#Spacing - Steve Clifford Thread

[Elden Payton]

Yeah I agree Kemba should've been in down the stretch.

Baffling considering he was a few games removed from a game winner...

[mrknowitall215]

Clifford on last night's loss to the Sixers...

"Our free throw shooting has been a season long issue. One of our strengths offensively is that we have a number of guys that do a good job of getting to the free throw line, and we haven't been able to take advantage of that as much as we'd like to. To be honest, last night we started the game at a good energy level. When we broke the lineup our defense at the end of the 1st quarter into the 2nd quarter just wasn't close to where it need to be. We played a good 2nd half, but in this league you can't take 15 minutes off and expect to win on the road."

Clifford on not having a consistent offense...

"First of all, it start with low turnovers in which right now we're 2nd in the league. We're not a roster built in a way where we're going to be a high scoring team night in & night out. We have a lot of strengths. We have above average competitors and lot of character. I really like our guys. We don't have a lot of shooting and we don't have a lot of guys on the perimeter that can consistently create help. In this league with a 24 second clock that's the easiest way to play offense. Our post up game through Al Jefferson has helped us a lot offensively. Our big thing is to try to keep the defense on the move, make quick simple decisions, keep the ball moving, and get to the free throw line. That's our best chance."

Clifford on MKG's defense...

"MKG is a elite defender. I know he's a young guy but there aren't many guys who can guard the better scorers like Carmelo and LeBron with limited help. He has the ability to do that plus not only missing his defense, we really missed his defensive rebounding. When he got injured we were the #1 defensive rebounding team (by percentage) in the league and he come back now & we're 5th. He brings a physicality, competitiveness, and energy every night that's hard to find in this league."

Clifford on developing young players (i.e. Zeller, MKG, Biyombo)...

"I don't think you necessarily develop players through playing time at all. The best players use every opportunity to improve. If you have a film session, use that to get better. If it's a day to just workout & lift, use that to get better. I think a part of player development to me is team culture. To me culture is the biggest part of player development."

Clifford on Kemba Walker...

"We have a couple of guys emerging. I think Kemba's defense is significantly better than it was a year ago. I think his 3-point shooting is starting to take off and his pick-and-roll game over the last 2-3 weeks is putting him in a better position. Last night he had 8 assist and 1 turnover again, and I think he had another game with 9 assist and 2 turnovers. I think he's putting in a lot of extra work and it's taking off."

Clifford on who do he see has the most upside when it come to being bonafide All-Star on the roster...

"I would say Kemba is the guy that is making the biggest stride and he's doing it the right way. He watches a lot of film. He's studying the league. He just have a competitiveness about him that's contagious. Plus in this league if you're going to be a year-in year-out All-Star normally you would have to play well at both ends of the floor which he can do. His ball pressure, pick-and-roll defense, and individual defense to me is night & day from what I watched on film last summer because he's put a ton of time in. I like him because he's a rock, loves to play, doesn't like to come out of games, and he's young. He's at a age where he can keep improving."

Clifford on Cody Zeller...

"Cody Zeller is a physically gifted guy and the game comes easy to him. He needs a summer where he work on one of his biggest issues which is strength, just physical strength. I think as he get stronger a lot of people will see his talent come out. He has a lot of intangibles because he's smart and the game comes easy to him."

Clifford on MKG's future...

"I think Michael's career will be dictated on how much better offensively he gets."

http://charlotte.cbslocal.com/2014/01/1 ... nced-play/

[fatlever]

thanks for typing all that out mrkia. lots of interesting quotes from that interview.

[catch20two]

Clifford love him some Kemba I see and I don't blame him. But damn he need to give MKG some love on offense. Instead of feeding Hendo in the post we need to feed MKG down there. At least he won't fade away from contact and is a better finisher.

[HornetJail]

Clifford on last night's loss to the Sixers...

