that these stats come from cleaning the glass, which filters out garbage time. I'll also point out that it's apparent to me that you didn't even consider whether that was something I had considered, you just chose to frame me as arbitrarily pulling isolated data points in some contextless attempt to defend Lee. That **** is getting tired.

If our ORTG was about league average amidst the injury and unavailability situations we've been facing, would you consider that to be a completely isolated data point not at all indicative of Lee's coaching ability? DRTG isn't exactly an obscure stat, it's just how many points per 100 possession does the other team score.

[Braggins]

The only real positive I can glean from this season is that their defense has been somewhat respectable, which seems kind of wild.

I see more negative than positive so far, but I also think it can take some time from a fan perspective to really know what you have with a coach because you don't actually see a lot of what they do and are just interpreting results, which can be obscured by many other factors.

Ive seen very little to actually get excited or be inspired about and I would not care at all if they did fire Lee this offseason. If you put a gun to my head Id definitely lean towards thinking he is more than likely not good, but I'm not quite ready to say that I'm personally completely convinced he needs to be fired.

Jordi Fernandez was my guy and he seems better at this point.

[SWedd523]

Will Hardy has a 36.9 win percentage in nearly three seasons and is currently marginally better than our own rookie coach. Is that really the standard for figuring it out with a depleted roster?

I didn't see a roster stacked with talent and ready to compete before the season began, so when they went 6-14 through Nov (6-10 pre Grant's injury) I was pretty impressed. From my observations in the many games I've watched, when the team is (more) full strength, they compete more. Less healthy available players have been tankier games.

The team is not good so it's easy to dismiss this as a stretch and it's not perfect, but here is an attempted example of what I think I've seen:

Seth Curry has played in 19/60 games where he's gotten 16+ mins. The team is 7-12 in those games. Seth should not be relied on to impact wins and losses, but he is a veteran role player with 11 seasons of experience, which is valuable, especially on a young team.
7 of those 12 losses are without LaMelo, so for those games, Curry isn't playing bc the team is "trying to win" but out of necessity to stop the bleeding. The team should be awful with Seth playing that many guard minutes without LaMelo, but only 2 of those Ls are by more than 10 pts. I think Seth has been pretty much healthy, so his general lack of minutes looks to me as an indicator that not a ton of games have tipped off with the goal being to win.

I was traveling during the recent embarrassing road blowouts, so I can't attempt to explain why they were so bad. I do think the team is currently in a weird spot trying to figure out what to do with Mark after moving on from him. The team was much more cohesive in that Spurs game before the Lakers backed out of the trade and Moussa's minutes are limited in favor of showcasing Williams and Nurkic. He's not in Lee's doghouse, he was subbed in to guard the inbounder and forced a turnover before the half which to me indicates that Lee is a believer, but he's currently the odd man out to rehab Mark's value.

It's a wordy enough post and I have more thoughts (some of them conflicting), but ultimately I think it's really hard to evaluate Lee this year. I haven't observed from Lee a guy that is worried about his job and desperate for wins, which to me speaks to a leash to implement a vision. I can see it when I squint and don't blame anyone if they dont see it, because my own bias is I want him and the team to succeed. I will say that a lot of the most negative takes appear to be from accounts I don't notice in the live game threads and/or seem to be evaluating things from a box score and I do question how much insight that shines on coaching ability.

I have always held the belief that coaching is less important than people give it credit for.

It's easy to be a "good" coach with a good team and it's easy to be a "bad" coach with a bad team.

However, the way I judge coaches is in their ability to manage difficult times, difficult situations, personalities, injuries, etc.

Lee has not shown much ability to make adjustments in game or throughout the season. I haven't seen him maximize the offense around the players, hunt mismatches, get the team out in transition, or really anything.

That's not a good sign

I agree your general sentiment here, with the caveat that it is especially unfair to judge a coach on his ability to manage a rotation when he has no predictability on what that rotation will look like. I challenge someone to point to a team that is playing 10 guys in their rotation like we did with WAS, where 6 of those guys were not projected to actually be in the rotation when the season started. And that is a game where Melo and Mark actually played, which has not consistently been the case.

I don't think it's fair to judge Lee on his ability to play a bunch of guys in completely new roles who have never been in their current roles and did not expect to be.

I disagree and think it's precisely the job of the coach to find a solution with the roster.

That's his entire purpose. That's what they're paid to do.

Worst three game stretch in history is simply inexcusable.

[yosemiteben]

I have always held the belief that coaching is less important than people give it credit for.

