Its not irrational hate. I like the guy. He's not a great NBA coach. The weird attachment of Thunder fans toward mediocre role players and a bad coach I can't understand. And this:
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.
Its not the 73 win team. Its that we saw the same faults in the Thunder as that were there under the guy they fired him for. Its not about a tweet by Durant (entirely), or a loss to Golden State. Though how many coaches are ever called out by a player anywhere? Its about looking objectively at the data we've got and seeing the offense remains the same, the passing remains the same, the development of players didn't improve, and the flaws stayed the same as they were before.
They still have a stagnant offense with poor shot quality, and I'm not convinced this team's future is terribly bright until something legitimately changes around SGA because right now it looks like he's it. And Donovan hasn't shown the ability to get anywhere higher. If you're giving significant credit for Shai, cool. I hope you admit Monty Williams is a great coach, so if he's in the same tier as Williams where's that? How about Gentry? Or Pierce in Atlanta? Seems the people saying the coach only gets blame and no credit are only willing to credit him without blame.
So far every point for him has been entirely debunked on a factual basis and every point for him has been some nebulous thing about players like Paul George or Abdel Nader having a career year (when Nader has just now shown he's a borderline NBA player). If you're going to try to put something on him, at least work with rational points. This is like the weird hope for Bazley being better than Shai, or Ferguson's hype, or Dort's hype, or any number of middling role players getting hype because for some reason there's an emotional attachment.
Oh and FTR I'm glad at least everyone can admit Durant was an issue. I know the apologists were out in force trying to shift blame there for a while too. Oh and for the love of all that's good the people saying this think Kerr didn't do anything in Golden State when we saw their entire culture and system change in a single season to create one of the best offenses ever.