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What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed?

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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#221 » by Captain Ballmer » Tue May 16, 2017 8:08 am

It's ironic that Boston Celtics just reached to the Conferans Finals. We haven't move one single step forward with him in 4 years while they made it happen with rebuilding after Doc's departure(dumping).
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#222 » by QRich3 » Tue May 16, 2017 8:13 am

I don't know, the Celtics got their ECF participation trophy after barely getting by two meh teams. To think this Celtics team has had more success than the CP3 era Clippers just because they made the conference finals is very disingenuous imo.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#223 » by Captain Ballmer » Tue May 16, 2017 8:28 am

I'm not arguing whose more successful in those 4 years It's just a statement that Celtics made like hundreds of steps further since then while we couldn't even single one.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#224 » by MartinToVaught » Tue May 16, 2017 1:37 pm

QRich3 wrote:I don't know, the Celtics got their ECF participation trophy after barely getting by two meh teams. To think this Celtics team has had more success than the CP3 era Clippers just because they made the conference finals is very disingenuous imo.

Man, those grapes sure are sour, huh? You can dismiss the Celtics' accomplishment as a "participation trophy" all you want, but it just makes you sound salty. I'd gladly take the "participation trophy" over 47 years and counting without even a conference finals appearance.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#225 » by wco81 » Tue May 16, 2017 3:37 pm

If Doc had stayed in Boston, would he get as much out of that roster as Brad Stevens has?

Also, didn't the Clippers have to give up a draft pick to get Doc? Wonder whom they drafted with that pick.

Or whom the Clippers could have drafted.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#226 » by QRich3 » Tue May 16, 2017 4:18 pm

That pick was RJ Hunter.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#227 » by wco81 » Tue May 16, 2017 4:37 pm

Ah, no biggie then.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#228 » by madmaxmedia » Tue May 16, 2017 7:32 pm

QRich3 wrote:I don't know, the Celtics got their ECF participation trophy after barely getting by two meh teams. To think this Celtics team has had more success than the CP3 era Clippers just because they made the conference finals is very disingenuous imo.


I understand that you can debate the merits of the current Celtic squad, but they still have gone farther this year than we ever have.

What they really have going for them is the ECF, PLUS the next 2 #1's from the Nets, plus a slew of #2 picks (enough that they should be able to land at least 1 rotation-level player.) They also own most of their own #1's (except this year, it's swapped with the Nets.) Best rebuild in history, courtesy of the Nets.

Ironically, they also own the #1 we gave up for Jeff Green. They also own a future Memphis #1 from, you guessed it- trading Jeff Green.

It really pains me to say this (and this is a different subject than your post), but if the Celtics were stripped of every single player on their current roster that is playing tonight in ECF Game #1, in 3 years they'll could still have a better roster than us.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#229 » by og15 » Wed May 17, 2017 7:26 pm

DieHardFan wrote:It's ironic that Boston Celtics just reached to the Conferans Finals. We haven't move one single step forward with him in 4 years while they made it happen with rebuilding after Doc's departure(dumping).

The team moved forward, not as much as we would like overall roster wise, but certainly in player development (Redick, Griffin, Jordan, Rivers, Mbah), and team offense and defense (not as quickly as I would have liked in terms of not hedging). Of course if everyone else is moving forward along with you, then you have to move forward a little faster, and that's the harder part to accomplish. Memphis has been a similar team to the Clippers and they had their WCF appearance in 12-13 when others were injured, and they got swept and it meant nothing for them moving forward. They didn't make any actual progress that year they just had a more favorable road with Griffin injured for LAC and Westbrook injured for OKC.

Of course the EC vs WC conference comparisons are always a bit difficult to make. If the Clippers were in the East they would have had ECF appearances, just based on the different competition, but they wouldn't be any better of a team and neither Paul or Blake would be any better as players, and Doc wouldn't be any better as a coach or GM, and their future improvement wouldn't be in a better place.

