KIDD FIRED - Hughes/Grgurich also fired - Vin Baker Hired

[ReginaldDwight]

So Doug Russell tweeted out this morning that he was at practice Monday and didn't see nor hear about any fight, altercation, etc.

He seems to be going directly at that Big Unit report. This is going to get good.

Interesting... hope someone tagged Bill Michaels so he can see it

Never understood why Bill Michaels has a show. Hated when they took Jim Rome off the air for that clown.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

so kidd is personally responsible for the individual improvement and breakout of half the squad while he bears no responsibility for the team stagnating and performing worse over that same time period.

the getting worse as a team is on the players while the talent explosion goes to kidd.

seriously wtf. this is the most nut debate ive ever heard on this board.

Sounds eerily similar to John Hammond being responsible for all the good moves over the years, but all the bad one's were due to meddling.

every move he made was under the umbrella of meddling owners and coaches. some of those moves bombed and some we got lucky. probably the drafts were mostly his.

for most of his time here kidd had way more control and influence over this organization than Hammond ever did.

[BigO]

The idea that Jason Kidd was responsible for Giannis's improvement is pure nonsense. Kidd is not responsible for improvement or lack of improvement in any player. It's the same logic that blames Dom Capers for not developing the trash that he was given on defense. Players win games and their improvement is 95% based on their work ethic and talent.

And even the 5% that may be due to good teaching would fall on the assistant coaches who actually work on player development, not the head coaches.

The key to any successful sports team is the general manager. It is he who gets the players and the players are always the key. And that is why Kidd had to go. He was an average to a below average coach, but his main problem was that his intrusion into player trades and drafts was hurting the team. I didn't trust his judgement and was worried that the new owners thought Kidd could do no wrong. Whether it was an incident this week or some other reason he was fired, it's the right call.

[tydett]

when we look back at lebron’s legacy, we just have to give credit to Paul Silas.

This ends the thread on Giannis' development at the hands of Kidd.

Look at the top 8 on the Bucks.

Giannis
Bledsoe
Khris
Brogdon
Henson
Snell
Delly
Thon (yikes, that list)

Who on this team has Kidd "developed" aside from Giannis? Middleton looks worse in year 4 of Kidd than he did in year 1 or 2 (large injury aside), Brogdon was developed by Tony Bennett, Henson was glued to the bench until the Bucks traded away their 50 centers this year, and Thon has basically not shown any signs of development whatsoever.

Meanwhile, look at all the players who have not developed under Kidd:

Wilson
Brown
Payton II
Thon
MCW
Inglis
JOB
Ennis

I'm not including Jabari in any list since: A) we don't know how he'll look after two ACL tears and B) according to all accounts, Jabari and Kidd weren't even speaking

You can say those are a handful of scrubs, sure, but if Jason Kidd is some developmental savant, why the hell does he need a generational talent to do so? Kidd deserves the same label as John Hammond: "Guy(s) who lucked into a transcendental player that prolonged their career in Milwaukee longer than they deserved."

[M-C-G]

I'm of the mindset that Kidd and staff were pretty good developmentally through the growth we saw in Middleton and Giannis, I will certainly give them some credit, either for fostering (like assigning Sweeney to Giannis and Frank Johnson to Jabari during his rehab, having KG and other guys come in and "consult")them to develop or seeing certain things about their game and giving them the opportunity to explore it.

I will also give some credit to Kidd for not just letting everyone become 3 point chuckers and forcing them to work on other elements of their game (namely Giannis, Parker and MIdds) even if it was painful as hell and perhaps has set them back in terms of modern NBA.

But I can't shake how colossally they failed with MCW, the regression of Thon, the abandonment of Vaughn, whatever we have been thinking at the C position for 3 years, whatever we are thinking with DJ. I can't give too much credit for the guys that did grow and completely ignore how much they whiffed on these other guys, which lends to the argument that maybe Middleton, Giannis, etc. are far more responsible for their growth and the coaching staff gets an "at a boy" for giving them the opportunity.

[paulpressey25]

Interesting... hope someone tagged Bill Michaels so he can see it

Seems like a good media story. We're now almost 72 hours into this and we still don't have a timeline of how this came down nor confirmation of the pizza restaurant.

