Wanted: New Coach

[Bowens]

Good thoughts, doc and Paydro. I am recently back from looking at the current E.C. standings. Surprisingly, the Bobcats are experiencing something of a revival in the standings! A LOT of other teams also have 17 wins(Chicago, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia), and we are only 2 games out of a playoff spot. Talk about good news, bad news! The good news is that a lot of other teams' seasons are now in reverse. The bad news is that I believe that the front office is not likely to make any changes, since we are mathematically so close. So Shiny Head is on course and logically can argue that he is moving in the right direction.

But are we buying this?!?

The good news is we have 17 wins, the bad news is the rest of our season will be played on the road where we stink. So for the Shiny Head haters, there will be plenty of ammunition over the second half of the season to call for his shiny head.

[Paydro70]

Hey, we're 2-2 in our last 4 road games (and lost the 10 straight before that) so it's possible that our recent resurgence will mean we're not heinous on the road anymore, merely bad or below-average.

We only have 13 home games left... assuming we have a .500 record (I'll give us the tiebreaker and say 7 wins) at home, and our goal is 38 wins, we need 14 of 31 away games, or a little under .500.

To me, that's at least conceivable. Question is, if we make the playoffs, is all forgiven for Sam?

[amcoolio]

The Philly game was killer. We needed that game badly.

We have to win these next two games for any shot. We can't keep losing to teams we should beat or lose close games and continue to say everything is fine.

[Walt Cronkite]

I don't think anyone is saying "everything is fine".

What I've written is that we are half way through the season and a first round playoff loss is within the realm of possibility. We don't have enough overall talent or depth to make any real noise, so personally, I'd rather see us NOT win enough games to make the playoffs, although I can live with our pick being a late lottery one.

Vincent, McInnis, Harrington, Anderson, unused 15th spot--these all maximize our losing possibilities. Fire Vincent and pay him a nice buyout for the luxury of having a coach like Skiles, Carlisle, Cowens, Fratello, Brown, Silas, Van Gundy doesn't change the fact that we have 8/15 NBA players on our roster this season...and that's being nice and including McInnis. So we sign JVG and he likes defense so we go with McInnis/Richardson/Wallace/Okafor/Mohammed Felton gets 30 mins off of the bench and Carroll around 20... what has changed? Maybe the team plays more inspired......

ORRRRRRRRRRRRR

The more pressing matter is ROSTER MANAGEMENT or more specifically, it's MISUSE. If SV refused to say, play Rueben Patterson and Chris Webber and Earl Boykins (3 top of the head guys, not logical solutions), then I'd be the first one calling for his head.

As things stand, I'm disappointed we're not a lock for the playoffs just like everyone else, but I can't say I couldn't have seen this coming. We never addressed a big man problem over the offseason and we went to battle with McInnis as the expected backup pg. We were HOPING for a 7 or 8 seed WITH May and Morrison expected to play minutes. We need players before we can fairly evaluate the skills/lack of skills of our coach.

[fatlever]

from the coaching thread this summer (removed guys who got head jobs this summer)


Paul Silas
Mario Elie
Lionel Hollins
Mike Fratello
Herb Williams
Larry Brown
Butch Carter
Darrell Walker
Patrick Ewing
Doug Collins
Bill Cartwright
BJ Armstrong
Jim Cleamons
Ron Harper
Phil Ford
Mike O Koren
Kenny Smith
Pete Myers (interim)
Scott Brooks
Dan D'Antoni
Alex English
Del Harris
Larry Drew
Adrian Dantley
Dave Cowens
Tom Thibodeau
Johnny Davis
Brian Shaw
Kurt Rambis
Kareem Abdul Jabaar
Mark Aguirre
Randy Ayers
Jack Sikma
Alvin Gentry
Jim Lynam
JB Bickerstaff
Rick Carlisle
Terry Porter
Don Casey
Bill Laimbeer
Michael Cooper
Jeff Bzdelik
Eric Mussleman
Bill Hanzlik
Dan Issel
John Lucas
Mike Montgomery
Rudy Tomjanovich
Paul Westphal
John Thompson
Muggsy Bogues

[watchoutdernow]

I wanted Paul Silas from day one, but I guess you can't have everything your own way. I thought the original plan was to let Bernie coach the team until we got enough draft picks and FA pickups to build a playoff quality team. After that, they would get a good coach who could take the team to the next level. I think we have the players, but we don't have the coach. We really should have gone after a coach with NBA head coaching experience (especially in the playoffs). So, I'm not sure why we decided to go with a guy who wasn't even an assistant coach for a long period of time. Paul Silas would have worked for me. I thought he did a good job with the Hornets and a decent job in Cleveland. I think Lebron just didn't like him and you know how that goes.

[Walt Cronkite]

Just so I don't get stuck as "the Sam Vincent supporter-guy". I think, if our goal was to get to the playoffs (all things equal), a veteran coach would have no doubt gotten more out of the current roster than Vincent has. Both in terms of player performance and record.

With that said, I'm not convinced we had that as franchise goal, especially once May and Morrison were officially done. Then again, I'm one of the two guys that created a tread about the team tanking, so I probably give the FO more conspiracy credit than their due.