Indiana, Atlanta, Toronto and now Boston have all made the ECF recently. Boston has all those Brooklyn picks due to the idiocy of Billy King and the Nets, but the two other teams "went further" than the Clippers but in the long run accomplished nothing more in terms of the team actually being better. Toronto is contemplating whether or not to even keep their roster together despite their ECF appearance just last season. Toronto has good management though, so that's a positive, but they are in a similar boat.

Getting to the WCF in 14-15 for example would have been nice, we would likely have lost to GS, I'm just being real here, but it wouldn't change the structural non-contact injury Blake had in 15-16, who knows about the punching though. It wouldn't make Paul's hands any less injury prone, and it wouldn't change the possibility of Blake getting another stress related non-contact injury, or the teams future prospects with all the wasted assets. It would be a short "celebration" quickly forgotten which we would be dreading the references to it right now and saying "who cares about the WCF in 14-15, we just beat a Houston team that wasn't very good, and we still have no chance vs GS so we need to blow it up", etc.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#230 » by Captain Ballmer » Thu May 18, 2017 6:06 am

og15 wrote:
DieHardFan wrote:It's ironic that Boston Celtics just reached to the Conferans Finals. We haven't move one single step forward with him in 4 years while they made it happen with rebuilding after Doc's departure(dumping).

The team moved forward, not as much as we would like overall roster wise, but certainly in player development (Redick, Griffin, Jordan, Rivers, Mbah), and team offense and defense (not as quickly as I would have liked in terms of not hedging). Of course if everyone else is moving forward along with you, then you have to move forward a little faster, and that's the harder part to accomplish. Memphis has been a similar team to the Clippers and they had their WCF appearance in 12-13 when others were injured, and they got swept and it meant nothing for them moving forward. They didn't make any actual progress that year they just had a more favorable road with Griffin injured for LAC and Westbrook injured for OKC.

Of course the EC vs WC conference comparisons are always a bit difficult to make. If the Clippers were in the East they would have had ECF appearances, just based on the different competition, but they wouldn't be any better of a team and neither Paul or Blake would be any better as players, and Doc wouldn't be any better as a coach or GM, and their future improvement wouldn't be in a better place.

Indiana, Atlanta, Toronto and now Boston have all made the ECF recently. Boston has all those Brooklyn picks due to the idiocy of Billy King and the Nets, but the two other teams "went further" than the Clippers but in the long run accomplished nothing more in terms of the team actually being better. Toronto is contemplating whether or not to even keep their roster together despite their ECF appearance just last season. Toronto has good management though, so that's a positive, but they are in a similar boat.

Getting to the WCF in 14-15 for example would have been nice, we would likely have lost to GS, I'm just being real here, but it wouldn't change the structural non-contact injury Blake had in 15-16, who knows about the punching though. It wouldn't make Paul's hands any less injury prone, and it wouldn't change the possibility of Blake getting another stress related non-contact injury, or the teams future prospects with all the wasted assets. It would be a short "celebration" quickly forgotten which we would be dreading the references to it right now and saying "who cares about the WCF in 14-15, we just beat a Houston team that wasn't very good, and we still have no chance vs GS so we need to blow it up", etc.


Let me present you some counter arguments first,

as a coach and POBO.
Doc still hasn't able to collect more regular season wins than VDN.
Doc still hasn't expand our roster from 2013. Team is still short about two way wing players.
Doc still hasn't developed one single young he drafted.
Doc still couldn't figure it out the staggering lineups and avoiding full bench mob that killing us.
Doc still couldn't find a way to trade or expire Jamal Crawford's contract.He even gave him a raise!!!
Doc still hasn't been able to find a trade net us future picks or young talents(his son won't counts :noway: ).

League has evolved to new area that your roster should contain full of versatile players if you wanna be a succesfull team. However, ironicly your narrative about Doc was that he helped DJ to grow and defined redick's and The Prince's role, players that the opposite what being versatile is. Lastly, i think Blake could develop even without Doc, He's just adamantly trying regardless the personel.

