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We are just a few games out of the playoffs.
What was the Mcminus faktor?
I say easaly 5 Games.

-4, Mccinnis
-4, Vincent
-4, Injuries[/u]

Before we cut him I thought he might have cost us three or four games, but ever since he left the team has just been noticeably better. With each win we get on this little streak his negative looks bigger and bigger, right now I'd say he cost us at least 6 games just by taking Dudley/Carrol's minutes. We'd be a playoff team with +6, easily.

McInnis leaving has actually made Vincent look better as well. I realize Sam was the one calling the shots with who got PT, so you can't say he was a decent coach all along but McInnis pulled him down, but ever since he's been forced to play other guys we've been having a lot more success. The only reason I bring this up is because I hope our success in the stretch run, if we do in fact continue to win a respectable amount of games, doesn't make our front office forget about what a terrible job Vincent had done in the first 2/3 of the season.

Our lackluster season doesn't have just one culprit, as convenient as that would be, but McInnis does look like the biggest one right now. I also find it interesting that the FO backseat-coaching has proven more successful then what Sam was coming up with.

i'm thinking mcinnis probably directly led to about 7 losses and maybe 2 wins, for a net of 5.

Really sad for Sam, isn't it? The front office had to cut him just so Sam wouldn't continue to play him... that's a new low for the coaching profession.

Soooo many wasted minutes... yet everyone on this board knew it from day one. WHYYY didn't we see Dudley for 30mpg since December?

Why did Jeff McInnis make his way into the starting lineup to begin with?

JValone wrote:I realize Sam was the one calling the shots with who got PT, so you can't say he was a decent coach all along but McInnis pulled him down, but ever since he's been forced to play other guys we've been having a lot more success.

Why can't you? Vincent benched McInnis back during February...and we proceeded to suck just as much. If he was "in love" with McInnis, or whatever else silly excuse was made, he wouldn't have done that.

It's pretty clear to me that Vincent didn't necessarily like McInnis, but when players were given opportunities to better lead the team, or the team was given the opportunity to perform better, they failed. They failed at the start of the season, they failed for those few games in February, and only now have they finally started performing like they should have most of this season.

To answer my own question, the reason he moved into the starting lineup was because we were disappointing. Period.

If they were playing like this at the start of the year, or in that stretch back in February, he wouldn't have been starting.

He might have been a problem, but he wasn't the original problem, he was someone Vincent used to try and fix the original problem.

W_HAMILTON wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



Why can't you? Vincent benched McInnis back during February...and we proceeded to suck just as much.

You like to refer to the "stretch" in Febuary where Mccinnis was "benched" to prove that he isn't the problem.(Actually you're trying to prove in a round-about way that Raymond Felton sucks, but Nevermind)

i can only assume you are referring to this:

2.02.2008 - CHA101-DEN117
Mcinnis 0min

2.04.2008 - CHA104-118
Mcinnis 13min(Didn't Start)

2.08.2008 - NJN104-CHA90
Mccinnis 0min

2.10.2008 - CHA87-DET113
Mccinnis 32min(Didn't Start)

And then he Started EVERY game until The boston game last week.

3 games against some of the best teams in the NBA on the road. (and New Jersey) 2 of which he played in, and 1 of which he played his normal minutes.

Doesn't seem to prove anything to me....

Its a mystery to me why the cats would play Jeff 30mpg 1 day and cut him the next, if I had to guess I would say a disagreement between Mouth-breather and the FO, but who knows. In adition to Sucking at Basketball, Jeff happens to be a world-class douche-bag as well, so maybe that was a factor.

Jeff played 24 minutes the first game of the season, which was his average for the season. After getting Boykins, we benched him for one whole game (a loss against Denver), then he played 13 minutes (when we lost to Phoenix), and then finally he played 0 against the Nets. So we lost to two greatly superior teams, and one roughly equal team... and that proves we "sucked just as much" without him? Well now we have 6 games of playing better without him, and that's even without Wallace! Granted, we haven't played a team of the Phoenix/Denver caliber yet, but we did beat 4 East playoff teams.

It was a stupid decision to go into the season with only McInnis to back up Felton. It was an even dumber decision to play him more than absolutely necessary (12 mins or so). I don't care what Sam thought, he thought wrong, and now we're getting a delightful show of how wrong he was all along.

McInnis is the worst PG in the league, and he held us back all season. I can only wonder what would have been had we never played him at all.

Felton at PG >> McInnis at PG
Carroll at SG >> Felton at SG

Whoever forced McInnis out forced Vincent to play people at their "natural" postions, with good effects that synergize.

Which is pitiful. It was obvious after week 1.

It's nice, incidentally, when statistics are borne out. McInnis was the worst PG in the league according to plus/minus, PER, any other measurement.

Addition by subtraction for sure.

W_HAMILTON wrote:Why did Jeff McInnis make his way into the starting lineup to begin with?

Vincent made a horrible mistake.

McInnis didn't "beat out" anyone. Nobody could understand why he played so many minutes. He played long minutes after being horrible. After being bad. And, occasionally, after being mediocre.

Vincent just played him way too much without justification.

That's why.

It's pretty simple.

McInnis was and is a terrible NBA level PG.

