New Head Coach?

[bondom34]

And George was a vet who'd played at that level before, or near enough. And Schroder is a vet as well. That's not a coach's credit.

I suppose we should really credit Gentry for Brandon Ingram. Or Nate McMillan for Dipo. Or Kurt Rambis for Kevin Love.

Sorry, especially when a player is an established vet that's not coaching that magically made them improve, and in the case of George its not really that. The idea of an age curve applies. Crazy thinking.

Oh and sure don't count McGary. Then add in Kevin Martin since he had a career year and we're counting random vets.

Brooks developed young talent better, and he's done the same in Washington. Thomas Bryan, Troy Brown, Rui just this year.

[mr570]

And George was a vet who'd played at that level before, or near enough. And Schroder is a vet as well. That's not a coach's credit.

I suppose we should really credit Gentry for Brandon Ingram. Or Nate McMillan for Dipo. Or Kurt Rambis for Kevin Love.

Sorry, especially when a player is an established vet that's not coaching that magically made them improve, and in the case of George its not really that. The idea of an age curve applies. Crazy thinking.

Oh and sure don't count McGary. Then add in Kevin Martin since he had a career year and we're counting random vets.

Brooks developed young talent better, and he's done the same in Washington. Thomas Bryan, Troy Brown, Rui just this year.

Yeah and when the Washington Wizards lost their All Star they just lit the East on fire, didn't they?

[mr570]

Scott Brooks sucks in Washington and he sucked here and acting like he was better than Billy is LOL LMFAO

[bondom34]

And George was a vet who'd played at that level before, or near enough. And Schroder is a vet as well. That's not a coach's credit.

I suppose we should really credit Gentry for Brandon Ingram. Or Nate McMillan for Dipo. Or Kurt Rambis for Kevin Love.

Sorry, especially when a player is an established vet that's not coaching that magically made them improve, and in the case of George its not really that. The idea of an age curve applies. Crazy thinking.

Oh and sure don't count McGary. Then add in Kevin Martin since he had a career year and we're counting random vets.

Brooks developed young talent better, and he's done the same in Washington. Thomas Bryan, Troy Brown, Rui just this year.

Yeah and when the Washington Wizards lost their All Star they just lit the East on fire, didn't they?

The Wizards replaced Wall with Ish Smith and had one of the best offenses in the NBA. They were bad before and bad after. Paul vs Westbrook is mostly a wash last year.

[bondom34]

Scott Brooks sucks in Washington and he sucked here and acting like he was better than Billy is LOL LMFAO

Now this is in depth analysis. But hey, those young guys in Washington actually look good, better than anyone but Shai. Oh and in his first season in Washington they were healthy and won 49 games with a roster that wasn't overly talented either.

But Billy supposedly "outcoached" Pop that one time 4 years ago and Chris Paul is a midrange wizard who I guess people thought wasn't good? If you think the two are equivalent in terms of losing Wall vs replacing Westbrook with Paul, that's sort of a take.

[mr570]

And George was a vet who'd played at that level before, or near enough. And Schroder is a vet as well. That's not a coach's credit.

I suppose we should really credit Gentry for Brandon Ingram. Or Nate McMillan for Dipo. Or Kurt Rambis for Kevin Love.

Sorry, especially when a player is an established vet that's not coaching that magically made them improve, and in the case of George its not really that. The idea of an age curve applies. Crazy thinking.

Oh and sure don't count McGary. Then add in Kevin Martin since he had a career year and we're counting random vets.

Brooks developed young talent better, and he's done the same in Washington. Thomas Bryan, Troy Brown, Rui just this year.

Yeah and when the Washington Wizards lost their All Star they just lit the East on fire, didn't they?

The Wizards replaced Wall with Ish Smith and had one of the best offenses in the NBA. They were bad before and bad after. Paul vs Westbrook is mostly a wash last year.

Billy has had to coach a different team every year he has been in the league. That things are finally coming together without Westbrook is telling. Scott Brooks' offenses wished they looked this good. That guy was the king of ISO ball stopping in OKC.

[bondom34]

Yeah and when the Washington Wizards lost their All Star they just lit the East on fire, didn't they?

The Wizards replaced Wall with Ish Smith and had one of the best offenses in the NBA. They were bad before and bad after. Paul vs Westbrook is mostly a wash last year.

Billy has had to coach a different team every year he has been in the league. That things are finally coming together without Westbrook is telling. Scott Brooks' offenses wished they looked this good. That guy was the king of ISO ball stopping in OKC.

Scott Brooks team currently has a better offense than OKC that runs less isolation. He also had different teams every year. You're not actually saying anything factual here.

[mr570]

The Wizards replaced Wall with Ish Smith and had one of the best offenses in the NBA. They were bad before and bad after. Paul vs Westbrook is mostly a wash last year.

