**Official McGrady/Pistons 2010 Regular Season Thread**

This notion of Kuester being a terrible coach is a little overblown.

Granted, he might not be the best coach in the league, but its not like he's got much of a roster to field. Richard Hamilton's shooting the lowest field goal percentage of his career, and the entire team is a bunch of role players without a single go-to guy or star.

If Kuester/Detroit management are smart, they've probably realized that there's little value in fighting to get the 8th seed in the playoffs only to get swept in the first round by Miami or Boston. Probably better to tank, get young guys like Daye and Monroe more court time to develop, wait till the offseason to shed some contracts by either buyouts or trades, and hope to get lucky in the lottery.

 

ill have to defend tmac on this one.

when he was with orlando, management shipped out all his good friends (mike miller and darrel armstrong) and never really brought in a good player to back him up. and in his last season, his teammates sucked, they were losing, and then the management decided to tank so they can get a high draft pick (which resulted in dwight howard). tmac didnt agree with the decision so he quit and asked for a trade. i think that's within his rights.

when he was with the rockets, he was injured and management was trading him behind his back. when he got wind of it he blocked the trade to NJ which was a deadend destination by going with the surgery. he spent time rehabbing and when he felt he should be playing, the management didnt want to play him. they only started playing him because they wanted to showcase him. when he felt he can handle more minutes, he wasnt given them. he felt that the rockets plans didnt include him anymore so he asked for a trade.

during those times i dont see him being a malcontent. when he was healthy, he played hard.

anyway, now that he's with detroit, he feels that Q is the reason why detroit is losing which is what the other guys think too. which i think is true. im sure its a decision by the other guys and tmac's just following them because theyre his teammates. i mean, if you can oust kuester and get dumars to sign JVG or sloan, wouldnt you do it? i would

 

daye more PT? there was a LONG stretch daye didn't get playing time and he was doing well in his PT

then there is periods where his starters would not even enter in the 4th quarter.

i think the reason why people think he's a terrible coach is b/c he doesn't know what he is doing. the pistons have been in a ton of close games this year where some decent coaching would win them a decent amount of those games, but they lose them all b/c of his substitution patterns.

what coach you know would not play their starters in the 4th in a close game? that's unheard of. he's a bad coach; he really is.

and players never respected him from the start. hamilton, prince, ben wallace, stuckey all had moments EARLY IN THE SEASON where they argued with him. prince and stuckey DID IT PUBLICLY (prince argued with him on the sidelines, stuckey refusing to go back into the game).

and the players still don't respect him.

tmac will get another chance. trust me. he has proven he still has game. and the players' revolt was done primarily by richard hamilton. and he's playing right now.

 

Seriously, what is Kuester doing? You'd be hard pressed to find a worse coach this year than this guy. I can't think of one.

Del Negro?
Rambis?
Triano?

 

That's why not many assistant coaches are able to make the jump to head coach.

 

Why hasn't this dumbass of a coach been fired yet?

 

Pistons can't afford any unnecessary outcomes right now

 

What does that have to do with anything? Daye had 22 points against Minnesota which is his career high.

The roster management argument is a speculative one at best. Roster management decisions can almost always be second-guessed (we've been doing it with RA all season). I'm not saying that most of his substitutions have been right...I dont watch enough Pistons basketball to know or care. All I'm saying is that Kuester is probably an average coach in over his head.

RA does it all the time. Kevin Martin sits sometimes, same with Scola and the others. It's not like the starters in Detroits lineup are untouchable...is the roster THAT much better with Rip Hamilton in the game vs. Ben Gordon? Are they much worse with Stuckey on the bench? As my original point said, the entire roster composition sucks, and if he's tinkering with the lineups to try and see what he can get out of the different lineups, so be it.

This is really the crux of the issue, and depending on the way you look at it, there's an argument to be made on his behalf given the circumstances. Hamilton, Prince, Wallace, Stuckey...these are all guys who've been deep in the playoffs, and they probably still think the team roster, as-is, is good enough to get into the championship. Which its not. Put them up against Miami, Boston, Chicago, or Orlando in a first round matchup and they get swept by any one of them. None of those players is as good as they once were. They need to realize that they are at the point in their careers where they should be role players, getting between 15-30 min a night depending on how they're doing.

Their inability to accept that the team is really just beginning what will be an ongoing rebuilding effort has probably exacerbated the issue much more than it needs to be. Wallace probably hates sitting in place of Monroe, but Monroe needs the time and Wallace isnt getting any better. Rip probably hates having to split time with Gordon and seeing Gordon play 4th quarter minutes in his place.

I doubt he'll get much of a chance on a good team. This was his year to prove that he could contribute to a championship calibre ballclub, which he cant. He can contribute to an average team, and on any good team he's a 10 min/game player, nothing more. Boston, Miami, Orlando, Chicago, San Antonio, LA- name one of those teams that he could come into right now, make better, and get solid, consistent PT.

Given T-Macs history, coupled with the recent 3-game DNP, there's more than enough there to suggest that he may have had a larger role in the staged protest than was originally reported. Also, we really dont know whats going on behind the scenes between him and Kuester.

To me, its really simple. When you have malcontents on your team, as a coach you have to judge between those worth reconciling with and those not worth it. Rip Hamiltons contract runs through the next few years, and although Kuester's probably in his last season as coach, if he's not, its in his best interest to patch up things with Rip. With T-Mac, his contract ends this season, 21 games are left, and the teams already in tank mode.

 

wow this thread has had 200,000 views, that's insane.

 

Another take on Tracy McGrady and the 2011 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ba...reakish-talent-and-the-peril-o?urn=nba-330022

 

seems like an easy choice to up your draft pick though.

 

got tmac to tweet me back... asked him how many years he thought he had left in him and he said 3-5.

 

Tracy McGrady appears less and less thrilled with his situation in Detroit and it appears unlikely that he'll return to the Pistons next season.

A Twitter follower of McGrady's suggested that he finish his career in Chicago, to which he responded: "That would be a good look."

Via MLive.com

 

So you defend a guy because he was getting "traded behind his back"? This happens every year, McGrady is just a punk. I guess even Deron Williams can swallow his pride and do his job in NJ, but it would have jus not been fair to poor Mac.

 

Thats stupid

As many tweets as he has on his page, they went searching hard for the one just trying to make up a story

He hasnt said one bit that he is not thrilled in DET. What he did say on there though is dont live and die by everything the media says, and I happen to agree

 

If Tracy is indeed feuding behind-the-scenes with the front office. I'm done with him. If he has a problem with coach, you take it up with the GM or someone else. If you have a problem with the coach you don't go around attacking the front office as well.

^That's something I assume is happening.

As of yet, the only confirmed reason why T-Mac isn't playing is because of a headache from which he missed practice. I highly doubt that is true.

 

He said he doesnt know why he's not playing

As much as you've seen this stuff all season and now its a question?

 

McGrady not coming back to Pistons:

McGrady seems less than thrilled with the current situation. He answered questions from followers on Twitter early Friday night.
In response to a follower who asked him how it feels to play with the Pistons, McGrady responded: "Looks like I'm (a) day late and dollar short."
Another follower asked what he thinks of his coach. "He's trying," McGrady wrote. "Losing breeds dysfunction. We're all in it together though."
He did say he would consider staying with the Pistons past this season, but also responded to someone who suggested he should finish his career in Chicago with: "That would be a good look."

 

wow so Prince comes back and is put back in the starting lineup. So much for having to earn your minutes.