Contender with Doc or Treadmill/Rebuilding

[BlzMwt]

This is in response to the amount of negativity surrounding Doc at the moment, which seems even more pronounced than usual lol. There's even a thread on the GB talking about how badly Doc has messed up the team.

So my question is this: Would you rather have the current situation where you have all of the talented core in terms of Paul, Griffin, DJ and Redick, but you have Doc as the GM and Coach where he's going to make questionable acquisitions and coaching moves. In this scenario it's frustratingly difficult at times because as its show, Crawford gets played, picks get traded, useless veterans get picked up BUT at the same time, there is always the chance you break through to the finals. For any naysayers, all you need is a few lucky bounces/games during the last 3 years and the entire perception of the Clippers has changed if they make it to the finals.

OR

Would you rather being a situation more akin to the a rebuilding/treadmill team such as the Knicks, Nuggets or Utah in terms of contracts and talent level BUT you have a much more competent GM and/or Coach. Say you have Masai Ujuri or Danny Ainge for a GM and Rick Carlisle or Mike Budenholzer as a coach. BUT you're still in the West, so it's not like you are magically going to be doing a few solid acquisitions and you're making the second round of the playoffs.


Side Note: I find it kinda funny that during the offseason people complain more about Doc the GM but now that we have moved into actual games the complaints are about Doc the coach. Soon enough it will be the offseason again and it will be time to complain about Doc the GM again lol

[nickhx2]

The latter really depends on who your main talent is, though, and especially who is heading your organization.

Like, i know the celtics have a lot of middling talent but brad stevens is a star and their cache of future picks looks like a treasure chest full of diamonds. Compare that to the knicks, where the only thing i think that looks good for them is porzingis and some recent smart moves by phil jackson. But other than that they look fairly barren and derek fisher doesn't seem to be all that great.


With the clippers it's a tough call. I'm not sure we can get over the hump given the way we use our personnel. I read russo's defensive breakdown and it makes me so angry to know that doc is going to keep going to pierce/crawford as a tandem and he just doesn't get it. And that is the kind of stuff that is really painful when you are trying to beat a team that might be historically good in GS. Yet at the same time you keep thinking "if we only fix these couple things we are right there." It's tough because you hope doc will get it but you never get the feeling that he'll solve that stuff.

That said i'm pretty sure i'd take a team like boston any day over the garbage disposal that is houston right now.

[clip set]

Let's be real, we aren't unloading Griffin, Paul, and DJ for picks and prospects, and I doubt anyone really wants that.

Isn't the plausible option basically looking at this as a Mark Jackson with the Warriors situation? There were strategic flaws that everyone saw there, and it took a clean slate of a coaching staff (and even a David Lee injury) to implement meaningful changes. The flip side of that for us is that we basically don't have any young role players that can develop into higher impact players at this point a la the Warriors. The general concept still holds though.

[nickhx2]

Let's be real, we aren't unloading Griffin, Paul, and DJ for picks and prospects, and I doubt anyone really wants that.

Isn't the plausible option basically looking at this as a Mark Jackson with the Warriors situation? There were strategic flaws that everyone saw there, and it took a clean slate of a coaching staff (and even a David Lee injury) to implement meaningful changes. The flip side of that for us is that we basically don't have any young role players that can develop into higher impact players at this point a la the Warriors. The general concept still holds though.

It'd be hard to compare this to the warriors and their offloading of mark jackson. Jackson and the owners were fighting with each other for quite some time and the level of dysfunction and distrust was pretty high.

For the clippers, ballmer has pretty much given rivers carte blanche to do what he sees fit. It's gonna take at least one really bad season or a couple middling ones for ballmer to want to axe the coach.

Furthermore, even if we did get rid of rivers, i don't see any superstar or budding star coach out there for us. The level of depression i feel knowing that guys like stevens/kerr are already taken and already rare to boot is just too much. We basically don't have much of a chance of upgrading at coach, short of getting jerry sloan to come out of retirement. There's just no real good options and we're likely not being given anyway to begin with.

[BlzMwt]

i wasn't saying that we had the ability to change into the rebuilding team with great front office. I was just wondering what the consensus would be on what you would rather have

[LACtdom]

Even though I think Doc's coaching has been more detrimental to the team than his GM responsibilities (this year), having a separate GM could possibly solve this. If Doc can't be trusted with players like Jamal then we need a GM who will move them. I think if we got a new coach we would need a new GM anyway so we may as well get a new GM, see how the team goes and then if things still aren't working we can let go of Doc. It depends how quickly we would want to lock up a coach like Kevin, Jeff or Tom.