"Our free throw shooting has been a season long issue. One of our strengths offensively is that we have a number of guys that do a good job of getting to the free throw line, and we haven't been able to take advantage of that as much as we'd like to. To be honest, last night we started the game at a good energy level. When we broke the lineup our defense at the end of the 1st quarter into the 2nd quarter just wasn't close to where it need to be. We played a good 2nd half, but in this league you can't take 15 minutes off and expect to win on the road."

In other news, water is wet.

Clifford on not having a consistent offense...

"First of all, it start with low turnovers in which right now we're 2nd in the league. We're not a roster built in a way where we're going to be a high scoring team night in & night out. We have a lot of strengths. We have above average competitors and lot of character. I really like our guys. We don't have a lot of shooting and we don't have a lot of guys on the perimeter that can consistently create help. In this league with a 24 second clock that's the easiest way to play offense. Our post up game through Al Jefferson has helped us a lot offensively. Our big thing is to try to keep the defense on the move, make quick simple decisions, keep the ball moving, and get to the free throw line. That's our best chance."

All the horrendous possessions we have from so little floor spacing are as good as turnovers. How many of those do we have per game? Certainly we lead the league in attempts to score in a crowded paint/mid-range area.

Clifford on MKG's defense...

"MKG is a elite defender. I know he's a young guy but there aren't many guys who can guard the better scorers like Carmelo and LeBron with limited help. He has the ability to do that plus not only missing his defense, we really missed his defensive rebounding. When he got injured we were the #1 defensive rebounding team (by percentage) in the league and he come back now & we're 5th. He brings a physicality, competitiveness, and energy every night that's hard to find in this league."

Even without an offensive game, MKG is an average-to-above average starting SF with his level of defense. Give me his wing defense over anyone except George, Lebron, Allen, and maybe one or two other guys I'm forgetting. I seriously think he's closing in on being a top 5 wing defender in the league if he's not there already.

Clifford on developing young players (i.e. Zeller, MKG, Biyombo)...

"I don't think you necessarily develop players through playing time at all. The best players use every opportunity to improve. If you have a film session, use that to get better. If it's a day to just workout & lift, use that to get better. I think a part of player development to me is team culture. To me culture is the biggest part of player development."

That's a weird one. I agree you need to develop a culture, but you've got to play in games to improve! Biz isn't going to gain experience by only sitting on the bench watching.

Clifford on Kemba Walker...

"We have a couple of guys emerging. I think Kemba's defense is significantly better than it was a year ago. I think his 3-point shooting is starting to take off and his pick-and-roll game over the last 2-3 weeks is putting him in a better position. Last night he had 8 assist and 1 turnover again, and I think he had another game with 9 assist and 2 turnovers. I think he's putting in a lot of extra work and it's taking off."

Clifford on who do he see has the most upside when it come to being bonafide All-Star on the roster...

"I would say Kemba is the guy that is making the biggest stride and he's doing it the right way. He watches a lot of film. He's studying the league. He just have a competitiveness about him that's contagious. Plus in this league if you're going to be a year-in year-out All-Star normally you would have to play well at both ends of the floor which he can do. His ball pressure, pick-and-roll defense, and individual defense to me is night & day from what I watched on film last summer because he's put a ton of time in. I like him because he's a rock, loves to play, doesn't like to come out of games, and he's young. He's at a age where he can keep improving."

agreed. Kemba really is making the next step that we all hoped he'd make.

Clifford on Cody Zeller...

"Cody Zeller is a physically gifted guy and the game comes easy to him. He needs a summer where he work on one of his biggest issues which is strength, just physical strength. I think as he get stronger a lot of people will see his talent come out. He has a lot of intangibles because he's smart and the game comes easy to him."

Can we let Zeller just have an "injury" for an extended period of time where he's not really injured but just uses that time to do nothing but work out and eat a lot? Boris Diaw isn't here to steal his meals- he doesn't have the same excuse as Tyrus Thomas.

Clifford on MKG's future...

"I think Michael's career will be dictated on how much better offensively he gets."

