Gauging CelticStrong on HC Udoka

[Jvalin]

I've stopped watching the games. Can't stand the constant iso. Two of our players (Tatum and Schroder) are in the top 12 league-wide in isolation frequency for crying out loud!

My ideal hiring would be Quin Snyder. Imo, he's the best coach in the NBA. Obviously, he ain't available. Not till the offseason at the very least.

Or maybe we can actually exploit market inefficiencies like we used to (so much for going back to our DNA ) and hire a European coach who's one of the best coaches in the world like Messina.

If we go after a european head coach (which I don't think we will), gimme Šarūnas Jasikevičius. He's a disciple of Željko Obradović (the european Gregg Popovich) having played under him for 4 seasons. He played college basketball at the university of Maryland from 1994 to 1998. He also had a 2-year stint as a player in the NBA. All in all, he has lived 6 years in the USA so I guess it would be a relatively easy transition for him. He started his career as a head coach in 2016 with his native Zalgiris Kaunas. Amazingly enough, he led Zalgiris to the Euroleague Final Four in 2018. To put this into perspective, it would be as if a small market NBA team reached the Conference Finals with no stars on its roster! He won numerous trophies at national level with Zalgiris. He then left the club in 2020 to coach Euroleague's powerhouse Barcelona. That's the team Nikola Mirotic plays for. Jasikevičius led Barcelona to the Euroleague Final last season, but lost to Anadolu Efes which was led by former Celtic Shane Larkin. They won the ACB league which is hands down the most competitive national league in Europe. They also won the spanish cup. This season, Barcelona is sitting comfortably at the top of the table in the Euroleague with a 12-2 record. Jasikevičius' former team, Zalgiris, is dead last with a 3-11 record.

Fwiw, Quin Snyder has worked under Messina in 2012/13. Messina was the head coach of CSKA Moscow at the time. He's now coaching Olimpia Milano. They also participate in the Euroleague.

P.S. I don't expect us to fire Udoka anytime soon.

Didn't Messina win the Champions League with CSKA Moscow? I've always thought that was the equivalent of winning the championship with the '01 76ers against teams like the early-2000s Lakers, the mid-2000s Spurs, etc.

Hopefully we'll hire any one of the guys we've suggested though

As non-Americans, you have to realize, foreign coaches, no matter how good, just aren't going to happen in the NBA. Especially if they aren't 100% fluent in English. Head coaching in the NBA, where NBA stars have all the power in the locker room, is a completely different dynamic than you see in any league outside of the NBA, moreso with foreign leagues.

So, sorry to say, you guys might pine for those great Euro, Australian and/or Chinese coaches over some of the guys getting chances in the NBA as head coaches, but it's just not going to happen.

NBA teams were reluctant to sign overseas players prior to the 90s. They are now reluctant to hire overseas head coaches. It's only a matter of time before a foreign head coach succeeds in the NBA and he opens the gates for everybody else. It goes without saying that foreign head coaches are just as good as american coaches, if not even better. Personally speaking, I fully believe that most Euroleague coaches are better tacticians than most NBA coaches. There are no elite-level athletes in Europe. Players rely more on BBIQ rather than on athleticism. Coaches have to come up with a game plan if they wanna succeed. The same goes for NCAA head coaches. Most of them are better tacticians than NBA coaches for the same reason. Fwiw, two of the best NBA head coaches today have worked overseas: Nick Nurse and Quin Snyder.

The language barrier ain't an issue. Pretty much everybody is a fluent english speaker nowadays. Dealing with stars ain't an issue either. There are stars outside the US too. They aren't equally talented, but they are stars in their own country. Some coaches are great man managers. Some aren't. The same goes all around the world, including the US. Anyway, I don't expect us to hire an overseas head coach. Just saying.

@somebody
Messina won the Euroleague with CSKA Moscow in 2006 and 2008. CSKA is pretty much always among the favorites to win the title. They had a very talented roster at the time (at the Euroleague level). Everybody expected them to make a deep run in the competition. Messina also won 2 Euroleague titles with Virtus Bologna in 1998 and 2001. Again, both times he was coaching very talented players. For instance, the 2001 Virtus team had 24-year-old Manu Ginobili.

[Who]

Messina has plenty of NBA experience. He worked under Popovich for a few years as he was trying to build NBA experience to convince someone to give him an NBA head coaching gig. Nobody did which surprised me. His coaching record abroad is stellar.

I'd love to see him get a chance here or anywhere else.

[colincb]

Rookie HC struggling with a struggling team.

They should improve with JB healthy (assuming he is).

