Phreak50 wrote:GREY 1769 wrote:Well Manu's vacationing on the Californian coast. Something tells me he's not going to be on our bench this season. A lady can still hope...
But LMA has expressed interest in coaching recently, so I wonder if we'd consider bringing him into the fold? Not sure how I feel about him in that role for us, but I still hope we bring in someone with previous Spurs experience to help balance teaching and shouldering responsibilities Pop will hand out.
I don't see it with Aldridge.
A guy that hung his head all too often, a guy that sulked when a young superstar took his spotlight and a guy who asked out of a big contract because he refused to take a lesser role while he was ageing.
Not someone I'd look up to as a player looking over at the sidelines.
Yeah I agree - he definitely gets credit for shouldering the team in that horrible weirdo year, but a lot of good will can unfortunately get taken away with other acts, and things like not calling a timeout in the playoffs was a brutal misstep as was the whole not really accepting a new role in the new style of play.
There was an interview with him recently where he looked back explaining what his thoughts were when Dame was made the team star after LMA was drafted second overall. He felt slighted by the fact that he wasn't the main guy and that's what eventually led to his leaving Portland as FA.
When he signed with us and then he wasn't happy with his role, Pop adjusted and we became a largely LMA-half court-post touches team. You could sense that he didn't want to defer to being a secondary option but then when DeMar came along we became an even heavier half court team, but it worked to the extent that DeMar was a terrific and willing facilitator.
But when he left for the Nets he spoke about being grateful that they were willing to let him be himself, meaning getting those post touches he does best.
So in that interview about how looking back he perhaps would have handled things differently in Portland, part of the maturation process, ok fine, but since those Portland days I guess he's been more willing to adjust but only to the extent that it works for the team. He surely had to see that it wasn't working with him and though he and Pop had conversations about bench role with Jakob emerging, that lasted about, what - three or four games before he wanted out?
And so it's easy to go to the Nets and say 'oh they're letting me be me' when he an do his post-up work with three other high scoring All-Stars around him. Well we could've 'let him be him' in those circumstances too, right? But we couldn't make it work with him as the #1 option and he knew it. We tried with him in another role, and well, we saw how that went.
All of this is to say that while I greatly appreciate what he did, I also wanted to like and trust him more than I did because of these other instances.
I don't question his work ethic and his ability to transition to coaching. Timmy and Manu would undoubtedly work because of their gravitas and being a bit older and removed from the day to day of the team. LMA was literally with this group this season, so I'm not sure how that would work from team mate to more of an authority figure, or some bridge in between. The younger guys respected him as a more experienced vet presence, but I do wonder what they thought about having to cater to him so much, especially given how rather badly it went when he had to adjust to their style of play.
So given these issues with adjusting beyond what LMA felt was not being able to fully play his game, I do wonder about adjusting to coaching: would he be willing to start on the back bench or start as part of the development of young guys role or would he want a front bench role like Timmy did? How much catering like this would we need to do? How would the young guys adjust to him in this new role? How would LMA adjust if we also brought a more experienced assistant coach to help alleviate or share the teaching Pop needs to do with essentially a young assistant group?
To gump's point, LMA responded to a fan on Twitter about possibly coaching on the Nets squad and LMA seemed up for it, so I don't know if we or he would even consider it with us or what. All we know is he's open to it and right now is in Texas, possibly SA, and he and Pop have been in touch about his health after his heart issue resurfaced.
Speaking of more experienced assistants, with Will going to Boston, the C's are not renewing the contracts of long-term assistants Jay Larranaga and Jamie Young. One or both of them along with Brett Brown would be solid additions - looking form the outside just as a fan with no inside knowledge of what we look for besides culture fit.
