Something about this thread (that didn't happen with any Fire Doc or Fire Stevens threads), is that it makes me more aware of other coaches around the league. Like now I notice every game where a team doesn't call a timeout or their best player ISOs for the win/tie at the end of a close game (and it happens around the league a lot, though to be fair I don't know if other teams are doing it with the same frequency). I commented here on Nurse several pages back (he didn't look like a good coach to me in the PHI/NYK series, only able to win if Embiid or Maxey set a career high), but now I'm looking at Mike Malone and thinking what if that was Joe.
It's not that Denver is tied 3-3 vs Wolves, but how they've looked in their 3 losses. Losing the first 2 at home and having 2 blow out losses. And this is all while the Wolves are partially down a head coach (due to Finch's knee injury a lot of coaching duties have been given to Nori). The struggles against the Wolves are now making me think back on the Lakers series. Despite winning that series 4-1 it was probably closer than it should have been: they lost the 1st half of every game, and they only won 1 4Q. I was thinking the Lakers made a valiant effort to keep most games close, but maybe it was less Lakers playing well and more Nuggets playing poorly. Is this all on the players or Mike Malone? If they get past the Wolves though, all will probably be forgotten/forgiven.
Then the other day on Reddit, on a post about Jason Kidd getting an extension, a Mavs fan said he didn't know how to feel as most of the fan base wanted Kidd gone, a Celtics fan replied that most fan bases don't know anything about coaching (probably a Joe supporter, ha), and then a Bulls fan gave a description that made me think he either hangs out here or we're just like every other fan base with the same coaching complaints:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1clhoxp/haynes_dallas_mavericks_announced_a_contract/l2tv54t/?context=10000Fanbase coaching discourse is just saying some combination of:
Adjustments
Rotations
Our 9th man should be playing starter minutes
Why are we going iso in the clutch?
Why is the opposing team shooting 55% from 3 this half?
(For the record, I wouldn't be happy if the C's hired Kidd as coach, he's never looked like a good coach to me, but I would probably be enthusiastic about a Malone hiring).