Pelicans hire SVG to be Zion Williamson's coach

[kpt]

And there goes stan. Fired by NO. We all knew this was coming not a good fit for any young team and possibly any team at all

[chrbal]

It was such a odd hire at the time. He has an ok resume, but it was something that never seemed like a fit. Almost like the pelicans just picked an experienced name and random and said “sure, why not”

[bstein14]

Seems like with younger teams its more important about being a players coach than an XOs coach. Casey seemingly is really liked by his players.

SVG likely done permanently now as a lead guy. If he wants to coach it will likely need to be as a lead assistant somewhere.

[Invictus88]

Seems like with younger teams its more important about being a players coach than an XOs coach. Casey seemingly is really liked by his players.

SVG likely done permanently now as a lead guy. If he wants to coach it will likely need to be as a lead assistant somewhere.

There's no use being good at XOs (I don't claim this for SVG btw) if the players you are coaching have already tuned you out.

[flow]

And there goes stan. Fired by NO. We all knew this was coming not a good fit for any young team and possibly any team at all

Clearly, as demonstrated in this thread, not all.

.

[Cowology]

Seems like with younger teams its more important about being a players coach than an XOs coach. Casey seemingly is really liked by his players.

SVG likely done permanently now as a lead guy. If he wants to coach it will likely need to be as a lead assistant somewhere.

There's no use being good at XOs (I don't claim this for SVG btw) if the players you are coaching have already tuned you out.

One of my favorite quotes is "culture eats structure for breakfast". Whenever I'm training a new leader/manager one of the first things I drill into them is that it doesn't matter how smart you are, how much you know or how right you are if your team is not willing to follow. You need buy in.

The carrot-stick method of "leading" was semi-effective as we were becoming more industrialized with simple & repetitive tasks, but as soon as an activity requires even a modicum of cerebral activity it actually becomes counter productive. People want 3 things; autonomy (ability to make individual decisions), mastery (feel like you are good at your job) & purpose (feel like you are contributing something meaningful), with autonomy being the #1 driving factor for self-motivation in the workplace.

Micro-managing & beating people down isn't going to get you there. Especially not in the NBA.

[Manocad]

I think SVG is gonna be amazing for that team. He’s gonna maximize Zion the way he maximized Howard and Drummond. Ball isn’t the right point guard for him. He’s gonna utilize Holiday at PG often and set pick and rolls. He’s pretty amazing as a coach. I think what got him in trouble isn’t the coaching but basketball decisions. He should’ve stepped down to coach for his last year. I love SVG though. I think he’s a great coach.

Finalist: Posts That Did Not Age Well

[Snakebites]

So what’s everyone’s take here?

Was he NEVER a good coach (even in Orlando/Miami) or does his style just not work in today’s league?

I gave him a partial pass as our coach since the roster was always bad (that was on SVG the President), but at the same time I don’t find myself shocked that he missed the mark here.

Seems like even when he was successful he had regular issues with players, maybe the current NBA population just has less tolerance for that now?

[440BB]

I think SVG's coaching style hasn't aged well as the power has shifted to the players. Players started tuning him out earlier in his tenure at each stop, with the Pelicans only needing a couple months.

I actually thought he learned from his Pistons experience and would adjust but I was wrong. Maybe the theory that his time here would have been better if he was only the coach is a delusion.

[chrbal]

I think he was a very solid coach who would’ve been better had his career started a decade earlier. His biggest problem was the NBA becoming more about the players and handling egos and such.

I still say he wasn’t that much of a fit here, but do realize it’s tarnished by him also being gm. But do acknowledge that he helped pull the team out of obscurity and his “just get even a little better player” policy helped for a while (getting Ersan for nothing, Bullock and Morris for practically nothing, landing Harris).

I don’t understand why in the world he gave NBA head coaching another shot, his own ego maybe. And don’t understand what the Pelicans logic was in picking him to coach a team with Zion and Lonzo on. He has issues with coaching and relating to younger players and then joins a team built around the next big name and a member of the Ball family.

[Pharaoh]

Seems like with younger teams its more important about being a players coach than an XOs coach. Casey seemingly is really liked by his players.

SVG likely done permanently now as a lead guy. If he wants to coach it will likely need to be as a lead assistant somewhere.

There's no use being good at XOs (I don't claim this for SVG btw) if the players you are coaching have already tuned you out.

One of my favorite quotes is "culture eats structure for breakfast". Whenever I'm training a new leader/manager one of the first things I drill into them is that it doesn't matter how smart you are, how much you know or how right you are if your team is not willing to follow. You need buy in.

The carrot-stick method of "leading" was semi-effective as we were becoming more industrialized with simple & repetitive tasks, but as soon as an activity requires even a modicum of cerebral activity it actually becomes counter productive. People want 3 things; autonomy (ability to make individual decisions), mastery (feel like you are good at your job) & purpose (feel like you are contributing something meaningful), with autonomy being the #1 driving factor for self-motivation in the workplace.

Micro-managing & beating people down isn't going to get you there. Especially not in the NBA.

THIS and it's why the NBA focus on retread coaches boggles my mind.