OTOH, Boston has way more win than every previous year they had. Their roster getting expanded ever day and night. Their rotations are great that they makes good steps forward with less experienced squads. Have lots of freaking picks and euro players. Well worth talent development that guys like Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Amir johnson producing higher level than they did with their former teams. Their best yet to come.

My point of view was all about centering Doc and his former team's success after they defrock him, while Doc was quickly stripping our assets with his unexperienced, dumb decisions at both on the floor and the office. By the way, between the lines of all this you are mentioning Memphis, EC vs. WC things, Indiana, Atlanta, Toronto and finally the last one injuries. Well, i see you "spin doctor".

It's time to consider more strongly to fire Doc that even one of the brightest commentator like you are, whom has far better knowledge about Clippers than myself, started making excuses just the way doc would do. It's getting contagious around our organization i fear :o
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#231 » by Alex DeLarge » Thu May 18, 2017 6:16 am

I'm not sure if this has been touched on yet by LAC fans, but for me one of Doc's major failures is his complete inability to find any "diamond in the rough" type players that are either late in the draft, on the end of someone's bench, or overseas or in the d-league. In today's game, finding these players and getting production out of them on cost-controlled contracts is so important, especially when you are a team that is consistently operating around or above the cap.

Where is his Jonathon Simmons? His Hassan Whiteside? His Patrick Beverley? His Matthew Dellavadova? His Patty Mills? His Joe Ingles (a guy he could have signed but chose to let go)?

The only player that even comes close is Austin, but he was a high draft pick out of a major program who was on his way to being a bust. He was not a guy that hadn't received a chance that Doc identified as a high-level talent. Moreover, he is Doc's son, which undoubtedly factored into Doc's decision to give him a chance to play.

Doc's complete inability to look beyond washed-up has-beens - Glen Davis, Jordan Farmar, Mo Speights, Dahntay Jones, Paul Pierce, Spencer Hawes, BJ Mullens etc - is enough proof that he has no business running a modern NBA franchise.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#232 » by mattd13 » Thu May 18, 2017 12:02 pm

so true!!
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#233 » by MartinToVaught » Thu May 18, 2017 2:14 pm

og15 wrote:The team moved forward, not as much as we would like overall roster wise, but certainly in player development (Redick, Griffin, Jordan, Rivers, Mbah)

- How has Redick developed under Doc? Stan Van Gundy is the one who developed him in Orlando. Since then, he's been the same old one-dimensional player. The only difference is that Doc is delusional enough to think he's capable of being his Ray Allen and thriving as a starter. The Magic and Bucks brought him off the bench, where he belongs.

- Not sure how the idea that Doc has developed Blake squares with the popular narrative that Blake has declined and needs to be traded. Everything Blake has added to his game has been the result of hard work on his part, in spite of the coaching. If anything, Doc has stifled his game by trying to turn him into a soft jump-shooter.

- DJ has not added anything to his game in the Doc era. The post game he was starting to develop under Vinny disappeared as soon as Doc took over. His points per game and rebounds per game this season were literally exactly the same as they were last year (12.7 and 13.8 respectively). His DBPM, BPM, and VORP are all actually worse now than they were in Doc's first season. The only thing Doc did for DJ was play him in fourth quarters. If anything, DJ has regressed, as evident from how he's been punked by players like JaVale McGee, Timofey Mozgov and an injured Derrick Favors on one leg.

- Austin continues to be a net negative on the court (-1.6 BPM). The only reason he isn't quite the disaster he used to be is because he's been forcefed minutes at all opportunities. And those minutes aren't the result of a good-faith attempt at player development, they're the result of pure unadulterated nepotism. If his last name wasn't Rivers, he would be rotting on the bench next to Doc's draft picks. And rightfully so, because he isn't a good player and likely never will be.

