whoa calm down there bud....not sayin it's impossible. but my point is I'd rather go for a guy with a proven track record for the ROX. With such a young core, we need an experienced coach, not a potential NBA coach.
No kidding. You should see the screens the other team sets on our guards while their guard has the freedom to do whatever he wants. Asik and Pat need to learn how to set screens. If I were Harden or Lin, I'd never pass them the rock unless they set good hard screens.
Appreciate it. Barring time short-comings I'll post a few of these every now and then throughout the season. I'll keep it in this thread, if that's ok with the mods.
I agree. There are only a few proven European coaches that would be able to coach NBA teams immediately - Messina, Blatt, Obradovic. Finch is nowhere near that level as he never even coached a Euroleague team. I think we should get a proven NBA coach.
The guy won only minor things - titles in England and Belgium, hardly a top record. And with the England national team they never even passed the 1st round of the Europeans. Not that hard to do with Luol Deng in the team...
Actually it is quite hard. Many other teams trot out multiple NBA players on their team and/or have the benefit of years of playing together and learning the system from a very young age. Team GB was put together on the fly and went from completely amateur setup to holding their own against one of the top teams in the world - Spain - and nearly beating them twice.
I agree that Finch hasn't quite got the seasoning you'd want to take over an NBA team now but I think the point is that he has the potential to in the future. Euroball is very different from NBA ball and I think the idea is to develop Finch as an NBA coach that understands the ins and outs of the game at the top level here rather than in the Euroleague. Furthermore, I don't know that the Euroleague has been a great training ground for NBA coaches - have many made the leap over here from the Euroleague and been successful? Also, one other coach to watch out for in the Rockets system is Nick Nurse. Nick was Chris's assistant at Team GB and is now down at RGV with the Vipers. They could well become Head and Assistant coach for the Rockets someday but I don't think that day is as close as people think.
Rockets ran this awesome screen-the-screener set against the Spurs that the Bucks have successfully had in their play-book for quite some time now. I obviously don't have the stats to back this up, but it seems like the Bucks score on this set nearly every single time when the execution is on point. It's one of my favorite sets in the league. <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TtsNHheK960" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vcFTHUK7Fzw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vcFTHUK7Fzw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/exK0IH9tDYQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oZXorMKnRhE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> (Love the reverse curl play design)
I'm not convinced that Chris Finch is a franchise designated heir-apparent and coach-in-waiting. I think Morey wanted him there to provide a conduit to funnel more of the stat-based moneyball stuff and analytics into the coaching team, not necessarily for Finch to take over and become head coach someday.
There are many great coaches in international basketball and Finch and Nurse are not at that level. They had GB for many years, 5 or 6 maybe, and this is a long time. They did not get the result in the end and never won against a good team. Teams like Macedonia and Australia did a lot better. I agree that Morey uses Finch as his man in the locker room to channel his ideas. Maybe the guy has potential, but many other coaches do too. Why Finch?
I can't and won't make a case for Finch as a future head coach, but again I just don't think you can truly evaluate him. Team GB had some really awful players on their team. Guard play is most important in FIBA ball and their guard play was horrendous throughout Finch's entire tenure. Macedonia is a superior team from a talent standpoint and extremely well coached. Australia, I rarely watch, but they've always had a pretty decent collection of talent, relatively speaking, too.
Oops. Wanted to preview, not post. Stupid multiple quotes. Forgot to embed another clip of the the Bucks set: <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9eDWhUuLf7A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Add Ivkovic to that list. I've made a case for Blatt myself before. It's just hard to evaluate Finch as coach based on what he's done both in Europe and so far as an assistant coach. Really all we can do is look at film, but even then we don't know what's "Finch's" and what's not. I do disagree though with the general idea that you need a certain coaching background and that Finch's background isn't "worthy" of an NBA HC coach. If you can coach, you can coach - your background really doesn't matter.
But there are only two ways coaches are evaluated - winning titles and/or producing great players. Blatt took a very average Riussian team and made them Eurochamps in Spain against all odds, had a great World Championship with a very young team and great Olympics. He made players like Shved leaders, I read recently about his work of building that team. The Brits had talent - Deng, Pops, Freeland, that guy Clark, Archibald and some other players that they could build around. But it did not happen. All I am saying is that Finch is not a top international coach as Morey is trying to build him. There are far better coaches out there but they are not Americans and earn millions coaching in Europe. Not every basketball coach out there is keen to come to NBA, Messina?
Just give Finch the job. So tired of retread imagination-lacking, never winning been there, done that coaches.
Apart from Deng this is not "talent." Archibald retired right after the Games, Clark is a stiff, Pops is D-League fodder and Freeman is an unproven NBA rookie playing sparingly. Also, the GB point guard was a 38 year-old shooting guard from Kent State. Hardly the kind of floor general who in any way stacks up against Tony Parker, Jose Calderon or even Patty Mills! Give the guy a break! He took the Average Joes to within a point of beating Spain...
Well, the Macedonians have the huge talent of ...who?! And they beat Lithuania without Bo, and also killed GB in Skopije with Luol Deng. I think that with a better coach their team would have not look so hopeless against Australia conceiving over 70 points in one half, neither lose the game against Spain in such stupid way in the last minute... mind you, they only came back in that by some crazy lucky 3´s, not because of some great tactical work. It was obvious that the coaches were out of their depth as was widely discussed in the foreign media. I watched all their games because Finch is our coach in waiting and he was the worse coach out there. Some commentators were saying that his team played street basketball and has no idea in offense.NBA is a different game all together and he may be better coaching here. But please stop telling everyone that the guy is this top class international coach that achieved so much because he simply didn´t.
england and belgium leagues are ridiculously bad. winning these titles stands for nothing, especially since he was busted in the only serious (still not of the best quality in European standards) competition he was involved (Germany).