Compare Nate McMillan to SVG - there's a massive difference in who they are as people, the way they are as humans.

SVG appears to be old school operating in a very new school and that's not going to work.

Personally I wonder IF David Griffin gets a pass here though.

You have Zion, BI & Ball. You hire SVG.

You acquire Steven Adams? In the pace and space league! Then you extend him before a single game is played? Why?

Gotta trade Jrue? Ok sure. But why bring back Bledsoe? Was no one willing to take him in a 3 team deal with some of those firsts and swaps you've got stacked up?

I do believe the Zion, BI & Ball trio could have been really good under SVG but they needed to fill out the roster in a better way, have some legit shooters...

Adams & Bledsoe were the worst fits for them and that's on the GM, not SVG

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM mobile app

[Cowology]

I think SVG's coaching style hasn't aged well as the power has shifted to the players.

On the surface this sounds like it makes sense, and it's something that get's said about various people with some regularity. But it's also something that's been talked about for about as long as I've been a Piston fan. This is not a new phenomenon.

Sure, it's more polarized now; but your star players have been dictating front office decisions for a loooong time. The same things have been said about SVG going back to his Miami days some 15+ years ago, and yet people keep hiring him and then being shocked by the outcome.

What doesn't get talked about enough (IMO) is how some of these old school coaches simply haven't kept up with the X's & O's. It's like once these guys get a reputation for being savvy, it takes a really long time for that perception to break. We just assume that if they used to be good at it that they still are. Which is the real root cause for why some of their inter-personal relations break down quicker than they used to; the young guys know that's not how you win in todays league, which has to be immensely frustrating.

[Invictus88]

There's no use being good at XOs (I don't claim this for SVG btw) if the players you are coaching have already tuned you out.

One of my favorite quotes is "culture eats structure for breakfast". Whenever I'm training a new leader/manager one of the first things I drill into them is that it doesn't matter how smart you are, how much you know or how right you are if your team is not willing to follow. You need buy in.

The carrot-stick method of "leading" was semi-effective as we were becoming more industrialized with simple & repetitive tasks, but as soon as an activity requires even a modicum of cerebral activity it actually becomes counter productive. People want 3 things; autonomy (ability to make individual decisions), mastery (feel like you are good at your job) & purpose (feel like you are contributing something meaningful), with autonomy being the #1 driving factor for self-motivation in the workplace.

Micro-managing & beating people down isn't going to get you there. Especially not in the NBA.

THIS and it's why the NBA focus on retread coaches boggles my mind.

Compare Nate McMillan to SVG - there's a massive difference in who they are as people, the way they are as humans.

SVG appears to be old school operating in a very new school and that's not going to work.

Personally I wonder IF David Griffin gets a pass here though.

You have Zion, BI & Ball. You hire SVG.

You acquire Steven Adams? In the pace and space league! Then you extend him before a single game is played? Why?

Gotta trade Jrue? Ok sure. But why bring back Bledsoe? Was no one willing to take him in a 3 team deal with some of those firsts and swaps you've got stacked up?

I do believe the Zion, BI & Ball trio could have been really good under SVG but they needed to fill out the roster in a better way, have some legit shooters...

Adams & Bledsoe were the worst fits for them and that's on the GM, not SVG

Sent from my SM-G781B using RealGM mobile app

Nobody is giving Griffin a pass. He hired SVG and set the table so he should take some blame. But under no circumstances is SVG not responsible for the chaos as well. It seems he's already burned brides with Ingram and it's only taken a year.

[Snakebites]

Read on Twitter

Ouch.

I mean, the rollercoaster remark is bad enough, but what isn’t said speaks volumes- nothing actually positive about the man himself.

I won’t pretend to know much about the X’s and O’s aspect of a coaches job, so I’ll leave that to others to discuss. SVG’s interpersonal problems are evident though.

It could be as simple as the notion that a screaming, generally negative coach is a lot harder to tolerate when you’re losing- and the team wasn’t really built to win this year, especially not with the various injuries. And the roster construction was pretty awful too.

Although- I just hit in another even simpler issue- SVG is NEGATIVE. He just doesn’t act like he even likes the job- seems miserable most of the time. I noticed that even back in Miami. That’s pretty toxic.

I’m sure he’s got quite a nest egg. He should retire. I can’t see him doing well as an assistant at this point either, even though that’s obviously how he got his start.

[thesack12]

I’m sure he’s got quite a nest egg. He should retire. I can’t see him doing well as an assistant at this point either, even though that’s obviously how he got his start.

When he took the Detroit job, I remember reading something about him at that point he told his wife that that was going to be his last rodeo. Obviously, that didn't turn out to be true.

Unless he just has an undying passion for the game, I doubt he will resurface as an assistant somewhere. However, I don't think he will retire completely, he will have plenty of options in the media should be want to get back into that. He was a regular co-host on the Dan Lebatard show before taking the Pistons job, and I remember him doing a lot of radio stuff as well.

Stan's brother Jeff is better at actually calling a game, but in my opinion Stan is a much more entertaining personality. So It wouldn't surprise me if he ended up courtside with a headset on. Perhaps at TNT, with Marv Albert set to retire they will be reshuffling their deck.