- Not seeing how Mbah a Moute has developed. Like JJ, albeit in the other direction, Luc continues to be the same old one-dimensional player he's always been. He's 30 years old, let's not pretend Doc has shown him the ropes.

and team offense and defense (not as quickly as I would have liked in terms of not hedging).

Our "offense" is nothing more than iso-heroball at this point. When Gentry left, he took any semblance of an offensive system with him. And I'm not sure how anyone could sit through this past season and claim that Doc has improved the defense.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#234 » by og15 » Thu May 18, 2017 11:39 pm

DieHardFan wrote:
og15 wrote:
DieHardFan wrote:It's ironic that Boston Celtics just reached to the Conferans Finals. We haven't move one single step forward with him in 4 years while they made it happen with rebuilding after Doc's departure(dumping).

The team moved forward, not as much as we would like overall roster wise, but certainly in player development (Redick, Griffin, Jordan, Rivers, Mbah), and team offense and defense (not as quickly as I would have liked in terms of not hedging). Of course if everyone else is moving forward along with you, then you have to move forward a little faster, and that's the harder part to accomplish. Memphis has been a similar team to the Clippers and they had their WCF appearance in 12-13 when others were injured, and they got swept and it meant nothing for them moving forward. They didn't make any actual progress that year they just had a more favorable road with Griffin injured for LAC and Westbrook injured for OKC.

Of course the EC vs WC conference comparisons are always a bit difficult to make. If the Clippers were in the East they would have had ECF appearances, just based on the different competition, but they wouldn't be any better of a team and neither Paul or Blake would be any better as players, and Doc wouldn't be any better as a coach or GM, and their future improvement wouldn't be in a better place.

Indiana, Atlanta, Toronto and now Boston have all made the ECF recently. Boston has all those Brooklyn picks due to the idiocy of Billy King and the Nets, but the two other teams "went further" than the Clippers but in the long run accomplished nothing more in terms of the team actually being better. Toronto is contemplating whether or not to even keep their roster together despite their ECF appearance just last season. Toronto has good management though, so that's a positive, but they are in a similar boat.

Getting to the WCF in 14-15 for example would have been nice, we would likely have lost to GS, I'm just being real here, but it wouldn't change the structural non-contact injury Blake had in 15-16, who knows about the punching though. It wouldn't make Paul's hands any less injury prone, and it wouldn't change the possibility of Blake getting another stress related non-contact injury, or the teams future prospects with all the wasted assets. It would be a short "celebration" quickly forgotten which we would be dreading the references to it right now and saying "who cares about the WCF in 14-15, we just beat a Houston team that wasn't very good, and we still have no chance vs GS so we need to blow it up", etc.


Let me present you some counter arguments first,

as a coach and POBO.
Doc still hasn't able to collect more regular season wins than VDN.
Doc still hasn't expand our roster from 2013. Team is still short about two way wing players.
Doc still hasn't developed one single young he drafted.
Doc still couldn't figure it out the staggering lineups and avoiding full bench mob that killing us.
Doc still couldn't find a way to trade or expire Jamal Crawford's contract.He even gave him a raise!!!
Doc still hasn't been able to find a trade net us future picks or young talents(his son won't counts :noway: ).

League has evolved to new area that your roster should contain full of versatile players if you wanna be a succesfull team. However, ironicly your narrative about Doc was that he helped DJ to grow and defined redick's and The Prince's role, players that the opposite what being versatile is. Lastly, i think Blake could develop even without Doc, He's just adamantly trying regardless the personel.

OTOH, Boston has way more win than every previous year they had. Their roster getting expanded ever day and night. Their rotations are great that they makes good steps forward with less experienced squads. Have lots of freaking picks and euro players. Well worth talent development that guys like Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Amir johnson producing higher level than they did with their former teams. Their best yet to come.