Billy has had to coach a different team every year he has been in the league. That things are finally coming together without Westbrook is telling. Scott Brooks' offenses wished they looked this good. That guy was the king of ISO ball stopping in OKC.

Scott Brooks team currently has a better offense than OKC that runs less isolation. He also had different teams every year. You're not actually saying anything factual here.

I'm talking about what he did in OKC with KD and Westbrook. I don't remember Scott Brooks losing Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook or Paul George?

And the records speak for themselves really. If all of those young guys that Scott Brooks developed in Washington are so great why are they so bad? Billy Donovan lost Russell Westbrook and Paul George and replaced them with a sophomore first round pick and they are fifth in the West, about to be fourth.

How do you just explain away this year? How do you explain away 2016? How do you explain away how well OKC was doing pre-Roberson injury in George's first year in OKC?

[bondom34]

Billy has had to coach a different team every year he has been in the league. That things are finally coming together without Westbrook is telling. Scott Brooks' offenses wished they looked this good. That guy was the king of ISO ball stopping in OKC.

Scott Brooks team currently has a better offense than OKC that runs less isolation. He also had different teams every year. You're not actually saying anything factual here.

I'm talking about what he did in OKC with KD and Westbrook. I don't remember Scott Brooks losing Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook or Paul George?

And the records speak for themselves really. If all of those young guys that Scott Brooks developed in Washington are so great why are they so bad? Billy Donovan lost Russell Westbrook and Paul George and replaced them with a sophomore first round pick and they are fifth in the West, about to be fourth.

How do you just explain away this year? How do you explain away 2016? How do you explain away how well OKC was doing pre-Roberson injury in George's first year in OKC?

They're bad because young teams don't win. They're not talented, but their young players have shown development far more than OKCs have. To add, part of why Durant left was Donovan. To add again, they underachieved all year in 2016 before two first round exits. Their overachieving this year because they stayed healthy and didn't trade Paul or Gallo.

There is no reason a team with Chris Paul as it's starting point guard should ever not be really good if he's healthy. There has literally never been a team he's on where that's the case. If you thought Paul wasn't good, that's on you.

[slick_watts]

i'd be okay with keeping billy around unless we could convince one of the ex-player stud assistants to come.

[getrichordie]

To think that Donovan was a huge part of the reason Durant left was laughable. If Brooks was coach, he was definitely gone, IMO. He was gone either way unless he was taking the LOB home. He had seen enough of Westbrook and Roberson and Presti not bringing in the right talent.

[bondom34]

To think that Donovan was a huge part of the reason Durant left was laughable. If Brooks was coach, he was definitely gone, IMO. He was gone either way unless he was taking the LOB home. He had seen enough of Westbrook and Roberson and Presti not bringing in the right talent.

Durant actually said he didn't like Donovan, and did like Brooks. Oh and he said he liked Westbrook. So so sorry that he contradicted you.

Read on Twitter

"he didn't like the organization or playing for Billy Donovan. His roster wasn't that good, it was just him and russ." He followed up with another tweet that said "imagine taking russ off that team, see how bad they were. Kd can't win a championship with those cats."

Its wild that we have an actual quote and the response is to protect Donovan and say Durant was lying about his own feelings (and that the blame goes to the one person he specifically singled out who wasn't to blame lol). Its also pretty wild that we'd go against data we have at this point.

https://clutchpoints.com/warriors-news-kevin-durant-lauds-scott-brooks/

“To see it, it’s incredible. It shows the coaching we had — Scott Brooks allowed us to be who we are,” said Durant. “That’s an underrated part. He allowed us to make mistakes and learn from them.”

We've now gone from one point to just flat out lying and contradicting history. You're free to like Donovan. But making things up about what happened is probably not a good way to try to say it.

If you like him, great. But trying to purport he's changed something, or overachieved, or that he's actually done what was supposedly why Brooks was fired is just inaccurate. And saying he wasn't involved with Durant (when Durant said the opposite) but things that Durant didn't mention were is just discrediting yourself.

Granted, people here have laughable opinion after laughable opinion on players constantly.

[bondom34]

At this point I'm becoming convinced this is trolling because we've gone from flat out saying Durant is lying on a burner to saying Paul George being good is a credit to Donovan.

[bondom34]

Oh and saying all this, yes, Donovan isn't the worst coach in the league. We also don't see everything. He still isn't very good, is still a below average coach IMO, though a really good guy, and Paul is the main reason for this season. Chris Paul is apparently massively underrated while being a top 5 PG of all time.

Now saying that, I'll leave it there, but if people are going to quote and LMAO LOL or make up information when we've got actual direct quotes or information otherwise, I generally tend to respond.

[getrichordie]

The elephant in the room is that you could definitely argue that Brooks had higher-end talent to work with and failed.

