Nice guy, but nice guys don't win in the NBA. Too soft for this league and doesn't hold his guys accountable.
Spoeltra's a nice guy. Vogel is too.
I have some gripes with Brad, but this idea that he needs to be a raging lunatic at all times isn't one of them.
Sure, both of them are nice enough guys, but they also advocate for their players, demand respect from their guys, and hold them accountable, too. Both of them also work the refs when need be and chew their guys when they're not doing what they're supposed to.
Brad doesn't do those things. He doesn't hold any of his guys accountable, which is why they end up with these bad habits, and he simply doesn't work the refs - which is absolutely an effective and needed strategy of NBA coaches.
Smart is a perfect example. In 6+ years, Smart has essentially walked all over Brad - even chewing out his own coach on the bench on multiple occasions - and Brad has done nothing to address this or address his consistent poor shot selection at times. That's because Brad is just a soft coach and we all know that Smart is an alpha.
Beyond his obvious weaknesses in in-game management, his soft demeanor and character is absolutely another weak area of his that really limits his ability as coach.
Here's the hard truth: even if you swap out Brad for a "better" coach, I'm not sure this team's makeup leads to different results. Again, we're paying max salaries to guys that aren't max caliber (I like Kemba, but for much less money. Hayward has been a disappointment since he got here - I know, "injuries" but a spade is a spade). Our bench is comically thin. We're basically depending on a 22 and 23 year old to play well beyond their experience.
Brad, imo, can improve. But I don't see another coach that can mask the deficiencies of this team well enough to get us a championship.
I mean, he hasn't improved in many things since he came into the league, and he's about as experienced as you can hope for in terms of playoff time for only being here as long as he has (6 playoff appearances with 3 conference finals appearances). I don't think he's changing much at this point, and I think he's a major reason for why this season ended as it did.
And while I do think there are a few things that need improved roster-wise, the other major factor this year for us was injuries. With Hayward's (multiple) injuries this year and Kemba's knee, that really threw us off a lot before the bubble and even in the bubble. Do people really think Hayward looks this bad if he doesn't get injured in game one of the playoffs?
And that's not even mentioning the Timelord injury, which in my opinion is the most substantial of them all. Timelord was supposed to be our starting center this year, and before his injury he was looking very, very good and was slotted in to be the starter moving forward before his hip issue with a Capela-like projection. That forced Theis into the starting lineup, which was one of the major issues we had all season long, even if you can't blame Theis for not being able to fill that role.
Topic: Celtics (2-3) at Heat (3-2) ECF Game #6 9/27/20 (Read 55190 times)