Look man, you posted a very flippant and dismissive comment and I didn't like it. I particularly didn't like it because it's the same flippant and dismissive comment I've seen dozens of other people post regarding the coaching search and you still have shown me zero evidence that you can actually back it up with anything objective or quantifiable. Yes I get that you love the coaches you mentioned. Pop is an all-time great. Budenholzer and Kerr just won Coach of the Year awards. Brad Stevens is one of the brightest young coaches in the league. I don't know enough about Joerger to really comment one way or another but he kept a depleted Grizzlies team in the playoffs so he's doing something right.
What I don't get is why you dismiss the coaches that we're actually interviewing without putting in any work at all to tell me why. You just wrote an enormous essay which included not even one line about why Mike Woodson is ill equipped to coach against Popovich, Stevens, Joerger, or Budenholzer. And I never accused you of racism either openly or indirectly. I don't equate confirmation bias with racism. But something is going on when three coaches with impressive resumes are repeatedly labeled boring, uncreative, unccoperative hardasses, who are incapable of coaching offense. Maybe you don't want to actually read quotes from players who played for them or check if your feelings about their coaching prowess are backed up by the available evidence but don't expect that to win you any arguments. The challenge I put out there is for anyone who thinks McMillan, Woodson, or Mitchell are mediocre coaches to come up with a reason why.
Here's what I see...
Nate McMillan walked into a situation in Portland that was worse than ours is right now. It had gotten so bad that the fans were boycotting the games. He completely transformed them into a model franchise. Before Brandon Roy's knees went out he was easily a top 10 player in the league playing for McMillan and nobody expected that from him when he was drafted 6th overall in a weak draft after playing 4 years at Washington. He managed to get consistent production out of Travis Outlaw which no coach before or after him could do. He had the #1 ranked offense in the league in 08/09 with Steve Blake starting at PG, rookie Nic Batum starting at SF and Joel Przyzbilla starting at C.
Mike Woodson doesn't get a lot of credit for being an elite coach but he transformed Atlanta from one of the worst teams in the league to a perennial playoff team and he did it with only 1 succesful lotto pick. He's the only coach to get All-Star level production from Josh Smith. He was the first coach to move Jamal Crawford to the bench and he won his first 6th man of the year award playing for Woodson in Atlanta. The two best seasons in Carmelo Anthony's career were playing for Woodson in New York. Tyson Chandler made the All-Star team 1 time in his 15 year career and it was Woodson's first full season in New York. He was the first coach since Jeff Van Gundy to win 50+ games in New York and he did it with JR Smith leading the team in minutes played and Raymond Felton starting at PG. He got important contributions from 35 year old rookie Pablo Prigioni and 28 year old rookie Chris Copeland and the team set a record for most three point shots made in a season (since broken by the Rockets last year and the Warriors this year).
Sam Mitchell did an excellent job developing young players this year in Minnesota and an excellent job getting production out of career journeymen in Toronto. He inherited a Toronto team whose only star player demanded a trade before the season even started. In three years they were in the playoffs and Chris Bosh had developed into an All-Star averaging 22 points per game. Career journeyman Mike James inexplicably catapulted up to 20 points and 6 assists per game at age 30 in his one year playing for Mitchell. The Raptors won only 27 games that year but had the 5th ranked offense in the league. In fact, in his 4 years as the head coach they never ranked worse than 11th in offense. The following year they won 47 games and the defense improved from 29th to 12th.
These three coaches may not be the top buzzworthy names right now but you know what? If Tom Thibodeau and Scott Brooks don't want to coach in Sacramento there's no shame in hiring the best coach who does. Would you have taken Terry Stotts after he was fired from his previous two head coaching jobs? Portland did and they made it to the second round of the playoffs with a team most picked to be in the bottom 5 of the league. Sometimes the less obvious pick ends up being the right one. Maybe none of them get your hopes up, which is fine. I'm not trying to convince you anyway. I'm just trying to find what information I can on our current coaching candidates so that other fans can digest it and make up their own minds.
1. I get that you didn't like my post, but is there a severe need on a basketball message board to back up any post with a firm reason? I'm part of this message board for entertainment, not because I consider myself a student of the game and want to prove to people how knowledgeable I am when it comes to basketball. Therefore I will post something from time to time just to express my feelings. And it's not my goal to “win“ debates when posting on KF.com. So I don't understand at all, why you get upset about this little shallow piece and feel the need to respond to it the way you do.
2. Confirmation bias means something entirely different than hinting that someone might prefer certain coaches because they are white. At least it does in my understanding of the english language. I don't know, why you felt the need to write it. I honestly don't care, why you wrote it. And I still think it's unecessary and ill mannered.
3. You asked me, why I prefer the coaches I mentioned. I wrote a huge essay to explain just that. And still you seem to think I provided nothing to the debate. That's a bit confusing from.my point of view.
4. You wanted some kind of reason, why I'm not thrilled to see Mike Woodson taking over my Kings.
Well lets looks at his 2012/13 season with the Knicks. A season I watched maybe 40 regular season games of the Knicks and every playoff game.
Yes the Knicks won 54 games. They got into the second round. So why I'm not thrilled by the name Woodson popping up in our coaching search?
Because of the way the Knicks played!
The Knicks offense was build around Anthonys ability to attack from the triple threat position. It was a very ISO heavy system based on one of the most profilic scorers if the past decade. The Knicks ranked 30th in assists during that season and almost all assists were handed out by their guards.
What this means is that there was no major focus on ball movement, on screening to get all players involved. Woodson's success is directly tied to Anthonys ability as an ISO scorer.
Now I mentioned in my previous post, that I'm not a big fan of ISO basketball based on superstars.
The reason why I don't like it for todays league was on display in the first game between the Spurs and the Thunder. The Thunder may have the most talented duo in the league, but their weakness was on full display that night. Trading ISO plays for Westbrook and Durant against good defenders like Green and Leonard for open jumpshots for just average NBA players or even a jumpshot specialist like LMA is not a smart thing to do. The Spurs ball movement clinic is much more difficult to stop than one guy going 1vsX and making out of control kickout passes.
Now of course the Spurs can run an ISO offense, but they don't do it unless their passing flow is disrupted and they need a fall back option.
That's where the Spurs differ from teams like the Hawks or Celtics. When you disrupt the Celtics ball movement and the transition game based on their great defense, they are helpless. They just can't score (although Crowder usually hits a good amount of those shots he bricked versus the Hawks). The Hawks had a similar problem in the past. Only this years playoffs will tell, if they learnef their lesson.
The user Blob actually made a very good post in a different thread, where he compared DMC to Carmelo when it comes to scoring efficiency and overall influence on winning. His points are not easily dismissed. But I disagree with him in one particular point - I don't think the blame should be passed to the players. Anthony doesn't play that way, because he is necessarily a selfish prick. He plays that way, because the coaches ask him to do it or at least because his coaches never could teach him to play different. It's the same for Cousins, Westbrook or Durant. Those guys are so dominant, that it's easy to go down the road of “give the ball to X“.
Woodson for me looks like a prime example for acoach, who likes to play that way.
But for me, that's not winning basketball.
We need a coach, that teaches Cousins how to use his enourmous talents within a well thought out offensive scheme.