My point of view was all about centering Doc and his former team's success after they defrock him, while Doc was quickly stripping our assets with his unexperienced, dumb decisions at both on the floor and the office. By the way, between the lines of all this you are mentioning Memphis, EC vs. WC things, Indiana, Atlanta, Toronto and finally the last one injuries. Well, i see you "spin doctor".

It's time to consider more strongly to fire Doc that even one of the brightest commentator like you are, whom has far better knowledge about Clippers than myself, started making excuses just the way doc would do. It's getting contagious around our organization i fear :o

Doc had 57 wins in his first season, VDN maxed at 56 wins, close, but he technically did win more games.

Agreed, Doc has not been a good GM, but the problem here is that I wasn't arguing that he was, I wasn't arguing that he has maximized the team. I'm arguing that there HAVE been improvements from VDN, so citing the areas that didn't improve doesn't mean there weren't areas that did improve :wink:

The league is moving to more versatile players, teams have always wanted more versatile players, but Doc is too timid in making moves. Jamal should have been gone after 13-14 along with a pick for a younger SF who has more length and can give two way impact.

The comparison to Boston in terms of team improvement is not an apples to apples comparison. Boston started out as a lottery team, so getting better was a much easier road for them. Again, this doesn't mean that Ainge isn't a far superior GM to Doc, he is, but there was a lot more room for improvement for Boston than for the Clippers.

There's no excuses, I just like to stay away from swinging to the poles. People need to realize that it is okay to acknowledge that good things that Doc has done even if the bad outweighs the good. Our arguments against him aren't made any stronger by hyperbole or disregarding any good he's done, they are actually made weaker. The point is, yes, he did accomplish some things, but the faults overshadowed any of the improvements and stagnated the team.
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Post#235 » by Ranma » Sat May 20, 2017 12:33 am

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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#236 » by og15 » Sat May 20, 2017 1:28 am

MartinToVaught wrote:
og15 wrote:The team moved forward, not as much as we would like overall roster wise, but certainly in player development (Redick, Griffin, Jordan, Rivers, Mbah)

- How has Redick developed under Doc? Stan Van Gundy is the one who developed him in Orlando. Since then, he's been the same old one-dimensional player. The only difference is that Doc is delusional enough to think he's capable of being his Ray Allen and thriving as a starter. The Magic and Bucks brought him off the bench, where he belongs.

- Not sure how the idea that Doc has developed Blake squares with the popular narrative that Blake has declined and needs to be traded. Everything Blake has added to his game has been the result of hard work on his part, in spite of the coaching. If anything, Doc has stifled his game by trying to turn him into a soft jump-shooter.

- DJ has not added anything to his game in the Doc era. The post game he was starting to develop under Vinny disappeared as soon as Doc took over. His points per game and rebounds per game this season were literally exactly the same as they were last year (12.7 and 13.8 respectively). His DBPM, BPM, and VORP are all actually worse now than they were in Doc's first season. The only thing Doc did for DJ was play him in fourth quarters. If anything, DJ has regressed, as evident from how he's been punked by players like JaVale McGee, Timofey Mozgov and an injured Derrick Favors on one leg.

- Austin continues to be a net negative on the court (-1.6 BPM). The only reason he isn't quite the disaster he used to be is because he's been forcefed minutes at all opportunities. And those minutes aren't the result of a good-faith attempt at player development, they're the result of pure unadulterated nepotism. If his last name wasn't Rivers, he would be rotting on the bench next to Doc's draft picks. And rightfully so, because he isn't a good player and likely never will be.

- Not seeing how Mbah a Moute has developed. Like JJ, albeit in the other direction, Luc continues to be the same old one-dimensional player he's always been. He's 30 years old, let's not pretend Doc has shown him the ropes.

and team offense and defense (not as quickly as I would have liked in terms of not hedging).

Our "offense" is nothing more than iso-heroball at this point. When Gentry left, he took any semblance of an offensive system with him. And I'm not sure how anyone could sit through this past season and claim that Doc has improved the defense.

