The Steve Clifford Thread 2.0 - Off the Cliff we go

catsfan · Post #121 » by **catsfan** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:53 am

if someone is going to go, i think it is going to be cho. his draft record (based on analytics) is pretty not stellar (to be kind). his trades have been good to very good as the hornets always seem to come out on top. the hard thing to parse out is how much abandoning the reset by signing Al was mj or cho. if it was mj, then it is tough to really throw the whole thing on cho. had they sat tight on Al and bottomed out 1 more year you end up with a top 5 (and turns out #9) draft pick.

i think the franchise needs to look very hard at moving away from kemba. i think he and lin are both the same player and that is a back up pg/lou williams 6th man type. lin is much cheaper and a better shooter. as much as al hamstrings the offense, i think kemba does the same thing. with that said, i am very sure they won't move away from kemba and i don't think kemba would be ok with that role.

DY_nasty · Post #122 » by **DY_nasty** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:01 pm

good lord

can we at least play 3 games before talking about firing people this year? lol

Braggins · Post #123 » by **Braggins** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 12:18 pm

I don't think Kemba would have a problem with being a 6th man. He might not be too happy about not closing games, but I don't think it would be an issue since we'd probably want to close with most of the time anyways.

LamarMatic7 · Post #124 » by **LamarMatic7** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:48 pm

DY_nasty wrote:good lord

can we at least play 3 games before talking about firing people this year? lol

the conversation didn't start because of the L. it was influenced by the article.

moreover, no one on here is rambling that we need to fire him or anything. it was a good conversation based on reports and facts. no need to act holier than thou.

Post #125 » by **yosemiteben** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:53 pm

Agreed Lamar. I quite like Cliff, but spurred on the conversation because of the piece.

I do think the duration of his contract is a bit of a red herring though - I suspect if we wanted to fire him, we would regardless of his contract status.

DY_nasty · Post #126 » by **DY_nasty** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:55 pm

LamarMatic7 wrote:
DY_nasty wrote:good lord

can we at least play 3 games before talking about firing people this year? lol

the conversation didn't start because of the L. it was influenced by the article.

moreover, no one on here is rambling that we need to fire him or anything. it was a good conversation based on reports and facts. no need to act holier than thou.

Its not holier than thou, its just... geez. its been 1 game :roll:

not even 2

and if you really want to tackle that convo, you have to admit that cho and cliff have actually acted like they've been on the same page since the offseason started.

and i'm the guy who started the "if you could have any other head coach, who would it be thread?" thread last year :lol:

LamarMatic7 · Post #127 » by **LamarMatic7** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:02 pm

DY_nasty wrote:
and if you really want to tackle that convo, you have to admit that cho and cliff have actually acted like they've been on the same page since the offseason started.

they reportedly don't get along well. Clifford liked Higgins more.

DY_nasty · Post #128 » by **DY_nasty** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:16 pm

LamarMatic7 wrote:
DY_nasty wrote:
and if you really want to tackle that convo, you have to admit that cho and cliff have actually acted like they've been on the same page since the offseason started.

they reportedly don't get along well. Clifford liked Higgins more.

it was clear there was a rift the first two years but nothing seems to really indicate as much now

and ehhh.... that doesn't really make sense to me. the higgins thing.

LamarMatic7 · Post #129 » by **LamarMatic7** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:22 pm

DY_nasty wrote:
LamarMatic7 wrote:
DY_nasty wrote:
and if you really want to tackle that convo, you have to admit that cho and cliff have actually acted like they've been on the same page since the offseason started.

they reportedly don't get along well. Clifford liked Higgins more.

it was clear there was a rift the first two years but nothing seems to really indicate as much now

and ehhh.... that doesn't really make sense to me. the higgins thing.

just saying what was reported.

it makes sense given Higgins basketball background. Cho is a numbers guy. much more for a film-watcher like Cliff to talk about with Higgins than Cho.

DY_nasty · Post #130 » by **DY_nasty** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:53 pm

if it was lowe or bonnell, you'll have to understand that i'm skeptical

Braggins · Post #131 » by **Braggins** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 8:46 pm

I'll be honest, I think Cho is a better GM than Clifford is a coach. Cho's weak area has been drafting, but it seems like with this front office the draft is more of a collaborative effort so I'm not currently willing to blame our drafting woes completely on Cho. I'm not happy with either, but if I had to choose one to go it would be Clifford. My first choice would actually be firing MJ from having any say in basketball decisions, but thats never happening.

Mystical Apples · Post #132 » by **Mystical Apples** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 8:59 pm

Braggins wrote:I'll be honest, I think Cho is a better GM than Clifford is a coach. Cho's weak area has been drafting, but it seems like with this front office the draft is more of a collaborative effort so I'm not currently willing to blame our drafting woes completely on Cho.

Out of curiosity which of Cho's picks were bad? I doubt anyone can objectively say his drafting resume in totality is weak, but I'm all ears about the blatant whiffs.

Remember the baseline:

MKG
Cody
PJ via Napier
Batum via Vonleh
Kaminsky

Braggins · Post #133 » by **Braggins** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:22 pm

Mystical Apples wrote:
Braggins wrote:I'll be honest, I think Cho is a better GM than Clifford is a coach. Cho's weak area has been drafting, but it seems like with this front office the draft is more of a collaborative effort so I'm not currently willing to blame our drafting woes completely on Cho.