Jeff Green? 5th overall pick.
Cole Aldrich? 11th overall pick.
Byron Mullens? 21st pick.
Eric Maynor? 20th pick.
Jeremy Lamb? 12th pick.

What did Brooks do with Roberson? Adams?

And Kevin Martin didn't even start a game for us... sandwich a great shooter in between Westbrook and Durant! What a concept!

And Kanter had his best seasons under Donovan, not Brooks. Waiters had a markedly better season under Donovan, rather than Brooks, but expected development right?

Read on Twitter

Spoiler:

"He's running more sets, I think," Durant said of Donovan's offense compared to Brooks'. "He's put in different packages for guys at different positions. Scotty did a great job of moving the floor and allowing his iso players to make plays, and I think Billy is doing that, too, but it's a little bit different. We're moving around a little bit more, moving from side-to-side a little bit more.

"I think and feel like my job as a coach is to move the floor for those guys in actions and things that we're doing to help and create some space for them to play in," Donovan said. "I've always been a ball-movement, player-movement coach, where we want to extra pass, want to move the basketball. That said, we also have two of the best one-on-one offensive players in the NBA, so there's a balance on getting them the ball where they can play in some isolations, whether that's in post-ups or on the elbow.

"I don't think it's anything where someone's going to watch something and say, 'Geez, this has never been done before in the NBA.' I don't feel that way at all. All I'm trying to do is trying to create opportunities for those guys to play in space and to be who they are and put them in positions to make some decisions and reads."

"I think the guys have loved Billy's offense," said veteran forward Steve Novak, "because he puts a lot of the responsibility and trust in the players. It's not like we pass to A, then B happens, then C happens. He puts us in situations where he allows the guys to play and make plays. So as basketball players we love that, and it's also a lot of responsibility for us because we have to make the right decisions and be unselfish."

"[Coach Donovan] will stop practice and let us know what we need to do, how we need to get better with the standard he's trying to hold us to," Durant said. "He's holding Russell and myself accountable for everything as leaders, and that's what we need."

"Truth be told, we've got better players [than in past seasons]," Durant said. "We've got a deep team. When you have a deep team, everybody is going to get open shots and it'll take pressure off your guys. ... Having the best players on the floor, it helps everybody out. We can talk about the offense ... of course it's gotten better. We're moving the ball better, things like that, but when you have good players, it helps out."

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/13985301/nba-billy-donovan-reinventing-kevin-durant-russell-westbrook

...

https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/video/kevin-durant-billy-donovan-gave-okc-vision-held-team-together-tragedy

"Kevin Durant said he credits first-year head coach Billy Donovan for much of the Thunder's success this season."

Durant was singing a very different tune until he joined the Warriors...

...

Read on Twitter

...

2019-2020 — 288.3 passes made per game (17th in league) — 111.6 ORtg
2018-2019 — 242.4 (last) — 110.3 ORtg
2017-2018 — 254 (last) — 110.7 ORtg
2016-2017 — 255.3 (last) — 108.3 ORtg
2015-2016 — 256.6 (last) — 113.3 ORtg

2014-2015 — 271 (27th) — 107.8 ORtg
2013-2014 — 262.3 (28th) — 110.5 ORtg

There's no correlation between more passing and better offense... especially if who you are passing it to can't knock down a shot or create anything for themself. Thus a 2-man game is born. Or you run P&R between Adams/Westbrook, etc. and you become predictable.

https://stats.nba.com/teams/passing/?sort=PASSES_MADE&dir=1&Season=2019-20&SeasonType=Regular%20Season

...

This showcases some of the wrinkles added to OKC's offense to help move the defense and create opportunities, which is Donovan's job. As you can see, the players had trouble capitalizing on this at time. Not Donovan's fault that Presti brings these guys in who can't shoot for ****.

Watch on YouTube

...

And I STILL haven't heard an answer about a team succeeding who is so poor at shooting the ball from the outside...

Adams
Roberson
Westbrook

That's 3 *starting* players who have close to, if not 0 gravity in playoffs from outside. Yet... you expect a better offense. This is a joke...

...

"I wouldn’t blame Donovan for either Oladipo or Sabonis not really improving a ton in OKC; that was a roster construction issue forcing them into ill-fitting roles. At the time Dipo was not a real primary ball-handler and Sabonis wasn’t (and still isn’t) a stretch four. Those roles are what the roster desperately needed even though Dipo and Sabonis didn’t fit them and couldn’t perform to expectations. To me, that’s on Presti and where he was left post-KD."

...

What are/were your suggestions for improving the offense? Do you want to sit Roberson and play Abrines more? Do you want Roberson trying to create for himself? Do you want to run P&Rs with players that the defense can constantly go under on so they can force bad shots? Show me solutions. There were none. We maxed our offense out given the personnel we had. So what did we do? We doubled down on defense, forced turnovers, and created a chunk of our offense out of that success.

