The Wizards tenure of Scott Brooks

[tontoz]

I had so much respect for Wittman during his tenure, and he got undeserved hate from people who didn't like his lineups.

He got this team to play defense at a high level, and demanded better play from Wall/Beal. But his offense wasn't sexy; it wasn't the Warriors. His brand of basketball didn't sell tickets.

So instead, Grunfeld (and Sheppard) went after a loser who took a year off from basketball because he didn't have offers on the table. A loser who couldn't win with a prime Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka, with James Harden off the bench.

Anyway, my first choice for a replacement is Nate McMillian. He has a .529 career winning pct., and has a history of coaching up undertalented teams. He's not successful in the playoffs, and that is his Achilles heel, but he'll get us there.

I thought Randy Wittman did a good job overall .

Witman needed an assistant to run the offense. He loved long 2s and hated analytics. Beal became a different player after Witman left.

I agree that he got them to play hard on D but his offense was out of date.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Likewise, another past Wizard coach needed help from an assistant . Eddie Jordan needed help with defensive adjustments.

The Wizards ALMOST had Tom Thibodeau hired as assistant coach to EJ.

[SUPERBALLMAN]

Who is out there that could be of interest to replace Brooks?

Robert Pack is an assistant, is he an up and comer considered Head Coach material?

Personally, I'd be interested in Legler. Every time I hear him I like what he says and his philosophy, always enjoy hearing him talk to Sheehan. He REALLY knows the game, would put his heart and soul into it, and would be good for the young players IMO. It's a bit out of the box, but there have been examples of guys going from TV Analyst gigs to coaching and front office jobs. And look at the success of Spoelstra in Miami.

Watch on YouTube

My list would start with Legler and Pack, and go from there. Maybe Sam Cassell ?

[NatP4]

Charles Lee is my favorite from the research I have done so far, highly intelligent, very personable, awesome connections throughout his young career. This is a solid interview:

Watch on YouTube

[NatP4]

If you look up the minute totals for the Raptors under Nurse, the Bucks under Bud, the Celtics under Stevens, it is clear as day. If you are bad at basketball, you do not play. The bucks have relied on young players like Connaughton, Divencenzo, and Sterling Brown over the years. The Celtics don’t play anyone over the age of 30. The raptors had Boucher, Thomas, Davis, Powell, RHJ all in the rotation.

We simply need a coach that is intelligent and will play good players.

[nate33]

Reposting this from the Boston game thread:

It’s not Westbrook. He doesn’t know what to do on offense. He played a good portion of the game next to Ish Smith and Robin Lopez, there is no spacing. There is no coaching. We spent half the game with Beal guarding Tatum just because.....he wanted to. Brooks has no gameplan, he has no control over the players. He is terrible with player development. He had already killed Deni’s confidence. The guy never gets to touch the ball, the second he takes an open 3 in the 3rd quarter and misses it, Brooks gets someone up to come in and replace him. Imagine playing for that. There’s no sets, no defensive game planning. We don’t even move the ball on offense, it’s 1 simple action like an off ball screen for Beal or a post up for Westbrook, Thats it. Brooks refuses to play any of our young players like Bonga, Brown Jr, Mathews (until tonight finally), Winston, Wagner, even Avdija is playing less than 15 minutes a night lately.

I genuinely sit here and try to think to myself “what does Scott Brooks actually do well as a coach?” And I have absolutely no idea. Terrible personnel decisions, terrible Xs and Os, terrible as a motivator, terrible at player development. Espn is ripping the wizards, the NBCSW crew rips the team every single night endlessly. Not just the broadcasters, but the former players. The entire Cs board was posting about comically bad we are. Bradley beals entire family tweets about how awful Brooks is, on a nightly basis. The team would EASILY be 6-3 or 7-2 right now with an average coach. They need to get back to developing young talent. You build a good defense by playing the right players.

As some point, enough is enough. Brooks needs to be gone. Not by midseason, not by the end of his contract, not by Monday, literally tomorrow. He is hurting the value of everyone on the roster not named Beal. He is killing the enthusiasm about the team.