Out of curiosity which of Cho's picks were bad? I doubt anyone can objectively say his drafting resume in totality is weak, but I'm all ears about the blatant whiffs.

Remember the baseline:

MKG
Cody
PJ via Napier
Batum via Vonleh
Kaminsky

I've actually defended Cho's drafting quite a bit, but that is generally what people consider his weakness. I would definitely trust his judgement on drafting over MJ and Clifford. MJ is just downright pathetic when it comes to drafting and I'm pretty sure Clifford is part of the reason we only draft stretch 4's and his talent evaluation might be just as bad, if not worse, than Jordans.

Anyways, I thought the Kemba pick was a bit odd considering the best player on the team at the time was Augustine, but I think outside of that it was a sensible pick and people generally believe that MJ was the one who wanted Kemba anyways.

Biz was definitely a reach, but I think he is going to be a valuable player for a long time so I wouldnt call that pick a complete bust (if we wouldn't have let him walk for nothing), just disappointing.

MKG was a perfectly fine pick. We could have went for Lillard or Drummond, but not many people saw Lillard coming and everyone was scared to death to draft Drummond.

Zeller was a actually a good pick.

Vonleh was a perfectly fine pick.

I don't know what to say about Frank. I hated it initially, but later opened up to it. Now that he isn't even getting relevant minutes despite being a 4 year college player it is looking very suspect. I won't be surprised if this goes down as the worst pick in the Cho era. In hindsight it would obviously be Biyombo, but the good players we passed on for Biz (Klay/Kawhi) surprised everyone and weren't really obvious good picks at the time. Passing on the hometown stud that just won a national championship and miraculously fell to us for a guy who might be just a rich mans Spencer Hawes is kind of hard to swallow.

I thought Cho was doing a great job with the rebuild until we signed Albus and then doubled down on him the next two off-seasons. Whoever was the driving force behind that is the one who deserves the blame if this all falls apart. If MJ, with Clifford backing him, was giving Cho orders to build a playoff team around Al Jefferson then I can't really blame Cho much at all for how this has turned out.

Post #134 » by **yosemiteben** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:29 pm

Braggins wrote:I don't know what to say about Frank. I hated it initially, but later opened up to it. Now that he isn't even getting relevant minutes despite being a 4 year college player it is looking very suspect. I won't be surprised if this goes down as the worst pick in the Cho era.

You hated him initially, then liked him, then he played limited minutes in his first and only NBA game (one in which the coach said the plan was for him to get more minutes until we were down 20 in the 4th quarter) and now you're back to thinking he might be our worst pick? That seems kind of absurd to me.

LamarMatic7 · Post #135 » by **LamarMatic7** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:35 pm

DY_nasty wrote:if it was lowe or bonnell, you'll have to understand that i'm skeptical

I have to look up who said that.

What do you have against Lowe though? The man came down here and actually spent time with the team last season. When's the last time any national writer has gone out of his way to visit a sub .500 Charlotte team?

Edit: yeah, it was Lowe.

Braggins · Post #136 » by **Braggins** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:36 pm

yosemiteben wrote:
Braggins wrote:I don't know what to say about Frank. I hated it initially, but later opened up to it. Now that he isn't even getting relevant minutes despite being a 4 year college player it is looking very suspect. I won't be surprised if this goes down as the worst pick in the Cho era.

You hated him initially, then liked him, then he played limited minutes in his first and only NBA game (one in which the coach said the plan was for him to get more minutes until we were down 20 in the 4th quarter) and now you're back to thinking he might be our worst pick? That seems kind of absurd to me.

Thats not what I meant. I'm completely undecided about him currently. I like his skill-set and everything, but I'm saying the fact that he couldn't beat out Spencer Hawes for a rotation spot makes the pick seem suspect. I'm more inclined to think it is more an issue with Clifford having a veteran crush on Hawes than Frank actually not being good enough.

It is too early to really tell, but If he turns out to be a marginally better version of Hawes (which I'm not saying I necessarily think is the case) then it could go down as the worst pick in the Cho era considering how perfectly the stars had aligned for us to draft Winslow or acquire a bunch of extra picks from Boston so that they could draft Winslow.

Mystical Apples · Post #137 » by **Mystical Apples** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:39 pm

Fair enough. Every pick can debated but when I look at the big picture I think overall they've done well with Cho. Some of those drafts were bad and he turned most of them into something good. The teams biggest weakness was not modernizing the front office and sticking too long with a 2001 blueprint...or 1995. Or they weren't able to stick with their convictions but I wouldn't blame Cho for that.

Post #138 » by **yosemiteben** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:39 pm

If he sucks it'll be a bad pick. Got it.

Braggins · Post #139 » by **Braggins** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:43 pm

yosemiteben wrote:If he sucks it'll be a bad pick. Got it.

No, it will be a great pick. All our picks are great. Our owner is great. Our GM is great. Our coach is great. All their decisions are great and make sense. Everything about this franchise is great. There, are you satisfied?

Mystical Apples · Post #140 » by **Mystical Apples** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 9:47 pm

The final outcome isn't the way to evaluate any decisions, including a GM. I want to know what their plan is and is it sound, and how well do they stick to their convictions to follow that plan. Some of the organizational decisions seem to be in direct conflict and I grade Cho on a curve with he understanding he's likely not always in charge of the final product.