Yup, he'll never be RECOGNIZED as a top notch prospect till the offense improves, but once he becomes a two-way threat, watch out. The thing is, he can't be a two-way threat if Big Red Dog doesn't incorporate him into the offense. Have MKG run some backdoor cuts or something.

http://charlotte.cbslocal.com/2014/01/16/bobcats-head-coach-steve-clifford-hopes-mkgs-return-means-more-balanced-play/

[mrknowitall215]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/SamAmicoFSO/status/431127333395652608[/tweet]

[mrknowitall215]

How basketball lifer Steve Clifford is turning the Bobcats around

How do you fix a broken franchise?

We're not talking championships. We're talking about just not having a team be a broken pile of wreckage, lying beside the shoreline as birds nest on it. Before you figure out how to win a title, you have to figure out the process for being a good basketball team. That's the journey the Charlotte Bobcats are on this season in what is effectively their third rebuilding phase.

The Bobcats are 272-500 in their nine NBA seasons, and have undergone many attempts to make the team competitive. There were the first young-core attempts that fell apart when Sean May, Adam Morrison, and to a lesser degree Emeka Okafor failed to live up to draft promise.

There was the just-make-the-playoffs sellout in the late 2000s when Larry Brown and the front office mortgaged long-term assets for veteran players in hopes of reaching postseason play. They did and were swept in the first round like they had never been there, and the increase in wins didn't help changing the team's perception. The result was another rebuild.

The answer to the main question is maddeningly simple but excruciatingly difficult to accomplish. You have to change the culture. It's not about veterans or young players, it's not about star power (though they'll need that eventually), and it's not about scheme or system. It's about discipline, commitment and intelligence. The NBA is ruled by star players, but what separates the talented from the truly great is the culture they help cultivate. For Charlotte to be sustainably competitive, there has to be a culture that looks beyond wins and losses.

Meet Steve Clifford, first-year head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats.

The short-answer for "Who did the Bobcats hire this summer?" was "A respected assistant coach from the Lakers." That was the book's cover on Clifford. But to better understand why the Bobcats are, for the first time, competitive with the possibility of long-term success, you have to understand one thing about their new coach.

He's a lifer.

Clifford has been around coaching his entire life. The son of a high school coach, Clifford has known he wanted to do what he does since he was a kid.

"I grew up in a basketball family," he says. "I liked it from the beginning and I was always with my dad at practice and going to games.

"I can't remember a time when I wanted to do anything but coach."

Clifford has spent 31 years coaching, starting at Woodland High in Maine, where he also taught Special Education. It was there that he assisted at Jim Boeheim's basketall camp and met a young coach by the name of Jeff Van Gundy. More than a decade later, Van Gundy woud hire Clifford as an assistant with the New York Knicks, after Clifford already had ascended to head coach with Adelphi and was working as an assistant at East Carolina.

Clifford would go on to help mold great defenses in the NBA over the next 12 seasons. Between 2004 and 2013, nine of the ten teams he worked as an assistant for would have a top-15 defense in points allowed per posession, six in the top five. He worked under both Jeff and Stan Van Gundy, and helped coach Dwight Howard to become the Defensive Player of the Year multiple times.

So in a season when teams tried making big splashes with coaches who lacked experience, the Bobcats went the other way. They hired a guy who has been around, and has built a reputation on being able to communicate effectively with players at the NBA level, something that's not exactly known to be easy.

"What I've tried to do is, and I got this from Jeff when I was at Adelphi. He told me to come up with a leadership model. And I did the same thing when I got here. I think with these guys, if you ask them about me, at the end of the year the No. 1 thing I want them to say is 'he wants me to play well.'

"Most athletes, but particularly NBA players, that's all they care about. It's relationships and all that but at the end of the day, they're pro players. If they think that you can help them play well as individuals and as a group, they're going to listen to you. If they don't think you can help them or know what it takes to win in this league, they're not going to listen to you. For me, especially since I'm not not an ex-player, it's about helping them play well and then establishing credibility that I knows what we have to do to play well to win."

So that begs the next question. Are the Bobcats playing well?

