Stein: Sources say Hornacek's job is "under immediate threat"

[AtheJ415]

I'm pretty sure he has a better grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of our players than armchair coaches like many here. Sometimes we get so deep in a hole while those guys play because they lack D, and when your great offense doesn't outweigh how bad your defense is, it is difficult to climb out of holes. Ideally PJ is out there at the 4 while all of our scorers are in there....the team plays with more heart and energy when he is in there. It's as simple as that. Tonight if Tyson could show up and battle for some boards with Whiteside (if he plays) that would be nice, but otherwise, we might just want to go with Leuer at the 5 to take Whiteside out of the game. We just need to make sure we don't allow them to get offensive rebounds. We are unlikely to get many offensive boards.

If there are 10 seconds left and you are down 2 with the ball, and you sub in PJ Tucker to remove Warren and leave Booker on the bench, you don't have a great grasp of the strengths of the players, you are trying to lose, or you are simply stupid. If you have come back to pull within 17 and then pull a hot shooter for Tucker, you are oblivious to the scenario. Jeff makes decisions like that this year. It's not an offense for defense scenario there, and I think Jeff is a smart guy so I don't think it's the last scenario, but he has 1000% hurt us with these types of subs all year. He has made it so we go from a small chance of climbing out of holes to no chance.

And the numbers just don't support what he's done with the rotations overall. The numbers suggest his so called defenders' lack of offense hurt us more overall than our youngen's defense, and by a lot. I get trying to set an example for players, so if it was just the overall rotations I could buy it, but the situational subs don't fall into that line of thinking. When you must score or lose, you don't make defensive subs, when you must defend or lose, you don't put in offensive guys, and when you have a big lead and your star guy in Bledsoe is sitting, you don't put a lineup with no spacing, making everything harder for worse offensive players. He's been bad this year. Really, really bad.

The fact is the defenders not defending is as big a reason we are in holes as playing the young, bad defenders. Tyson has been our worst defender this year. Price has never had a single season where a team defended better with him on the court, and he's been playing for 10 years. Our defenders simply aren't good enough at defense to warrant this type of minutes tradeoff.

I'm not sure which specific scenarios you are talking about but there are a lot of variables to the equation. It's not all as simple as you like to think it is.

I think there may be some plays we have ready to use the young guys, or particularly Booker at this point, but in the early season it was going to be Bledsoe, Knight and Tucker that have a lot more rehearsal and experience in running plays. Sometimes these plays only have maybe a 30% chance of working out, and with Warren it would have and probably would have been less. But often times it's just Knight making dumb turnovers at the end, or even Bledsoe.

I'm pretty specific about the scenarios. We literally subbed in Tucker in place of Warren with 10 seconds left, down 2, with the ball coming out of a timeout. There are others like that, but that, for instance, is inexcusable, and it happened. By making that substitution, he was choosing to play 4 on 5 to try and tie or win the game. He didn't have to be in that scenario, but that's what he put us in. And he was universally railed against when the sub happened, before we inevitably missed the shot and lost. That scenario is very simple. You must score, you have Warren who is all offense, and Tucker who is all defense, and you sub in the defender. If you follow Haralabos Voulgaris on twitter, his feelings pretty much match mine as far as Hornacek's rotations this year.

Some of the decisions are complicated. Many really are very simple. Like I said, if it's the rotations, so be it if he's trying to make a bigger point about effort, but in the situational sub scenarios like the 10 seconds left down 2 parts, they really do become that simple.

[bwgood77]

I'm pretty specific about the scenarios. We literally subbed in Tucker in place of Warren with 10 seconds left, down 2, with the ball coming out of a timeout. There are others like that, but that, for instance, is inexcusable, and it happened. By making that substitution, he was choosing to play 4 on 5 to try and tie or win the game. He didn't have to be in that scenario, but that's what he put us in. And he was universally railed against when the sub happened, before we inevitably missed the shot and lost. That scenario is very simple. You must score, you have Warren who is all offense, and Tucker who is all defense, and you sub in the defender. If you follow Haralabos Voulgaris on twitter, his feelings pretty much match mine as far as Hornacek's rotations this year.

Some of the decisions are complicated. Many really are very simple. Like I said, if it's the rotations, so be it if he's trying to make a bigger point about effort, but in the situational sub scenarios like the 10 seconds left down 2 parts, they really do become that simple.

You say that as if with 10 seconds left we are playing street ball. Like I said, it's not always that simple. I'm glad you like to agree with Voulgaris. You should get some gambling tips from him too.

