kdthunderup wrote:We have seen players like Oladipo, Lamb, Sabonis, move on and become better NBA players elsewhere. We have seen guys like Schroder, Patterson and Waiters come here and become worse players.
schroder and waiters just suck and patterson was damaged goods with his knees. sabonis and oladipo just filled the conventional three point specialist archetype when they were here. it's up for debate, i think, whether this is made necessary by westbrook or the coaching staff or the organization. this kind of pigeon holing has been occurring before billy donovan's staff took over so i'm not sure it could be laid on this coaching staff specifically.
kdthunderup wrote:It is a coaching issue more than anything, a top 5 NBA coach would of gotten this roster to a WCF.
I envy a team like Houston that is able to pick up guys each year that no one wants and turn them into reliable role players. We need to pull the pin on Donovan to reach our ceiling, look at what Golden State did with Kerr and Houston did with Dantoni, they made massive leaps simply due to changing coaches.
ok. houston added eric gordon, replaced dwight with capela, added nene, featured harrell more, and later lou williams in 2016-17. mike d'antoni helped, and he definitely has a synergy with james harden. but c'mon. "simply due to a coaching change"? that's unreasonable.
steve kerr helped the warriors too, but they were already a good team (5+ srs the prior year under jackson) with four young players (green, curry, thompson, barnes) on upward trajectories.
is a new coach going to stave off russell westbrook's decline? neither d'antoni or kerr had to deal with the roster problems we are currently embroiled in. i think in general there's a lot of weight given to nba coaching and its importance by fans when it's a distant factor relative to roster strength and construction. a lot of really bad coaches have coached really good teams.
it helps both these teams that they have modern nba organizational philosophies.