[Quake Griffin]

As of right now, we're just the best of all the treadmill teams.

[mattd13]

I think we have the talent to be at the top. I just do not believe doc is using it correctly. hopefully he and the staff will get it right soon. we need a 5th starter and the defense has to get much tougher. the starters have to be staggered with the second unit be cause they absolutely have no direction. josh, lance, and Austin should not have a free rain on shooting. come on doc this is on you

[LACtdom]

I think we have the talent to be at the top. I just do not believe doc is using it correctly. hopefully he and the staff will get it right soon. we need a 5th starter and the defense has to get much tougher. the starters have to be staggered with the second unit be cause they absolutely have no direction. josh, lance, and Austin should not have a free rain on shooting. come on doc this is on you

I think Austin has been one of the better bench players. I cringe when Josh shoots 3s but realistically if he's open then he has to take them.

If I was Doc I would be increasing the minutes of Wes, Luc & Wilcox.

[Neddy]

I came to hate every Steve Ballmer hire so far. I was all for hiring the first female business executive of this franchise in Gillian Zucker, but she didn't exactly turn out to be Amy Trask. outsourcing our "make over" logo and uniforms to the Heat, our away uni is for summer league. Doc has improved on his GM skills, collecting the current roster of players but he is playing the wrong ones. the Coach Doc is starting to lose my patience. if patting up Jamal's stats and his trade value is the motivation, great, but by doing so we may not even make a top 4 for the playoffs at this rate. hell we may miss it if things don't change fast.

right now seeing what our rotation is, I want to fire doc and all of his chronies, re-promote Gary Sacks as our GM, and hire Thibs, but I fully understand we are not going to be able to install a new defensive scheme during a season. none of the moves i mentioned would be a realistic scenario but I am getting fed up.

[Woodsanity]

Number 2. I do not trust Doc to build a team or coach tbh.

I can only see Doc winning a title if he has a super stacked team like he had with the Celtics BUT in that case he had Thibs as assistant coach and played in a weak East. He would need a team like the Warriors to win but he would gut that team mid season due to his incompetence as a gm.

The best solution is to completely clean house. Fire Doc Rivers as coach and GM! Hire Thibs or someone competent. Man I wish the Clippers still had Oshley.

[nickhx2]

i was just thinking yesterday. clips + olshey or ujiri or random competent gm = RINGZ

[Sofia]

I think I'm done guys

#teamfiredoc

[og15]

I still think the problem roots down to Doc having influence on roster building and player acquisitions.

If he had no influence there, things would be different. Many times a GM forces a coach to play certain players and try certain things by not giving them alternative options. This team has needed that with Doc.

[Quake Griffin]

I still think the problem roots down to Doc having influence on roster building and player acquisitions.

If he had no influence there, things would be different. Many times a GM forces a coach to play certain players and try certain things by not giving them alternative options. This team has needed that with Doc.

He needs to look down the bench on game nights and not see Jamal Crawford there.

and it can't be because of injury. If it's because of injury, he'll just think, "oh well, Jamal will be back."

[nickhx2]

I still think the problem roots down to Doc having influence on roster building and player acquisitions.

If he had no influence there, things would be different. Many times a GM forces a coach to play certain players and try certain things by not giving them alternative options. This team has needed that with Doc.

I generally agree with this. I think you can go for the former in the question posed in the OP if you have two different entities at GM/coach. At least in general, because on occasion your GM might be billy king and you are screwed every which way.

Here's a question i have for people, and i don't mean to derail the question asked in OP but:

would you take billy king as your GM since his MO is to artificially spike a contender's championship window for the next few years, if it meant a nuclear wasteland starting from say 2020 and lasting at least 5 years? Let's just say hypothetically we actually had first rounders and some other young prospects to trade off as well, the way he did with the nets.

[TucsonClip]

Id rather cheer for the Lakers than hire Billy King.

[og15]

Billy King is one of the guys that would make things even worse, so no. Right now Billy King might be one of the few GM's the Clippers can trade with to get out of some of the issues with too many redundantly skilled / non-complimentary players.

[KDRE]

I think this team would've done better with stan van gundy running the GM and Coach duties than what Doc is doing which is nothing at all

They've peaked and at this point have nowhere to go but down with the current squad. While Blake is improving he has more to go, CP is declining and that wraps it up. The other half of the big 3 cant score without dunking

[QRich3]

He probably would, but Stan rejected us before Doc became a possibility.Though they probably never got to offer him an executive role. Plus, Stan has Jeff Bower doing the day to day work, who was a competent executive/coach before being on the Pistons. we have Dave 'yessir' Wohl