[In Len We Trust]

I'm pretty specific about the scenarios. We literally subbed in Tucker in place of Warren with 10 seconds left, down 2, with the ball coming out of a timeout. There are others like that, but that, for instance, is inexcusable, and it happened. By making that substitution, he was choosing to play 4 on 5 to try and tie or win the game. He didn't have to be in that scenario, but that's what he put us in. And he was universally railed against when the sub happened, before we inevitably missed the shot and lost. That scenario is very simple. You must score, you have Warren who is all offense, and Tucker who is all defense, and you sub in the defender. If you follow Haralabos Voulgaris on twitter, his feelings pretty much match mine as far as Hornacek's rotations this year.

Some of the decisions are complicated. Many really are very simple. Like I said, if it's the rotations, so be it if he's trying to make a bigger point about effort, but in the situational sub scenarios like the 10 seconds left down 2 parts, they really do become that simple.

You say that as if with 10 seconds left we are playing street ball. Like I said, it's not always that simple. I'm glad you like to agree with Voulgaris. You should get some gambling tips from him too.

You must be one of those guys that thinks Dragic chilling in the corner every game whIle the offense was stagnant was the front offices fault for signing IT, even though we sucked horribly with IT on the bench.

[nevetsov]

Gotta agree with AtheJ on this one, I think his (or her) observations are spot on. They're backed up with actual in game examples and in this instance is providing positive forum discussion.

[AtheJ415]

I'm pretty specific about the scenarios. We literally subbed in Tucker in place of Warren with 10 seconds left, down 2, with the ball coming out of a timeout. There are others like that, but that, for instance, is inexcusable, and it happened. By making that substitution, he was choosing to play 4 on 5 to try and tie or win the game. He didn't have to be in that scenario, but that's what he put us in. And he was universally railed against when the sub happened, before we inevitably missed the shot and lost. That scenario is very simple. You must score, you have Warren who is all offense, and Tucker who is all defense, and you sub in the defender. If you follow Haralabos Voulgaris on twitter, his feelings pretty much match mine as far as Hornacek's rotations this year.

Some of the decisions are complicated. Many really are very simple. Like I said, if it's the rotations, so be it if he's trying to make a bigger point about effort, but in the situational sub scenarios like the 10 seconds left down 2 parts, they really do become that simple.

You say that as if with 10 seconds left we are playing street ball. Like I said, it's not always that simple. I'm glad you like to agree with Voulgaris. You should get some gambling tips from him too.

Well, on that play PJ stood in the corner, his man predictably sagged off to crowd the lane, preventing a drive to the right of the key. Now, I get PJ is a better rebounding SF than Warren, but PJ also doesn't have to be covered in the corner. He is no threat to score, and shooting horribly from 3 on the year, particularly at that point in the year. You could just as easily put Booker or Warren in, giving Knight more room to operate because both have to be covered and cannot be left alone, and have either crash the glass. It's a simple instruction. But if you're going to put in rebounders, you also have to go quicker so a rebound is possible, and if PJ sees his guy sagging and knows he's in for rebounding, he should crash the glass then and there to get position instead of continuing to stand there in the corner. We did neither, shooting with like 2 seconds left, and with PJ crashing late, and lost, which is a sign of a badly coached team. That type of stuff means the difference between good and bad execution, and is something we've struggled with well before Knight and going back to when we had IT and even before IT with just Goran, and IT's been great executing for Stevens.

The players deserve plenty of blame for this season. I'd say some, like Markieff and Chandler, deserve the most, because Tyson is our worst defender and I see no real leadership on this team. Those were what he's been paid big money to provide here, and I don't see him doing either. Markieff's blame is self-explanatory. I'd put Jeff right behind both though. When you have broad, overarching problems and players across the board underperform 2 years in a row and across many different players who other coaches laud for their coachability despite having them for just half a season, that starts at the top. Jeff is in the best position to drive culture and provide leadership of anybody in the organization. Those, imo, are where we are lacking most and have been lacking for the past 2 years. I don't think turnover explains the extent of these problems. There are teams who have had a lot of turnover that haven't had these issues despite having arguably worse knuckleheads (Sacramento, for instance).

Normally, Jeff is a smart coach who knows his X's and O's. I think his X's and O's are still solid despite some of the huge tendencies on offense that imo make us predictable. When it comes to rotations, I've never hammered his rotations until this year, but it's because he's never done stuff like this before. He's been really awful this year. In the past 2 years, there were rarely subs that just made no sense, but this year there's a lot of them in times that either have no rational backing, or in which the sub isn't used in the scenario to support the only rational backing they could have. In my opinion, Jeff has also played the victim this year. I think he's frustrated with the team and like many on the team is pouting. Maybe that's why he's doing this stuff, but it's certainly not helping us win games.