Hornets Culture

[JDR720]

This is related to the Rozier comments, but I figured it can be it's own topic since some of the players are responding to it.

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[Liver_Pooty]

This is related to the Rozier comments, but I figured it can be it's own topic since some of the players are responding to it.

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Sounds like Terry kissing ass. I see a team with 6 d league players busting their ass every night.

[LofJ]

This is Hornets culture, an entire organization that doesn't mind losing and acts as if there's nothing wrong with it.

But please be excited to pay higher ticket prices to help us finance arena upgrades.

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[yosemiteben]

Man don't bring that video in here and make me get on my soap box again.

I'll just say Terry sure sang a different tune on the way out than he is singing now.

[LofJ]

Man don't bring that video in here and make me get on my soap box again.

I'll just say Terry sure sang a different tune on the way out than he is singing now.

Did he say anything untrue? I'm not seeing it, it's on the organization to prove him wrong.

[yosemiteben]

Man don't bring that video in here and make me get on my soap box again.

I'll just say Terry sure sang a different tune on the way out than he is singing now.

Did he say anything untrue? I'm not seeing it, it's on the organization to prove him wrong.

Is losing in his DNA? He was one of the longer tenured players on our roster, so if it's not in his DNA then I don't see how it could be in others.

On the way out he talked about how he fought next to guys, became a better player, and was brothers with guys. Now he's like your identity is a loser and I'm with winners now.

[LofJ]

Man don't bring that video in here and make me get on my soap box again.

I'll just say Terry sure sang a different tune on the way out than he is singing now.

Did he say anything untrue? I'm not seeing it, it's on the organization to prove him wrong.

Is losing in his DNA? He was one of the longer tenured players on our roster, so if it's not in his DNA then I don't see how it could be in others.

We're talking about an entire organization here, not a single player. Unless that single player is Jordan, Shaq, LeBron, Giannis, etc. no single player is going to be the difference between a winning and losing team.

And the Hornets have the longest playoff drought in the entire league and haven't won a playoff series in 20 years. Losing is in the organization's DNA, over those 2 decades they've consistently lost more than any other organization in the league.

If the team really has a problem with someone making a truthful observation then the onus is on them to do something about it. If you don't want to be labeled a loser, there's only one way to change that.

[fatlever]

Hornets culture is Clifford and the front office repeatedly making the claim that if everyone was healthy this would be a fifth seed or at the beginning of the Season how this was the most talented team he's ever coached.

A front office living in pure denial of their long-lived incompetence



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[LofJ]

And here's Clifford with some masterful motivation tactics, telling his players they aren't talented enough.

Organizational dysfunction and a lack of accountability from top to bottom are THE reasons this team has been bad for so long. It isn't the talent, bad organizations like us will always be worse than the sum of our parts until those issues are addressed.

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[yosemiteben]

Relevant:

“I can coach better and all that, but the injuries have been devastating,” Clifford said. “You can’t win like this. Our guys actually, last year they hung in there and we got a lot better, we played better as the year went on. What you have to do is what they’re doing. They were great this morning. Our guys want to win. And what happens as a coach is you have to be able to turn the page, which I’m not sure I’ve done a good job of and have got to be better.

“If we had everybody and played pretty good, to me, we could’ve been a fifth-, sixth-place team. But we’re not that now. And you coach a team like this differently than you coach a team like with Kemba (Walker) and those guys. And I’ve got to be able to do that to help them more, too.”

Clifford defended the franchise, breaking down how it unfolded from his perspective and the reasoning for it unraveling to its current state.

“I think the thing you have to get to is just ‘why?’” Clifford said. “I think we made the playoffs two of the first three years. Our best team we had here, we were sixth (in the Eastern Conference). We won like 47, 48, we lost to Miami in seven games (in 2016). But we had seven free agents and we only had enough money to bring two of them back.

“We lost Al Jefferson, Courtney Lee, Jeremy Lin, Troy Daniels and somebody else all in the same year, and the next year our starters were like eighth in plus-minus, but we couldn’t bring all those guys back and we never got depth again.”

But this time, things are different in Clifford’s eyes. He insists the main culprit has little to do with any kind of financial situation during his second tour of duty in Charlotte.