It's easy to be a "good" coach with a good team and it's easy to be a "bad" coach with a bad team.

However, the way I judge coaches is in their ability to manage difficult times, difficult situations, personalities, injuries, etc.

Lee has not shown much ability to make adjustments in game or throughout the season. I haven't seen him maximize the offense around the players, hunt mismatches, get the team out in transition, or really anything.

That's not a good sign

I agree your general sentiment here, with the caveat that it is especially unfair to judge a coach on his ability to manage a rotation when he has no predictability on what that rotation will look like. I challenge someone to point to a team that is playing 10 guys in their rotation like we did with WAS, where 6 of those guys were not projected to actually be in the rotation when the season started. And that is a game where Melo and Mark actually played, which has not consistently been the case.

I don't think it's fair to judge Lee on his ability to play a bunch of guys in completely new roles who have never been in their current roles and did not expect to be.

I disagree and think it's precisely the job of the coach to find a solution with the roster.

That's his entire purpose. That's what they're paid to do.

Worst three game stretch in history is simply inexcusable.

I just disagree with that. You don't give a coach half a rotation of guys that aren't supposed to be getting actual NBA play time (both because they literally have never had it and no big picture game plan was put together to prepare for it) and then get mad at him because those guys can't perform.

[Walt Cronkite]

Clifford's career winning percentage is 42.4. If Lee isn't around that level by the ASB next season, I would be fine with moving on. That would have the team competing for a play-in spot and I think is a pretty low bar.

[KembaWalker]

i think between the 2024-25 G-League EC Regular Season Champions and 2024-25 Slightly Below League Average DRTG we have enough achievement here to put up a banner. schedule the ceremony

[SWedd523]

I agree your general sentiment here, with the caveat that it is especially unfair to judge a coach on his ability to manage a rotation when he has no predictability on what that rotation will look like. I challenge someone to point to a team that is playing 10 guys in their rotation like we did with WAS, where 6 of those guys were not projected to actually be in the rotation when the season started. And that is a game where Melo and Mark actually played, which has not consistently been the case.

I don't think it's fair to judge Lee on his ability to play a bunch of guys in completely new roles who have never been in their current roles and did not expect to be.

I disagree and think it's precisely the job of the coach to find a solution with the roster.

That's his entire purpose. That's what they're paid to do.

Worst three game stretch in history is simply inexcusable.

I just disagree with that. You don't give a coach half a rotation of guys that aren't supposed to be getting actual NBA play time (both because they literally have never had it and no big picture game plan was put together to prepare for it) and then get mad at him because those guys can't perform.

Not looking for a winning record with a **** roster, but a 50 point loss followed by a 40 point loss followed by a 30 point loss is abject failure, period.

Regardless of the roster, you should have some semblance of an offensive philosophy. You should have some sort of defensive identity. You should have something. Even if they're losing, something.

[yosemiteben]

I disagree and think it's precisely the job of the coach to find a solution with the roster.

That's his entire purpose. That's what they're paid to do.

Worst three game stretch in history is simply inexcusable.

I just disagree with that. You don't give a coach half a rotation of guys that aren't supposed to be getting actual NBA play time (both because they literally have never had it and no big picture game plan was put together to prepare for it) and then get mad at him because those guys can't perform.

Not looking for a winning record with a **** roster, but a 50 point loss followed by a 40 point loss followed by a 30 point loss is abject failure, period.

Regardless of the roster, you should have some semblance of an offensive philosophy. You should have some sort of defensive identity. You should have something. Even if they're losing, something.

We have basically a league average defense despite relying on essentially 2 groups of players: (1) guys that were part of the rotation of a team that was ranked 28th in defense last season, or (2) guys who have not been part of our system for more than a couple weeks and/or have literally never been a part of an NBA rotation.

I don't know how anyone can plausibly complain about our defense.

[yosemiteben]

Pace is not a good indicator of transition though. Pace is just number of possessions divided by time.

https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/fastbreak-points-per-game

We remain in the doldrums in fast break rate and efficiency.

Fast break efficiency is the result of guys not finishing in transition, which is a talent problem, not a scheme problem.

With regard to fast break rate, I would be very, very interested to see on/off numbers for Melo, because I don't see anyone on this roster capable of leading the break if Melo is off the floor.

[Bassman]

The Hornets defense has been better than previous recent editions, at least to my eyes. Not great, but certainly better. I give Lee credit for the hustle these players put into the game on nearly every night. Heck, half the battle to produce good D is effort, desire and sheer determination. It’s not always there, and many times assignments or rotations are missed, but it is better IMO.