RealGM

Does coaching matter?

Exhibit A: Suns dropped 140 in Gentry's coaching debut.

Thoughts?

I say a NBA coach today matters from a standpoint of getting everyone to believe in the system.

If you have doubters, it will be obvious. The coach also points out what kind of players he needs to have in order to succeed. Most probably don't get their way the majority of the time, but someone has to make the decisions on the court.

The players themselves couldn't do it alone. Now, do the Hawks have a believeable system and ooze confidence in Woody?

When you have a team who constantly goes ISO and never changes it up no matter what the circumstances, while refusing the run the PnR which always has great success because we have one of the best PnR PG's in the NBA, it's a coaching problem.

When you have players who NEVER box out and don't get scolded for it, it's a coaching problem.

When you come out of a timeout and end up taking a fadeaway jumper off the dribble to beat the shotclock, there is a coaching problem.

Can see where you're coming from with most of that. But how do you know Woody doesn't yell at Josh for not boxing out? He yells at him quite a bit, I'm sure that's one of many things he gets on his case for. If I'm not mistaken, he criticized Josh's effort publicly in his post game presser last night.

The iso plays are annoying. But I think it's interesting to see people defend Joe as being a true star when he can't consistently beat guys 1-on-1. If anything, Woody has far too much trust in JJ down the stretch. The ball should be in Bibby's hands at that point and he should facilitate the offense.

I think we run the PNR more than people realize, a lot of times it is covered (Horford really doesn't run it well at all), and others Bibby just takes a jumper.

Woody micro-manages as much as any coach in the league and that is the biggest problem I have with him. Sometimes you just need to let us beat teams with our athleticism, and you don't do that by trying to settle down and run a half-court offense all the time. I also think he takes entirely too long to give guys on the bench a chance to play. In the first 20 games of the season I would have liked to see Randolph/Rio/Othello get to see some extended time on the court to see what they could do.

conleyorbust wrote:Does coaching matter?

Exhibit A: Suns dropped 140 in Gentry's coaching debut.

Thoughts?

Exhibit B should be that the Clips were playing defense. That team is an absolute mess.

Seriously... I think that has a lot more to do with the fact that the clippers didn't have Randolph, Kaman, or Camby for most of the game. They played Al Thornton at center at times.

killbuckner wrote:Seriously... I think that has a lot more to do with the fact that the clippers didn't have Randolph, Kaman, or Camby for most of the game. They played Al Thornton at center at times.

Fair, on the other hand, the team has missed both Camby and Kaman for a lot of games this season and never had nearly 140 dropped on them... if you are saying that missing Randolph for most of a game is going to kill a team defensively... I don't think you've ever watched Zach Randolph. Similarly, it was by far the highest scoring game of the Suns' season even though the opponent was around league average in pace...

Beyond that, you have to give a little consideration to the fact that they get rid of their old coach who was brought in to "slow it down and get better on D" which had borderline disastrous effects and replaced him with a guy who said, "we are going to go back to what we do best" and suddenly the team does exactly that and has its biggest victory of the season.

JoshB914 wrote:.

I think we run the PNR more than people realize, a lot of times it is covered (Horford really doesn't run it well at all), and others Bibby just takes a jumper.

I agree. I don't think Horford runs the P&R that well. And I hate to see anyone set a pick for Acie Law. He ALWAYS goes to the opposite side of the pick. That defeats the whole purpose of setting a pick. I like to see Josh and Bibby run the P&R. They should do it more. I think our offense just needs more movement period. Marvin and Josh should be constantly cutting to the basket. Woody needs an offensive coordinator.

1. Phoenix (and D'Antoni's 7 seconds or less) is generally the exception that proves the rule.

2. I would like to see the Hawks play more pick and roll, mainly because iso basketball is the ugliest brand of basketball there is to watch. Reminds me of the early 90s, yuck. I don't think running more pick and rolls is going to affect how far this team goes in the postseason though.

On a lighter note - I hope PHX starts playing like itself again. They have been my second favorite team for the past 5 or 6 years. I'd love to see them give the Lakers a good battle in the playoffs.