Charlotte remains in the 8th spot in the Eastern Conference by a game and a half over Detroit. They are six games under .500, on track for 36 wins. Baskeball-Reference projects they have a 62.6 percent chance of making the playoffs. Good. Not great. They seem like just another awful Eastern Conference team.

But there's more going on here than wins and losses. It takes more than that to rebuild a franchise like this. Consider this. Last season with nearly the exact same roster, the Bobcats finished dead last in points allowed per possession. This season, with their only major addition being on the offensive side in Al Jefferson, the Cats are sixth in points allowed per possession.

The offense is along ways off. But watching the Bobcats, you see something you haven't seen before. Discipline. Effort. A consistent commitment to what they want to do. Clifford says that's all part of building the culture.

"I like our team, I feel like we're developing the right kind of culture. We started off well, fighting in games, hanging in there. After Christmas, we got away from that. The (Michael KIdd-)Gilchrist and (Jeff) Taylor injuries definitely took away athleticism, quickness, and defensive ability but we didn't handle it well either. We've come back though, and gotten back to it. We're fighting harder, we're practicing well. To me, that's all part of the process.

"You're not going to change things overnight. But we've developed a culture of work, of rebounding, of toughness and playing smart. That's what I feel good about right now."

It's still surprising, in that the Bobcats who were so terrible a year ago defensively, could make such huge leap under Clifford. Clifford says that it's not about scheme, it's about using the talent that's on the team in the right way defensively.

"We have a talented defensive team in the NBA to me," Clifford says. "We have quickness and toughness on the perimeter, and we have guys who can guard primary scorers fairly well. So we're not having to run around and double team a lot. That makes everything easier. Our two four men, and really or three fours when Anthony (Tolliver) plays that position, they naturally make multiple efforts.

"And then they're smart about it. We're just playing base defense. We're not doing a lot. For me, to be an elite defense or a unit that can defend in the playoffs ,there are things that we need to add. I don't think we're ready for it this year. We may do a few things here and there. Really, my thing is they're buying into it, they're trying hard, and we have guys who are capable of doing it."

One of those guys is sophomore defensive star Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. MKG entered the league with hype that he could evolve to be a defensive player of the year candidate eventually, and he's already showing signs of that. His ability is making things easier for the entire team.

"Gilchrist is so exceptional on the ball, even against the really good offensive players,he can on many nights make it hard on them to just not blow by them. That limits how much you have to help. And when you don't have to run around a lot, you get to stay in your spots and keep things pretty simple."

A lot of coaches will try and blow you away with competitive bluster. They have big opinions about issues or criticisms. Ask Lionel Hollins about advanced metrics, and you'll get a sermon on the dangers of math. Clifford is refreshingly nuanced in his opinions. When evaluating his defense, he cites points per possession instead of per-game, a so-called "advanced" stat, but also thinks that the numbers are only part of the whole picture.

"I like (analytics), you can never know too much. But this is not something new in coaching. When I was eight years old, my dad was doing OER in Vermont. That's points per possession. He'd take a freshman girl every four years, teach her how to do it, and he'd be in the kitchen with the assistants looking at a chart with OER and DER. Analytics have been around forever. They've just evolved.

"So I like it and I use a lot of it but it's only part of it. It only tells you part of the story. An example is points in the paint. We're doing a good job limiting points in the paint. But there are other teams that are having success in tat and they're doing it totally differently.And the only way you're going to know that and how to attack them is if you sit and watch. The thing you have to do to really understand what's going on is you have to sit and watch film."

The Bobcats are very much a work in progress. In the beginning of the year, an injury to Al Jefferson meant that the team had to evolve a temporary identity without him. It took time to integrate a healthy Jefferson into the offense. But in January, Jefferson exploded. He averaged 23.4 points, 11.3 rebounds and 2.6 assists while shooting 54 percent from the field. He dropped three straight 30-10 games while the Cats knocked off the Warriors and Nuggets.