JJ Redick:
There's a limit to the possibility of development of a player like Redick. Doc put him in a position to maximize his productivity as a player. Redick has been maximized in effectiveness as a Clipper, but no coach is going to make him capable of being a star player or of being able to defend any better than he can with his physical limitations. We're not talking about developing from nothing to something. Stan developed Redick from his roots, the Magic organization guided him in being stronger, etc. Stan developed him defensively on how to be a neutral defender without many tools. Doc further developed Redick in utilizing spacing as much as possible, this is from Redick's own mouth. He maximized him as a scorer, but like a Peja Stojakovic who was developed by a great coach in Rick Adelman, there's no coach that was going to prevent Redick from being a player that could be shut down similar to Peja. We got him for just over the MLE though, so he has fulfilled and even surpassed him contract, and the team badly needed shooting and spacing and movement, and there were no other players in the price range who could have accomplished that like Redick has over the past seasons. Now, this doesn't mean they continue with him. Those who have posted here know that my conclusion right when Redick was signed was: "trade Jamal Crawford because we need balance and we need a bigger more defensive SG/SF off the bench to compliment Redick who is smaller and more offensive". So I haven't been happy about a Redick/Crawford SG rotation being the Clippers rotation for 4 seasons now.

Blake Griffin:
There's probably no reason to be telling me about any popular narratives about Blake since I don't care about those or ever fall in line with them. Even then, it should be obvious that the discussion about Blake's decline by other fans and even some Clippers fans is mainly about injuries and decline in athleticism and explosiveness due to that. There's some truth to that, though the extent is overblown, but that's always the case.

Any player that is going to improve is going to have to be hard working, the coaching can only do so much, so if we had expected a coach to develop a lazy player, that's unrealistic. Blake himself has said that the direction that Doc and the new coaching staff gave him about working on his game helped him to work on specific things that fit into the way the team played. Let's look at something more recently taking form, and that is Blake's 3PT shooting. Blake started consistently shooting the 3PT shot, about 3.0 3PA/G over the last 30 games of the season, he said he was working on it in summer, but he didn't shoot it most of the season. Doc was calling the 3PT shot, at least from the corners a "good" shot for Blake and saying if he is open he should take them since 2013, this was just months after he became the coach. Doc prodded him to start shooting it more this season before he started doing it consistently over those last games. Of course we can just say "Blake developed it himself, Doc didn't do anything", well, yes, Blake had to put the work in the gym, that's true of every player, but that's not an intellectually honest argument since we aren't saying that Doc is the one that was shooting with him in the gym. Here's what Doc did to help him develop the ability in games. Doc drew up plays, even in critical points of games for Blake to shoot 3PT shots. What does that do? Confidence, and what does confidence do? It breeds consistency and greater confidence. That is development.

One of the things all Clippers fans should certainly know with Blake is that he seems to be fine staying in his comfort zone even if he has worked on something and knows he can do it. He seems to require constant reminders and prodding when it comes to certain things. Taking open mid-range jumpshots was the first step, he would always pump fake and hesitate, and if he did shoot after that, he was more likely to miss. After prodding and encouragement, he took them with no regard. Pushing the ball up the floor as the ball handler, he would do it sometimes, but if you noticed, there were many times he would rebound, pass the ball to Paul, then Paul would pass it back to him and have to signal him to go with it and take it. Doc used to do the same thing. We saw this season that without as much prodding Blake did not do it as much. The three point shot is the same thing, he worked on it, they've run plays for him, he's trusted to take them, but it still took most of the season before he actually started doing it consistently. This is not an uncommon personality, but it is Blake's personality

I would certainly say that Doc impacted Blake defensively, he has gone from a below average defender who would look lost on defense at times to an average to above average defender who looks like he knows where to be more often than not. Clearly him facing up more was due to Doc, that is one we can't argue at all, but that helped him in other areas which tied in to his development. Those areas are his ability to read the floor better and utilize his passing more, and also his ball protection.