Many said it at the time, and many more will say it in retrospect.

Your backup PG is going to get minutes. If you are complaining that he was on the team to begin with, or that he was getting any minutes at all, that's another problem, that's a different story. But then again, the only reason McInnis was our backup PG to begin with was due to us basically cutting Knight was to free up more time at PG and lessen the competition for Felton to begin with.

You say that that stretch didn't mean anything, but if the team can "get it" in a few games since we cut McInnis, why couldn't they have "gotten it" back then in that small stretch of games? If they did, McInnis wouldn't have made his way back into the starting lineup.

Problem is they didn't.

As for why McInnis started to begin with, we were one of the worst teams in the league offensively, we got off to a disappointing start in what was supposed to be the easiest part of our schedule, and Vincent tried to change things up to see if that would bring us more wins.

And it did.

It's taken three tries just this season, but at least for a few games, the team is finally playing the way it should, and if it had played this way the first two tries, McInnis wouldn't have been starting to begin with.

It was obvious he wasn't that great of a fit last season. Thats what bothered me about his resigning. It seemed like something you should do if you have no other option.

I still would've liked to have seen Charlotte trade Knight to Orlando for Arroyo before the season started. The Magic would've saved $2.5 mil and the Bobcats would've gotten a better backup Pg to push Felton (well, realistically screw Feltons development until Arroyo got waived).

chrbal wrote:It was obvious he wasn't that great of a fit last season. Thats what bothered me about his resigning. It seemed like something you should do if you have no other option.

I think that's 100% what happened. They missed the boat on getting an actual back up PG and had no choice but to go with McMinus.

If you get a "good" backup PG, that PG would challenge Felton for minutes as the starting PG, and it was obvious since the team cut ties with Knight, that they did not want a PG that could compete with Felton for the starting position.

They probably figured McInnis was a perfect fit, a veteran willing to accept his role and not be a threat to move into the starting lineup as our PG (little did they know!).

I don't think you can say they "missed the boat," because it was obvious they were not interested in upgrading our PG position, and in fact were trying to downgrade it for obvious reasons.

If the only choice they had was to re-sign a guy who has a negative impact on our game play, then I think it's safe to say they missed the boat on getting an actual back up PG.

I think they wanted a vet because Felts is so green, which is why they didn't go with Watson, but they left it so late and for some strange reason turned their back on BK that they had no choice but to go with the guy who was on their door step.

Maybe McMinus would have been cut months ago but we had no other PG on the roster? Didn't Vincent call Earl a month or so before he signed with us? Maybe they were working out the details of the deal and the plan all along was to cut McMinus as soon as Earl came on?

or maybe the front office figured there was no chance that vincent would be stupid enough to play any backup pg, let alone mcinnis, 30 mpg, while moving felton to sg...........again, that assumed that whoever they signed as a back would be a non-issue. when it was obvious the coach was too dumb to change his philosophy of playing mcinnis 30mpg and felton as sg, they went out and signed a midget and cut mcinnis, telling sam, either start a midget or start felton, your choice. luckily sam was at least smart enough to start felton, this time.

fatlever wrote:or maybe the front office figured there was no chance that vincent would be stupid enough to play any backup pg, let alone mcinnis, 30 mpg, while moving felton to sg...........again, that assumed that whoever they signed as a back would be a non-issue. when it was obvious the coach was too dumb to change his philosophy of playing mcinnis 30mpg and felton as sg, they went out and signed a midget and cut mcinnis, telling sam, either start a midget or start felton, your choice. luckily sam was at least smart enough to start felton, this time.

BigSlam wrote:If the only choice they had was to re-sign a guy who has a negative impact on our game play, then I think it's safe to say they missed the boat on getting an actual back up PG.

If you assume they wanted an "actual back up PG," ie, a decent one, sure.

But I don't assume they wanted one, because of reasons I've already stated (they didn't want anyone to push Felton for the starting spot), and because they put very little effort into pursuing one.

I think they wanted a vet because Felts is so green, which is why they didn't go with Watson, but they left it so late and for some strange reason turned their back on BK that they had no choice but to go with the guy who was on their door step.

Probably. And I don't think it's so strange they got rid of Knight; considering what they did to McInnis, it's pretty obvious.

Maybe McMinus would have been cut months ago but we had no other PG on the roster?

Months ago would have been close to the start of the season, and if the team was interested in bringing in another PG so soon, they would have just done so in the offseason.

They were content with McInnis, they just were not content with him displacing Felton as our starting PG. The same could be said for Knight, because when it's all said and done (buying out Knight, paying McInnis then cutting him, and signing Boykins), we'll have spent just about as much on our backup PG situation as we would have if we had just retained Knight. It wasn't a money thing, it was a "we don't want someone starting ahead of Felton at PG" thing, which is the same thing that cost McInnis his job.

fatlever wrote:or maybe the front office figured there was no chance that vincent would be stupid enough to play any backup pg

They probably also figured that there was no way McInnis would move into the starting lineup and post a better record as a starter than anyone else on the team.

For a rookie coach that had just lost 8 of 10 and had to start hearing the "whispers" about his ability as a coach, it's not a surprise that he would do whatever it took to win, to make it look like he wasn't a failure as a coach.