I'm generally pretty reserved about criticizing coaches. I recognize that lots of decisions are easy with a fan's 20/20 hindsight but can be difficult in the middle of a game. But I have no defense for Brooks whatsoever. I thought he was a mixed bag as a coach of his first 4 seasons - good at some things and bad at others, but he has been inexcusably awful this entire season. Everything NatP4 said is right. Brooks has been terrible at X's and O's, terrible at managing rotations, terrible at motivating the veterans, terrible at managing his stars' worst tendencies, and terrible and building confidence in the young players. I really do believe that any other coach in this league would do better. Brooks has to go.

[nate33]

Who is out there that could be of interest to replace Brooks?

Robert Pack is an assistant, is he an up and comer considered Head Coach material?

Personally, I'd be interested in Legler. Every time I hear him I like what he says and his philosophy, always enjoy hearing him talk to Sheehan. He REALLY knows the game, would put his heart and soul into it, and would be good for the young players IMO. It's a bit out of the box, but there have been examples of guys going from TV Analyst gigs to coaching and front office jobs. And look at the success of Spoelstra in Miami.

Watch on YouTube

My list would start with Legler and Pack, and go from there. Maybe Sam Cassell ?

I think Legler and Pack are names that fit the profile. I like former players who weren't stars but worked hard enough to have a long NBA career and then stuck around afterwards as an analyst/assistant coach. I don't really have any idea how they would fare as actual coaches because I don't know their personality well enough.

I'm not interested in Sam Cassell. He was an assistant coach for us for a little while and all I remember is him teaching our guards to take a lot of long 2's. I think he is too old school and will not effectively utilize the information we now have from the analytics crowd.

[NatP4]

Please no former scrappy NBA role players. Someone like Stevens, Nurse, Spoelstra, or Bud.

[NatP4]

In 2019-2020, the Miami Heat played both Nunn&Robinson about 2000 minutes. Nunn was an undrafted rookie, Robinson was an undrafted 2nd year player that had played 161 total minutes in his rookie season in 2018-2019.

in 2019-2020 Boston won almost 50 games, they played undrafted 2nd year player Brad Wanamaker almost 1400 minutes. He averaged 13-5-4 per36 on .577 TS% and was outstanding. We all know about Theis, another undrafted player that has become one of the best bigs in the NBA. Theis played 1000 minutes as an undrafted rookie in 2017-2018.

Toronto in 2019-2020 won 53 games, they played undrafted rookie Terrence Davis 1200 minutes, and undrafted 3rd year player Chris Boucher 800 minutes. Boucher had played a grand total of 164 minutes in his career before that.

In 2019-2020, in a season in which Wall was out injured and the wiz had NOTHING to play for, the wiz played Ish Smith 1787 minutes and despite trading IT in February, they still played him almost 1000 minutes. They gave undrafted guard Chris Chiozza 161 minutes, later on BKN would acquire Chiozza and play him 278 minutes as their backup PG and he would finish the season ranked 14th in ESPN's RPM stat for all PGs and average 15-7-5 per36 on .531 TS%.

This season, the trio of Lopez, Ish Smith, and Neto have played 435 minutes. Brown Jr, Mathews, Wagner and Bonga have played a combined 230 minutes. I promise you, teams like Boston, Miami, Toronto would be utilizing guys like Gill, Mathews, Wagner, Bonga, Brown, and Winston much better.

What are we doing??

[Frichuela]

Please no former scrappy NBA role players. Someone like Stevens, Nurse, Spoelstra, or Bud.

Agreed, we need a proper coach, not a players-coach who is all about being buddy-buddy with his veteran players and frequently put young players on the dog house -I.e Brooks in a nut shell...

[penbeast0]

We've seen this consistently since Brooks was hired. He'll keep better players on the bench and give minutes to guys who don't deserve to play. ....

As an occasional HS coach, I can tell you that I played lesser players over better ones because they gave the effort at practice and listened rather than doing their own thing. I think almost every coach does . . . both to inspire the other players to practice hard and listen and because your ego gets involved too.