Blake has needed a jumpshot, and the 3PT shot is vital for a basically undersized PF like him. We really can't conveniently forget how much easier Blake was to contain before he was considered an outside threat. Now, shot selection is one that we can consider.
Did Doc make Blake more passive or did Blake do that to himself? If Doc wasn't there and Blake was having the injury and fatigue issues, would he still done the same thing? Of course if we observe carefully we would note that while Blake played more perimeter during the regular season, he has played more inside in the post-season. We haven't really had a chance to see that though since he has played just 3.5 and 2.5 playoff games the past two seasons. The Clippers offense puts Blake in positions where he has options from the middle of the floor, he is not bound to shoot jumpshots if he truly doesn't want to, he isn't bound to pass up shots if he doesn't want to. Blake himself mentioned part of why he's less aggressive all regular season:
Honestly, they had a point. My first few years in the league, I was relying on my athleticism to get me by, because that’s what got me to the NBA. The problem with that is, you end up getting really, really tired by February. My rookie year I tried to get out of bed on a road trip near the end of the season and I was like, Am I physically able to walk right now? I went out on the floor that night and ran up and down just trying to look like a real NBA human

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/why-aint-he-dunkin/

Now with how much he's been injured the past 3-4 seasons, do you blame him? With how much he mentioned fatigue and tiredness being a factor for him in the Houston series despite actually being out for 50 games that season, what do you think is motivating him? Maybe he wants to be more primed to produce in the post-season. Maybe he wants to extend his career and have a game that can last past his athletic prime, and if that is so, then of course he would need to develop that now, not when it comes crashing down.

DeAndre Jordan:
Stats like BPM, DPM and VORP are not meant to be standalone statistics and there is a range of error associated with them. DJ has been in a similar range when it comes to all those statistics since Doc became the coach. Let's be real here, we're talking about a decrease of 1.2 DBPM, 0.1 BPM and 0.5 VORP, what is that actually telling us outside of just citing those statistics? DJ went from being a jumping pogo stick to actually learning to play defense with his feet on the ground and not just look for blocks. He vastly improved in reading opposing defenses and knowing their sets. He's actually now able to make some plays offensively as a passer though not anything spectacular. He's shot 70% FG three seasons in a row. Is there really much value in citing those examples as if that was the only good games those players had all season and as if they didn't do that to other bigs? At least DJ isn't like $26 million man Al Horford who gets owned by Tristan Thompson all the time. Javale McGee has technically owned a lot of bigs in the league this season. Steven Adams, DeMarcus Cousins, Robin Lopez, Hassan Whiteside, etc. He gets to play with some of the greatest shooters and scorers and just has to be a roll man and dump off man and hustle player. It's not really as valuable as you might think to point out that a player can get outplayed, or produced on by certain players, that's basketball. If it happened every game, okay, that's an issue, but it doesn't. A standard of trying to suggest that no less celebrated players should have good games against you or even outplay you is not useful, and like I always say, apply this standard liberally among all C's and it falls flat on its face. If a standard can't hold up the conclusions being made from it among all players, then it's a useless standard.

Austin Rivers:
Austin started out in his rookie year as a -5.6 BPM player and has steadily gone down from -3.4 his last stretch in New Orleans to his still poor -1.6, but just because he's still a marginal player doesn't mean he didn't improve, and this season his VORP was finally positive. He's committed to defense, become a better shooter, and is just overall less stupid though he still does a lot of stupid things. At the least he seems to have value around the league as well as a seemingly friendly contract. Of course he is Doc's son, so that kills everything. We can't discount Austin based on the other draft picks. One was traded for Austin, one was the 56th pick who somehow actually got to play NBA minutes, another was a terrible pick that sucked and still sucks, two others were just drafted last season, one a project and one missing most of the season, so who knows, and the last was a draft and stash, so who knows. We're not going off any good data, all we can say is that Doc's 14-15 draft pick of Wilcox was terrible and useless and made no sense Wilcox shouldn't even have been on the Clippers board.

