Ime and our coaching staff have vaulted our player development into top tier status. Just look at the strides all of our prospects made last season. Ime is a great teacher. Not all coaches are. He may not enjoy having to develop rookies to win games, but he’s good at it. So my question is: should our ability to develop young talent with this coaching regime figure into our draft strategy? Does raw upside become a bigger factor in our draft strategy? How do we take advantage of our advantage with good teacher-coaches?
...hard to tell what is Ime jbeing an excellent development coach vs just providing basic guidance for already talented young players which was different than what Silas brought signing up thinking he was coaching Harden and ending up a year later babysitting a bunch of raw players(clearly not his skill set). Personally I think the strategy is continue to bring in self motivated, high work ethic, prideful guys with the highest ceiling you can find and let them all grow together. I get the sense part of what has worked well is all of these players we have respond to being challenged in a positive way and Ime has clearly challenged them, not been afraid to bench guys and in each case guys have responded positively. That's really the BIG value of Ime is in setting a real culture of accountability. As long as we continue to bring "the right type of players in" the culture put in place and guys who buy into that culture will help guide those young players. That's the real value of Ime and that's why teams like Miami manages to stay competitive regardless of who plays for them.
The Rockets now have the luxury to be able to draft and develop prospects, without forcing them to learn trail-by-fire. For example, Cam in his rookie season was not asked to give 36 mpg with no constraints. If Cam plays poorly (does not do what Udoka asks), then he sits. Cam will thus will be incentivize to play "the right way" and will lose his bad behaviors more quickly. As a contrast, a player-who-will-not-be-named going into his 4th year still has to be reminded to play defense and to actively rebound.
Yeah I’d hold the teacher coach talk for now. Ime is not really about development. He’s about discipline and holding you accountable as a player. He’s a good defensive minded coach but I don’t think he’s teaching our guys much. His assistants however probably are though.
Is it though? That Celtics team was always competing in the playoffs with Brad Stevens prior to Udoka taking over. LeBron needs to join stars to win championships, while Michael Jordan wanted to beat those stars....not join them. Udoka might need ready made playoffs contending teams.......get rid of potential for vets. Vets, as in already trained.
jordan played his entire prime with another top 30 all time player, who was on the same level basically as the stars he was going against (reggie, ewing, etc.). That team also won 55 games and made it to game 7 of the ECF without him. Let's not act like jordan carried last years nuggets to a title or something
Drafting players is different from recruiting already top 20 players in the league: Bulls drafted: Pippen B.J. Armstrong Kukoc Luc Longley Horace Grant Charles Oakley Stacey King Will Perdue Scott Williams **MJ helped train them up as he was a well known A-Hole in practices** -------------------------- Kerr (7 yrs experience prior to joining Bulls) John Paxson (2 yrs experience prior to joining Bulls) Craig Hodges Bill Cartwright (came off of injury which saw his points go from 20 pts to around 12 pts ..........................years prior to joining Bulls) None can be confused as top 50 players in history when they joined the Bulls -------------------------------- The only one in high regard was Dennis Rodman. Rodman was a possible 20 rebounds per game guy that was also All Defense. Not exactly Karl Malone. Kobe united with Gary Payton and Karl Malone.....Shaq. That's different than LeBron who barely made the Playoffs or got bounced in the First Round. LeBron never did much in the Playoffs until the "Decision" "The Decision": joined D-Wade who may have been Top SG with Kobe..... won a championship before joining LeBron. Bosh was seen as a Top 5 PF. Top 2 [Stretch-5] "The Return Home": joined Kyrie Irving + Kevin Love "The Bubble": recruited AD......Rondo had won championships with Ray Allen, KD, Pierce. Try not to confuse Drafting vs Recruitment
I've realized this since the draft research began. We all applauded the structure a coach and some quality veterans brought. We knew that a disservice had been done to the first 4 picks. We saw the immediate dividends in last season's rookies. But now we find ourselves as a 41 win team drafting 3rd. Whoever that pick is has zero pressure to perform immediately. They get to sit, learn, watch and improve BEFORE getting on the court. That is friggin amazing. Luxury is the correct word. All hail structure and accountability.
What in the hell are you talking about? Lebron at 21 lost in round 2, at 22 lost in the finals, at 23 round 2, at 24 conference finals, at 25 round 1. He literally not once lost in round 1, despite the fact that he never played on a team that could have won 20 games without him. He was always on a bottom 2-4 team in the league and STILL went deep into the playoffs literally every season. I didn't realize that trading for pippen didn't count as having pippen, i guess i can't argue that gibberish
He came into the league at 18 turned 19 at start of season Again no championships until he got with two other stars. Why is that hard for you to understand? Dude forced the Cavs to bring in Jamison, Jamario Moon, Mo Williams, JJ Hickson, Shaq, Sebastian Telfair and others, then bailed on them and had the nerve to say the Cavs never let him to put input into who the team brought in. Anyway don't distract from the topic of Udoka needing experienced players to win. Pops was the same way....without David Robinson, Duncan, Ginobli, Tony Parker....Pops hasn't won s#it. As soon as those guys retired people give Pops a pass and say he is senile.
This is why I'm opposed to adding a second tier star like Trae or Mitchell. Happy to add a top tier star but those are available once every ten years to one or two lucky teams. We're eventually going to understand that what will be available is 1B and 1C players with 2-3 prime years remaining. Jimmy Butler or Paul George or end of career Durant is a great example of the last piece kind of player. We should wait a few years before doing that. I'm also ok upgrading our long term role players. Going from Brooks to Bridges solidifies the salary for years. Would invest a bit in that.
Did our young guys all make major strides last year? I didn’t think so. I was really disappointed by Jalend development. I was hoping for a lot more, he looked worse for most of the year and only excelled late - which he also did the two prior seasons… I was hoping for more for Jabari - yeah he got better percentage wise, but overall he still looks really timid on offense. Tari pretty much looked the same until he got injured. Amen and Cam improved as the season went on - which is also something you expect out of rookies (one being 18 years old when drafted the other playing in an obscure league). Really the only player that impressed me with his improvement was Sengun. But even here it looked more to me, as if he was mostly just giving a bigger role than before. I hope we see bigger improvements across the board this year as players mature more and now have a season of Imes system under their belt. But so far I wouldn’t call him a teachers coach.