Clifford credits the work Jefferson has done to get healthy and get back into conditioning mid-season, and says that much of their early struggles with getting Jefferson involved have to do with the modern difficulty in building a post offense. But just as the Cats as a whole are a work in progress, Jefferson's role is starting to bear fruit for a team fighting to stay with the solid play it's shown early on.

But maybe this is all temporary success, which the Bobcats have seen before. Maybe the team will regress and they'll start again next year, the as the Hornets, all over. For Clifford, he's not looking to be Phil Jackson, some megastar coach with book deals. He loves what he does, not what he does it for, and just as basketball has always been a part of his life, it always will.

"You know, I'd never had the dream or ultimate goal of being a head coach in the NBA," Clifford says. "I wouldn't have stayed an assistant until I retired. But I would have gone back to college, because I wanted to be in charge one more time. But I'm so fortunate to be here, I'm happy to be here. I loved it with the Lakers, I loved it in New York, I loved it in Orlando. I love to coach. I can't remember a year that I haven't enjoyed. I feel blessed and I feel equally blessed to have had the right opportunities to have success."

Maybe, finally, the Bobcats have the guy who can give them that opportunity as well.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/status/432237368737660928[/tweet]

[Elden Payton]

Amazing read!

Thanks!

[Bassman]

Clifford exudes a "matter of fact" knowledge and insight of the game and his players. His observations seem honest and fair. I don't know where this all leads, but the man knows his basketball and how to coach. How nice to have a guy in charge that bring it all together. He shows the promise of a long-term leader for this team.

[hotrod]

Great read.

@JaredZwerling: Inside Access with the Bobcats: Behind Their Remarkable Turnaround (with Michael Jordan's take). My story here -- http://t.co/yDIzmmkhOT

[fatlever]

Great read.

@JaredZwerling: Inside Access with the Bobcats: Behind Their Remarkable Turnaround (with Michael Jordan's take). My story here -- http://t.co/yDIzmmkhOT

i keep hearing cliff talking about how he has only added the base defense so far... more to come next year.

5. Keep your friends close, your friends who know defense closer.

"Jeff and Stan watch a ton of our games and I talk to them all the time, and then Tom.

"In September, I took a day and just flew to Chicago early in the morning and (Tom and I) spent the day together, and I talked to him about a lot of defense. I took the first flight in and the last flight home, so we sat there for eight, 10 hours, and he just let me rattle questions. I had a bunch of questions—stuff I had never done before when you do this leadership-type thing.

"He was the one who really reemphasized to me—Stan said the same thing—don't mess with your defense the first year. Get the base in, get the foundation in. In year two, then you can start to mess around, but make sure they're comfortable with what you're doing first.

"All three of them are elite coaches and they know this league, and they know what it takes to win. Plus, they're three of my closest friends, so when you're talking to them, they want what's best for you."

[JDR720]

Its gonna feel really good to have the same head coach in back to back seasons

[Elden Payton]

Awesome read.

BRD is king.

Some parts of it read like "to be successful, you can't be like Mike Dunlap at all"

So glad Cho and co. made this choice.

[fatlever]

wouldnt it be nice to be one of those franchises that has the same head coach for 5, 10, 15 years?

[HornetJail]

Its gonna feel really good to have the same head coach in back to back seasons

What's the franchise record? Two and a half years?

[fatlever]

Its gonna feel really good to have the same head coach in back to back seasons

What's the franchise record? Two and a half years?

bickerstaff - 3 years
vincent - 1 year
brown - 2.5 years
silas - 1.5 years
dunap - 1 year
clifford - 0.5 year (and counting)

[JDR720]

How Cliff turned around Charlotte
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1952 ... te-bobcats


Cliff's coaching principals

[thruthefire]

Al and McBob be like, "Protect the paint? What does that mean?"

[freakon0mics]

Summer of 2013 has been great for us so far...signing Big Al and hiring Coach Clifford.

[LamarMatic7]

Summer of 2013 has been great for us so far...signing Big Al and hiring Coach Clifford.

Tolly for one million was a bargain as well.