[Mythbuster] The front office telling the coach how to coach

i can go to one simple thing, aaron brooks was hurt, so if we are going to go to statistics, this was a statistical outlier season for him.

however, i have addressed your issue on efficiency with shane/chase. and secondly, chase is a much more viable option than shane, so we can sit here and talk statistics. i've never seen chase hold the ball too long, be a high turnover guy or do whatever a ball stopper can do to hold up an offense

for give me if talk actual playing style, but the battier chase argument might be better on the defensive end for you. anyone watching can clearly see chase was less hesitant when battier was gone.

 

Hmm.... or was it because Brooks was gone?... or maybe it was because he felt more comfortable with his shot... regardless, your point is a tangent... Morey dealt Battier.... Morey has said he never told Adelman whom to play... Adelman played Battier, and now you are saying that Chase was better after Battier left..... well, sounds like Adelman's roation wasn't right...

 

i think he had a rick adelman moment. he doesn't trust your fancy stats. he's invested in his argument. he won't give it up until its traded away.

 

Well they haven't given me much reason to believe in their competence for 17 years (and counting) now. And this hire most certainly doesn't do it either. They always say they want to win. The problem here is that they really don't have a clue about how to go about doing so. We saw it with Dawson and now we are seeing it with Morey. Oh they may make all the right "we want to win a championship" noises for the masses but the results since 1995 speak otherwise. This whole charade of conducting a "comprehensive" smelled funny to me from the beginning and when McHale's name popped in from left outer space, I know something was afoot. As for their motives: I believe that Morey is more interested in proving that his new school approach works than he is about winning a championship. Discounting experience and knowledge for so-called leadership and personality does not strike me as a winning formula.

 

Man I'm getting severe second hand embarrassment from this guy. Here I'll spell it out for you.

http://basketballvalue.com/teamunits.php?year=2010-2011&team=HOU

Look at the first two rows in that table. They are the Rockets starting lineup with Battier and with Chase. Notice how he numbers in the last two columns are almost identical.

This leads us to believe that Chase did not in fact have any effect on the lineup and confirms what was previously thought by all smart people: that it doesn't matter what kind of bad SF you plug into that spot, your SF is going to be your worst starter and have little to no overall impact.

 

.......wait. How does he prove that his approach works if he can't make the Rockets contenders, or at minimum competitive? As far as I'm concerned, that's basically the same thing.

 

And yet you went to your five year to get a picture of Phil Jackson, a man who has coached teams to 10 titles. SO what exactly are YOU trying to say here? That you believe that as a coach, McHale is on the same plane as Phil? Now that's baseless and if that is the best you can do, you should just give it and continue to nob in agreement with whatever BS the Rockets decide to shovel your way.

 

Well, they were minimally competitive under Adelman so that's setting the bar low. If you make this sort of radical change, the bar has to set much much higher. This does bring to mind an interesting question: What record will McHale and DM need to reach in order for this move to be declared a success? 45 wins? 48? What if they fail to reach the playoffs (again)? Was all this for naught or will it be back to old perverbial drawing board once more?

 

Except for the fact that we've always disagreed on CD, you're spot on in your logic. There are are whole lot of us around here who agree with your critiques of the current methodology. But putting ones' face into a fire hydrant of ill-conceived logic...well, never fun and a lot worse this summer.

There just seems to be a plethora of Morey Me-too's around here these days. There's a lot more to basketball than running it thru an arithmatic formula. I'll just sit back for awhile. Proably going to be a strike-shortened season anyway...

Carry on though. Excellent opinions.

 

i tried asking this same exact question on my first day here. i was called a troll and a pr shill for failing to admit that the rockets made a horrible horrible mistake. i never did get an answer.

the best answer i got was, "not a fair comparison." ... i wonder if that counts for mchale too or only for adelman ...

 

Now that's where you and I differ. I believe that it's all interrelated and that they continue to make the wrong choices based on faulty premises. Example: Pair TMac & Yao to have a team with two star players. The premise? That this organization was smart enough to build a team around them that was a championship contender. The results you know all too well.

Another example: Les cans Rudy T and goes for JVG - a defensive minded coach who believed in keeping games in the 80-90 point range. When JVG is not successful, Les cans him because his teams were boring to watch. So he hires Adelman - an offensive minded coach who is not as focused on defense as was JVG and was the right coach to execute Plan A (TMac-Yao plan). So when the TMac-Yao plan blows up in their faces and Adelman is not as successful as they had hoped, Les & DM now turn to a corporate style coaching staff where the head coach is something of a figurehead leader. The premise? That the coach and coaching staff is responsible for the team's lack of success so if we deemphasize the role of the head coach, we will increase our chances for success.

Now before you recite the company line about Tmac & Yao getting hurt, you need to go back and examine that original premise. This plan would have never worked anyway because the organization had proved it was incapable of putting together the right players around the two star players. Their getting hurt masked this point and folks have chosen to ignore it and thereby dismiss the past 4 years of Morey's tenue as GM when he, too, was following that plan.

Now that premise has been replaced with this new one where your head coach doesn't have to be an experienced guy, just a good motivator and leader. You will excuse me if I am skeptical that this premise will turn out any better than the ones from before.

Well, they aren't going to win a championship next year - not with this team and that coach so I guess the proper question to be asked is what constitutes success? A high lotto pick? And more importantly, who gets to define what is a successful outcome for this upcoming season. If it's Morey, I believe I can almost predict what he'll have to say.

 

Why the hell do people keep reciting tired ass lines like this as if they add anything to the conversation? No freaking kidding there's alot more to basketball than running it through an arithmatic formula. There's not a soul in the world arguing against this, but people like you keep saying this like anyone who thinks there is SOME use to statistical analysis thinks that that's ALL there is to basketball. It DOES have a use, but EVERYONE realizes that it's just another assisting tool to aid in evaluation.

 

I'm not making any point other than you're wrong.

 

You do realize the ONLY argument Morey cult followers have is what happened after the break. What they refuse to admit is how much Battier's leadership helped Memphis get to the playoffs and beat San Antonio. Perhaps that same leadership is why we didn't make the playoffs? Maybe Budinger's defensive liabilities played a role in our inability to stop teams from scoring down the stretch?

Moreyrites seem to change the focus off the obvious and more on microscopic offbase points in arguments. The fact is Brooks was our best player the last couple seasons up until the injury, Adelman SHOULD'VE played Brooks after his injury. I have more confidence in Brooks than I do Budinger's defensive shortcomings ANYDAY. What coach would sit theyre player best known for closing games?

I agree with your points. But you arguing with these guys is pointless until Morey resigns and starts his real career in producing Broadway musicals

 

Just out of curiousity....

What statistical analysis did the Lakers just use for their recent 3-Peat? And the Spurs to win every other year for about 5? (It was more luck than stats getting Parker at 29 and Manu in the 2nd round). And BTW...what statistical analysis did Don Nelson use to draft Nowitski late in the Lottery?

If you want to use the $Balls, at least have an ex-NBA player like Kevin Pritchard rolling them for you. I'll believe the Morey "collecting assets and turning it into a star" theory WHEN it happens. And not a nano-second before.