Centre Court wrote:I'm not surprised that Jay said that. I've said it since the pre-season - Jay lacks the intensity, discipline and leadership that elite head coaches all have.
Tonight, Jack Armstrong went on and on about the discipline and systems that good coaches like Sloan, Skiles, Brown demand - yet he never once mentioned Jay in those conversations. Also, Jack said the Jazz were all business in the pregame warmups and he implied the Raptors were not.
I don't think effort is the main issue. It's strategy, talent and execution.
How can you have a hundred practices and still botch up so many entry passes? This team could have one game and six practices a week and it would never get better because Triano doesn't know how.
Here's something that bothered me more than anything Triano said after the game. In the papers today, I don't remember which one, he remarked that no matter how you defend the Jazz, "they have a counter for everything you do".
And I sat there dumbfounded thinking, "So we don't we have a counter for everything?" It felt like Triano was indicting himself!
Now people here know my viewpoint. We have a a very basic offensive strategy based on ISO Bosh + pick and roll. Everyone in the league knows you double Bosh, ball movement ends, and the saddest part of me is that half the team can't make a freaking entry pass. (Sonny Weems, you are one terrible passer.)
I've argued for years for a more complex offence with more cuts, more shots off screens, etc. I'd move my seats to the lower bowl if we installed the Princeton offence.
So we have the worst of both worlds. A stagnant, predictable offence coupled with terrible execution. Ya, we can pile up the points when the matchup is favorable, but
good defences eat our lunch.That's what bugs me the most. This might be a better team - at least one that makes good teams sweat - if we had a good coaching staff. I'm not arguing that Jay Triano is the only thing standing in the way of a title. Far from it, but this group plays a lot worse than it should, and at least a good part of that is because we have a bad offensive strategy and an abysmal defensive strategy which is overly dependent on switching bigs onto smalls and smalls onto bigs when we don't have the talent to pull that off.
And while Triano could motivate a talentless national team, he knows nothing about motivating a bunch of professionals. The best motivation, of course, is confidence, and this team has no confidence in itself or in its leadership.