[getrichordie]

Yeah, when you start quoting clutchpoints..., that's where I should probably stop trying.

https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-kevin-durant-scott-brooks-20150423-story.html\

You could easily make the case that Durant is just clawing at anything to defend his decision to leave OKC. One twitter comment on a burner account means nothing... We've all said things we don't really believe or mean at times and if you argue against that, well you just aren't human...

[getrichordie]

Also, players have had nothing but good things to say about Donovan... except for... you guessed it! Durant!

https://abc7chicago.com/espn-oklahoma-city-thunder-nba-kevin-durant/690029/

And Durant even walked back the statement, saying...

"That was just me being a total [expletive] idiot. I own up to it," Durant told USA Today. "I want to move on from it. It probably hit me probably harder than what everybody [thought]. Everybody else was telling me to relax, to snap out of it, but I was really, really upset with myself more than anything. It's not the fact that people were talking about me, because I deserve that, but I'm just more upset with myself that I let myself go that far, you know what I was saying?

"It was a joke to me at first. I was doing it all summer, and it went too deep. ... I haven't slept in two days, two nights. I haven't ate. It's crazy, because I feel so [expletive] pissed at myself and I'm mad that I brought someone into it."

[bondom34]

Oh he walked back a statement after backlash? Shocked. He mustn't have felt that way and was just lying and not trying to sound better.

Also Green, Waiters and Kanter had arguably career years under Brooks. Jackson looked better than Schroder while he was younger.
And they achieved more. But hey since apparently the discussion is Brooks vs Donovan, they're close enough. And Brooks was fired.

Oh and for clarity, since apparently nobody really reads, clutchpoints aggregated the Athletic and Slater.

We're going in circles and its pretty clear Donovan is a coach who does no wrong even when people directly say they don't like him. The last word is yours if you'd like.

[getrichordie]

You're a cheeky mate, aren't you?

Durant didn't *just* walk back a statement. He gave reason as to what led to that statement. It would be incredibly easy to say, "oh, but of course!" but I've provided evidence to the fact that Durant was singing a very different tune about Donovan AND Brooks. And there's ample evidence that suggests that Durant's misgivings about Donovan was his inability to reign in Westbrook. And again, far more players have had nothing but great things to say about Billy Donovan. Durant is the outlier, and it's pretty clear why -- he was frustrated that the offense was sort of held hostage by Westbrook.

—

Brooks had Waiters for what, 40+ games?

Brooks and Donovan used Waiters in different ways. Waiters had a larger role under Brooks due to Durant's injury. Waiters (obviously) took more of a backseat once Durant was healthy. But Waiters clearly played with more discipline under Donovan. He was bad under both, but he was less bad under Donovan. He recorded double the WS/48 under Donovan in comparison to his play under Brooks. Waiters also had a higher FTr, higher STL%, higher TS%, higher 3P% + much higher 3PAr + better BPM.

Hell, Waiters even credited Donovan in the video above. We have video evidence.

—

Look, I've defended, or at least offered a different perspective on a lot of your opinions, and you have done the same, but you refuse to acknowledge my defense of Donovan or the circumstances he was operating within. It's easy to say he couldn't win it with 2 MVPs. It's harder to break down the why. And again, to see losing to a 73-win team as some kind of coaching failure is beyond me. To knock Donovan because of a single tweet by Durant when all other evidence points to the fact that Donovan is well-liked by players, is also beyond me.

And why haven't you given him credit for developing Adams or pointing to the fact that the players he is trying to develop are all players drafted or traded for to compliment Westbrook. We've criticized Presti for bringing in these uber-athletic, low-skill guys then we knock Donovan for not making them look better? That doesn't make any sense from where I'm sitting. What about Dort?

Also, it's unfair not to give credit to Donovan for his work with Shai. Shai has made huge improvements to his game from last year to this year, but that's just expected development right?

In the wake of another impressive OKC Thunder victory, we’re still digesting the historic performance of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Following arguably the worst performance by the Thunder this season in a loss to the undermanned Lakers head coach Billy Donovan gave his young star some pregame advice — to do more.

Postgame, Gilgeous-Alexander elaborated stating Billy Donovan asked him to do more and attack first. As per the video below from FOX Sports

“Coach just challenged me before the game to fill up the stat sheet, he knows what I’m capable of and challenges me every day. And I just wanted to step up to the challenge personally.”

—

Look at the end of the day, if you are going to not give credit where it is due and sidestep evidence and reasonable defenses of Donovan, I'm not sure what to tell you...

[mr570]

Durant also got Kenny Atkinson fired and left Golden State on poor terms. But yeah he is exhibit A of why Billy Donovan sucks.

Billy haters are so vexing and I can't stand their irrational hate toward the guy.