“It’s not an organizational thing,” he said. “You can go back through draft picks and this and that. We actually have a good nucleus here, so we’ll see. In these two years — and it’s not an excuse — these injuries have crushed us. And yet I’ve got to find a way so we can play better. That’s my responsibility is that we play better.

“Last year when I looked at it in the summer watching film, we got a lot, lot better on both sides of the ball. This year we haven’t done that yet. We have time to do it, but that’s the coaching part. That’s the head coach’s job.”

Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/charlotte-hornets/article284773331.html#storylink=cpy

[fatlever]

Neverending excuses to explain organizational failures.

Summer of 2016 was an obvious red flag. All key free agents hitting market same summer the cap jumped by an ungodly amount giving every team stupid money to spend.

We all saw it coming.

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[JMAC3]

Where is the Clifford lie though? I get if you don't want him to be honest but where is the lie? We have been decimated by injuries, we do have no depth. Most nights right now the other team is just better.

On paper our best 5 to star the year was Ball-Rozier-Hayward-Miles-Mark. So we are playing with 1 starter right now. It is great Miller has turned it on and looks like a real starter but that still doesn't have the impact of having those other 4 guys even just 70% of the year. We are going to be lucky if they play 30% of the year.

[LofJ]

The Courtney Lee trade deadline acquisition was a masterful move. Which we promptly followed up by dropping the ball and failing to bring him back. A smart player like him that defends and can be counted on to hit shots are prized by all winning teams. We are allergic to players like that. One season of Cody Martin is the closest we've come since then. We've needed players like that for a while, but for some reason it just doesn't happen. We don't draft them, we don't sign them, and we don't trade for them. Why is that? What's the excuse from the organization for their failure to identify players that contribute to winning teams?

All I see is Mitch drafting combo guard after combo guard while failing to bring in any 3 and D vets or draft picks. Or waiting until the season has already started before identifying that we didn't have ANY experienced backup point guards on the roster. Something that everyone on this board correctly identified early in the summer.

The level of ineptitude on display here can only have two explanations. It's either 1) incompetence, or 2) they just don't care. I personally think it's a mix of the two, leaning more towards they just don't care because I have a hard time believing anyone is THAT incompetent.

[KembaWalker]

I don't really think that Clifford is wrong in anything he's said, but I'm also not really a believer in coaches having that much impact one way or the other most of the time. This is a talent driven league and we don't now and we never have in the Horncat era had a lot of talent.

Almost any team in the league can claim before a season to have a ceiling of 5 or 6 in their conference, especially in the east. That's a low bar of success for the 0.00% chance that every single break goes your way for an entire season

[JMAC3]

There is like 1 real surprise in the NBA if you look at their roster talent and their record and that is Utah, who is 24-25. Outside of that I don't think at the beginning of the season anyone is significantly better or worse than expected.

It is really hard to win in the NBA these days. Evidence by Warriors being the 12th seed with a top 5 player. Lakers being the 9th seed with the arguably the best player ever.

Both of those teams have more talent than Charlotte and it isn't close.

[MPM]

For my nerds out there: https://towardsdatascience.com/quantifying-the-contribution-of-nba-coaches-using-fixed-effects-56f77f22153a

Quantifying the impact of an NBA Head Coach. '20 piece, and the author admits to WIP holes in his model, but interesting - particularly in the undervalued/overvalued coach measure (wait for it...).

[yosemiteben]

I get people being upset with Cliff for his weaknesses. I think he's a particularly bad coach for the situation he's in - he preaches predictability and consistency in rotations and the importance of guys knowing their roles and what to expect. That philosophy is just completely incompatible with a situation where you have extremely unpredictable rotations due to injury with core pieces missing. I think any coach would struggle with that, but Cliff is particularly poorly suited to deal with it.

I also get people being upset with Mitch. It's been talked about enough, but it obviously makes no sense that we didn't use our MLE or BAE.

If I had any degree of confidence that either Mitch or Cliff would be around after this season, I would probably feel like expending effort trying to balance the blame between the two of them, but I think we absolutely need a fresh start in the FO and a new coaching staff so I'll just hope that is what happens.

[MPM]

think we absolutely need a fresh start in the FO and a new coaching staff so I'll just hope that is what happens.

Yeah - this is the reality. Who's to blame for the house fire doesn't matter - we just need to put it out.