With our roster, great was top 10, which is what we got in that month. Yea it was, no one is saying it wasnt. But we were trending upward before Jeff came back which is the truth. We were top 6 last year, and yes it is very good. It was good enough to win a chip. It is definitely impressive that we were able to make it back to that(in said month) given the roster changes. Agreed our defense was bad. Jeff did not fail, he worked with what he had, defensive rebounds killed all season and it then put an end to our post season. It was a personnel issue.
The team showed it was playing acceptable defense towards the end of the season. If we had done that all year, we would have been the #1 seed and a much better chance of being in the finals. We know this team is capable of playing good defense despite the fact that we lost Ariza, they showed that at the end of the year. The coaching staff being unable to get that effort out of them all year is a failure in my view.
But, we still failed though? Like even when Jeff came back the best we could get our defense back to was average. Defensive rebounding percentage was horrible all year. Roy was getting it out of them before Jeff came back. Then Jeff came back, we got worse, but then after all star break we got really good again. But in the playoffs we still couldnt grab boards like we did all year which killed us.
I agree with everything you said, we showed glimpses but the staff wasn't able to consistently bring good effort from the team. That's why I'm ok with the firings.