But perhaps Doug challenging Handsome Dan's story might get spur some action.

[M-C-G]

Interesting... hope someone tagged Bill Michaels so he can see it

Seems like a good media story. We're now almost 72 hours into this and we still don't have a timeline of how this came down nor confirmation of the pizza restaurant.

But perhaps Doug challenging Handsome Dan's story might get spur some action.

I have ZERO doubt in my mind there was an incident and I don't really need to look further than the Horst comments around this being a reactive decision they hadn't planned on, even if they had been thinking before the season about firing him.

Everything reeks of there being an incident that needed to be responded to and the most logical way I can construct it, Kidd went off the rails and Horst saw his opportunity to strike against him, and won. Originally, I thought Horst would forever be tied to Kidd, but just like Littlefinger, he waited for his opportunity and struck.

[Treebeard]

The team members have probably since been advised by management (and their own agents) to keep their comments to a minimum and keep the tone up beat for the sake of the organization - just crisis marketing 101... Don't lie, but keep it positive and vague.

[sidney lanier]

The idea that Jason Kidd was responsible for Giannis's improvement is pure nonsense. Kidd is not responsible for improvement or lack of improvement in any player.

[Matches Malone]

Bill Michaels will probably just ignore Doug.

[Matches Malone]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised.

Read on Twitter

[WeekapaugGroove]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised.

Read on Twitter

Sarvers an idiot so litterally nothing is beyond the realm of possibility but this does seem unlikely since Kidd is widely hated here in Phoenix from his time as a player.

[emunney]

Kidd's best trait as a coach, to me, is his willingness to experiment, but I did not get the sense that he was very good at evaluating the results, which kind of defeats the purpose. Playing Pierce at the 4 was a stroke of brilliance and ahead of its time. But when more and more teams went to smaller lineups, his only idea was to post everybody up all the time, which is interesting in theory but turned out to be a bad value proposition, and he never gave up on it.

[DingleJerry]

If a fan base mobilizes similar to what TN football did with Schiano around Kidd's DV background to make it a big story they could easily block him from ever getting another job. All it takes is one media person to re push the story and Kidd's likely done.

[skones]

He's accountable for Wilson just like Hammond is accountable for Alexander. I don't play the blame game with draft picks because it ultimately falls on the GM to make the final decision. If the reports of Kidd's waning influence since last year are accurate, then I don't believe for a second that Horst wasn't fully on board with the Wilson pick. I guess Horst just needs to go out and find his Giannis or Middleton to make up for it...

Except that Horst has been with the organization for the last 9 years, it's not like he wasn't familiar with the scouts, or the information, or the workouts. He wasn't suddenly walking into a situation where he was forced to look at players in an entirely different range. He wasn't just appointed, he was in the room the whole time. Horst has been aggressive, I like it, but he doesn't deserve a pass for Wilson AT ALL.

[emunney]

I hope somebody hires Kidd so we can jam their roster with our trash.

[Matches Malone]

I hope somebody hires Kidd so we can jam their roster with our trash.

Just load them all up in a uhaul with Jeff Schwartz driving and back it right into his next destination.

[Matches Malone]

LMAO Go figure... Sparky is reading into the "Trade me" comment that Giannis made. So annoying.

[M-C-G]

Kidd's best trait as a coach, to me, is his willingness to experiment, but I did not get the sense that he was very good at evaluating the results, which kind of defeats the purpose. Playing Pierce at the 4 was a stroke of brilliance and ahead of its time. But when more and more teams went to smaller lineups, his only idea was to post everybody up all the time, which is interesting in theory but turned out to be a bad value proposition, and he never gave up on it.

DUDE, you are obviously forgetting the "Smallest Ball" line up from earlier this season where he rolled out GP2, Brown, Brogdon and Bledsoe together? And I actually thought there was something like a GP2, Terry, Delly, Snell, Middleton line up or something to that effect earlier, but got tired of trying to look through line up data. I mean, if small is good, smallest is bestest.

[Balls2TheWalls]

Kidd was also reticent to experiment with some things. It took him forever to give Giannis the ball to run the offense. He made excuse after excuse for not letting Giannis handle the ball. We made a lot of noise on twitter and on this forum, and months later he finally did it -- and then took all of the credit for it as being his idea.