[flow]

So what’s everyone’s take here?

Was he NEVER a good coach (even in Orlando/Miami) or does his style just not work in today’s league?

I gave him a partial pass as our coach since the roster was always bad (that was on SVG the President), but at the same time I don’t find myself shocked that he missed the mark here.

Seems like even when he was successful he had regular issues with players, maybe the current NBA population just has less tolerance for that now?

From afar, it seemed like he did a really nice job as Miami's interim coach, and a good job in Orlando until they got to the Finals v. LA. Then he did two things I found highly questionable. 1) He threw Jameer Nelson right into the starting lineup after missing all of the playoffs with injury, disrupting the team chemistry that got them there, and 2) He switched up the team's entire offensive scheme prior to the series in order to "adapt" to the Lakers. Inexcusable.

Nonetheless, I was hopeful when we hired him. He'd certainly be a better coach than the last few we'd had, right? And he was an improvement over Cheeks at first. But he wasn't very good at all. Forget about his broodiness and personnel management, I'm talking X & O's. His offense was scattered & haphazard, and his defense was chaotic, with more chasing than actual defending. Just an undisciplined mess on both ends.

.

[Cowology]

So what’s everyone’s take here?

Was he NEVER a good coach (even in Orlando/Miami) or does his style just not work in today’s league?

I gave him a partial pass as our coach since the roster was always bad (that was on SVG the President), but at the same time I don’t find myself shocked that he missed the mark here.

Seems like even when he was successful he had regular issues with players, maybe the current NBA population just has less tolerance for that now?

From afar, it seemed like he did a really nice job as Miami's interim coach, and a good job in Orlando until they got to the Finals v. LA. Then he did two things I found highly questionable. 1) He threw Jameer Nelson right into the starting lineup after missing all of the playoffs with injury, disrupting the team chemistry that got them there, and 2) He switched up the team's entire offensive scheme prior to the series in order to "adapt" to the Lakers. Inexcusable.

Nonetheless, I was hopeful when we hired him. He'd certainly be a better coach than the last few we'd had, right? And he was an improvement over Cheeks at first. But he wasn't very good at all. Forget about his broodiness and personnel management, I'm talking X & O's. His offense was scattered & haphazard, and his defense was chaotic, with more chasing than actual defending. Just an undisciplined mess on both ends.

.

This right here. Exactly.

[whitehops]

i think SVG is a really good x's and o's guy and has a good mind for the game but his personality/coaching style just isn't feasible in today's league.

SVG led successful teams before coming to detroit and while he was here he consistently led the pistons to top 10 defenses despite having some atrocious defenders playing big minutes. that was mainly because of his defensive schemes, as we also consistently forced teams to take shots from inefficient areas at a very high rate. he also had a vision of what today's game is, where pretty much all five players on the floor can shoot, put the ball on the floor and make plays.

it's a shame that as a president he inherited a team in an atrocious situation (capped out, no prospects and albatross contracts) but i largely agreed with the intentions of his moves. jon leuer was supposed to be a big part of SVG's vision, as in theory he could stretch the floor, provide size, put the ball on the floor and switch onto the perimeter. unfortunately leuer couldn't handle the increased role, both from a skill standpoint and from a physical standpoint. a lot of things like that happened to SVG which probably made his tenure here look worse than it could have been.


that said, it was clear his coaching style wouldn't work in today's league after his stint in detroit so the pelicans have no one to blame but themselves for the hire. he yelled "andre!" like a hundred times a game loud enough so you could hear it through the tv announcers microphones, he didn't trust his point guards enough to run the offense so he called the majority of plays, etc. how can players play a free-flowing game when they're being yelled instructions the entire time?

i think if SVG wants to find a role in the league being a defensive assistant or a commentator are his best bets.

[JNewton]

I had thought he did a decent job until here until the 2016 cap spike. With the passage of time, some people might be forgetting just how scorched earth the Pistons were at the tail end of the Dumars era. That 2013-2014 team to me remains perhaps the worst roster in team history, and had no lotto pick that year to boot thanks to Gores not willing to use the amnesty on Ben Gordon. SVG did a decent job building the Pistons back up in his first two years but went completely off the rails after that, the Leuer contract being perhaps the most egregious offense until the Griffin trade.

You have to wonder how much he regrets turning down the GS job to take the Pistons one. Complete control was too much to give up though and thinking he could re-create late 2000s Orlando with Andre Drummond in the Dwight Howard role was a major miscalculation on his part.

[Spider156]

I think SVG is gonna be amazing for that team. He’s gonna maximize Zion the way he maximized Howard and Drummond. Ball isn’t the right point guard for him. He’s gonna utilize Holiday at PG often and set pick and rolls. He’s pretty amazing as a coach. I think what got him in trouble isn’t the coaching but basketball decisions. He should’ve stepped down to coach for his last year. I love SVG though. I think he’s a great coach.

Finalist: Posts That Did Not Age Well

Hahaha so funny. Yeah I was wrong about all of that. I think it’s safe to say SVG’s coaching style doesn’t work anymore. I don’t think it’s Xs and Os. It’s interpersonal skills.