I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect it. Not defending Brooks, I've been as vocal as anyone about the fact that I HATE that this team plays no defense. Defense is where effort and coaching have the most effect. Get me a coach whose players play defense and a GM that makes the coach pay attention to analytics, I will give you a winner.

[youngWizzy]

Truthfully no coach is going to bench Russell Westbrook because he is a "star" and is owned millions of dollars. I'm not sure any coach is going to tell Westbrook to stop shooting either. Besides that, the team has a lack of team oriented defensive players and rim protections. Clearly there are other concerns with the team as well...

[SUPERBALLMAN]

TIM LEGLER


http://basketballintelligence.net/2020/11/15/tim-legler-interview-part-one/

http://basketballintelligence.net/2020/11/29/tim-legler-interview-part-two/


https://sports.yahoo.com/tim-legler-still-wonders-90s-035832434.html


" I think I could take a head coaching job from day one. I don’t know that I need to be an assistant coach somewhere first. I’m still holding out hope but I’m a little bit more realistic and I’m kind of planning out what the next twenty years of my life are going to look like. I thought it was going to be coaching. I thought that my last chapter in basketball was going to be as a coach."

[SUPERBALLMAN]

We want defense, how about this guy?

https://virginiasports.com/coach/tony-bennett/

[doclinkin]

OOh. Good call on Tony Bennett. Though I think some of what he does is personnel based. He picks guys who are willing to scrap. Still. I agree on Legs. He is smart and as an analyst he often has a teaching perspective that displays a deep understanding of the game and an ability to translate it in simple and effective language.

[long suffrin' boulez fan]

OOh. Good call on Tony Bennett. Though I think some of what he does is personnel based. He picks guys who are willing to scrap. Still. I agree on Legs. He is smart and as an analyst he often has a teaching perspective that displays a deep understanding of the game and an ability to translate it in simple and effective language.

Tony Bennett would be flat out great wherever he coached. But, I cannot see him wanting to coach in the pros. He loves the college game. He is fundamentally a teacher and an evangelist. He loves shaping young people into men. He coaches in order to spread the gospel. His program is based on five biblical pillars. When young men work together based on passion, servanthood, humility, unity and thankfulness, he is sated. I don’t see the pro game as compatible with his ethos, though he was good enough to stick around in the league as a player for a while.

[payitforward]

I like Legler a lot -- but, he has no real coaching experience. & when he says that he thinks he "could take a head coaching job from day one," he's talking about a college job.

We can't afford to proceed in that way. It would behoove us to find a coach who has been successful in one of the excellent franchises in the league. Someone out of the San Antonio system for example....

[SUPERBALLMAN]

I like Legler a lot -- but, he has no real coaching experience. & when he says that he thinks he "could take a head coaching job from day one," he's talking about a college job.

We can't afford to proceed in that way. It would behoove us to find a coach who has been successful in one of the excellent franchises in the league. Someone out of the San Antonio system for example....

Someone like.... Avery Johnson ??

https://www.coachesdatabase.com/avery-johnson/

https://thespun.com/nba/former-alabama-coach-avery-johnson-reportedly-interviewing-for-new-job

[SUPERBALLMAN]

They should hire Gene Hackman...

Watch on YouTube

[NatP4]

I think Jay Wright from Villanova would be a home run hire if we go the college route. Just look at this list of quality NBA players that he has recruited and coached in recent years:

Jalen Brunson (5 star, 22 national)
Donte DiVencenzo (4 star, 124 national)
Josh Hart (4 star, 79 national)
Mikal Bridges (4 star, 81 national)

So you know he can evaluate talent. That’s 3 quality NBA players not even ranked in the top 75 nationally.

Arcidiacono, Bey, and Spellman are honorable mentions.

In his last 7 seasons, Villanova has lost a grand total of 38 games out of 253. 2 NCAA championships 4 conference championships and made the tournament all 7 seasons. They only signed five total 5 star recruits over that period. Hard to believe.