Luc Mbah A Moute:
Luc just had by far the most efficient scoring season of his career. He shot the 2nd most 3PA he has shot in his career. His high came with a terrible Philadelphia team. Well what was the difference between him as a Clipper and in Philly? In Philly of course they were a bad team, but he took just 16.3% of his 3PA from the corner. As a Clipper he's taken 90%, and this season with more attempts, 74.5% of his 3PA from the corner. Yes, it's simple, but it has opened up two areas for Luc, being put in a spot on the perimeter where he can be more effective, and secondly Luc is actually a good slasher, and can utilize attacking the closeout quite well from the wings and corners. The development here is in usage, allowing him to be more useful in modern offenses, though yes, he's still a guy other teams can play off to shrink the floor unless you have 3PT shooters at every other position at least from the 1-4.


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Development doesn't have to be developing the player from their first stages to their finals stages. Players who are more seasons can still be developed even in little ways. In the end most coaches will acknowledge that the main skills development is done by the players hard work himself and the work with and by their other coaching staff. The coaching development is going to primarily be in the utilization of the player and putting them in the best positions to succeed and trying to maximize every player as much as possible, but still in the team setting. This means not prioritizing maximizing one player over the whole team dynamic. Now, Doc has his faults with this, his lineups is an issue, but there are areas where he's done well with this. It's okay to acknowledge that even if we overall don't give him a positive rating.

The defense improved initially, then they adjusted as they realized they didn't have the personnel for what they were doing before, then it was very good. Last season the defense was very good, they made schematic changes, and things were clicking. Of course personnel as a whole has always been an issue, but this season they went away from zone-ing up against the pick and roll as a primary means of defense and were too focused on becoming better at switching since that is supposedly the ideal defense vs GS. Instead of strategically switching, the team just started switching way too much and all season they were causing themselves to have bad mismatches all the time. Now, you coach does have to reign that in, so Doc is obviously as fault, and so are the players since they do have decision making power in regards to that.

If we're talking about the 4 years Doc has been the coach of the team compared to the two years with VDN and even to VDN's last season where they won 56 games, yes, Doc has improved / developed the team coaching wise. They have in general be better on defense, they have become more versatile offensively, they have player at league average or above pace as opposed to bottom of the league pace, they isolate a lot less than they did with VDN. This doesn't mean there aren't flaws an issues. Why is there such a polarizing mentality, people think that in order to accurately assess there's only hate or love. It's not evil to acknowledge that Doc isn't a bumbling idiot and yes, knows more basketball than you do, despite how much of a genius we think we all are, and that he is respected by other coaches around the league, but still acknowledge that he has faults and many of those faults have limited the Clippers.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#237 » by nickhx2 » Sat May 20, 2017 2:17 am

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Clippers Going to Lose Out on Another Good GM Candidate 

Post#238 » by Ranma » Sat May 20, 2017 11:05 pm

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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#239 » by Don Tommy » Sun May 21, 2017 2:34 pm

Random fact of the day...four years ago today VDN was fired, causing CP3 to supposedly say he would only play for a Black head coach, which led to us losing a first round pick (and almost DJ) for Doc.

My question pertaining to this topic. Is there any head coach you would hire if he also said he had to be in control of player personnel? I say no, I don't want the coach sacrificing the long term for his short term goals.
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Re: What will it take for Ballmer to admit that the GM/Coach Doc experiment has failed? 

Post#240 » by MartinToVaught » Mon May 22, 2017 8:28 pm

It's beyond frustrating that Doc continues to get a free pass from both the media and Ballmer as the Celtics whizz right past us without him. Why can't Ballmer see that Doc is flushing his $2 billion investment down the toilet? If he doesn't care, then he needs to admit that and sell the team to someone who does.
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