[Kuberski33]

I'm not sold on him, but he's new and his team has been dealing with injuries almost since training camp. Any team that loses its #2 player for a significant amount of time is going to struggle.

Positives- they play hard defensively for him - most of the time. They sure didn't on this trip after the first two games.
Seems to have the team's respect.

Negatives - offensively they're still a work in progress, not overly impressed with his X/O ability. Hasn't committed to developing Romeo & Nesmith I think to the extent that he probably should. And he's buried Pritchard making him essentially excess baggage - at the expense of giving all the minutes to someone who likely won't be here after the trade deadline. 

So the jury is very much still out on him - in my view anyway.

[SHAQATTACK]

He seems to be up and down , same as the team, but he needs a healthy starting five for a good 20 or so games to see how he can mold and coach them.  Team just struggles so bad when a top 5 player is not available.  And dies on vine without Jaylen , Time lord and Jason. All healthy.

We have no replacements ,  this team is THIN on shooting , when you have to rely on Grant And Al to make threes .  what the heck do we have 5 wings and guards that can’t shoot 40 percent consistent.

[ozgod]

I'm not sold on him, but he's new and his team has been dealing with injuries almost since training camp. Any team that loses its #2 player for a significant amount of time is going to struggle.

Positives- they play hard defensively for him - most of the time. They sure didn't on this trip after the first two games.
Seems to have the team's respect.

Negatives - offensively they're still a work in progress, not overly impressed with his X/O ability. Hasn't committed to developing Romeo & Nesmith I think to the extent that he probably should. And he's buried Pritchard making him essentially excess baggage - at the expense of giving all the minutes to someone who likely won't be here after the trade deadline. 

So the jury is very much still out on him - in my view anyway.

My view too. Not too impressed thus far but there are qualifying factors as you mentioned. And all the "we want resultz and chip naoooo" people will yell at me for this but I really think you need to give new coaches a long rope when it comes to judging them, unless there are significant extraneous things (e.g. off-court issues or fit issues like Urban Meyer with Jacksonville). Most people don't want to be judged on the basis of a couple of months of work, unfortunately coaches aren't given that luxury but I really do think it takes time, especially with a person new to the head coaching role to begin with. I'm sure Brad and Wyc know this and they have given Ime till the end of the year at the very least and they're looking for growth through the year.

When the team are making shots, and switched on defensively, they look like they could beat anyone. But when they miss shots, or take stupid shots and miss, and let it affect their defense, then their poor defense affects their shot selection and the way they move the ball, they look terrible. Unfortunately making shots or not should not affect their defense, but it does, which is Ime's No.1 thing he has to fix - the mentality of this team. He has to get them to play defense no matter if they are missing shots or not. That is what has ailed this team for years.

The Xs and Os part, I will withhold judgment until he can fix the team's mentality. Same with the playtime distribution, which I'm sure could be better. But he has to make them have a more consistent approach to the game from a process point of view.

[Somebody]

I've stopped watching the games. Can't stand the constant iso. Two of our players (Tatum and Schroder) are in the top 12 league-wide in isolation frequency for crying out loud!

My ideal hiring would be Quin Snyder. Imo, he's the best coach in the NBA. Obviously, he ain't available. Not till the offseason at the very least.

Or maybe we can actually exploit market inefficiencies like we used to (so much for going back to our DNA ) and hire a European coach who's one of the best coaches in the world like Messina.

If we go after a european head coach (which I don't think we will), gimme Šarūnas Jasikevičius. He's a disciple of Željko Obradović (the european Gregg Popovich) having played under him for 4 seasons. He played college basketball at the university of Maryland from 1994 to 1998. He also had a 2-year stint as a player in the NBA. All in all, he has lived 6 years in the USA so I guess it would be a relatively easy transition for him. He started his career as a head coach in 2016 with his native Zalgiris Kaunas. Amazingly enough, he led Zalgiris to the Euroleague Final Four in 2018. To put this into perspective, it would be as if a small market NBA team reached the Conference Finals with no stars on its roster! He won numerous trophies at national level with Zalgiris. He then left the club in 2020 to coach Euroleague's powerhouse Barcelona. That's the team Nikola Mirotic plays for. Jasikevičius led Barcelona to the Euroleague Final last season, but lost to Anadolu Efes which was led by former Celtic Shane Larkin. They won the ACB league which is hands down the most competitive national league in Europe. They also won the spanish cup. This season, Barcelona is sitting comfortably at the top of the table in the Euroleague with a 12-2 record. Jasikevičius' former team, Zalgiris, is dead last with a 3-11 record.

Fwiw, Quin Snyder has worked under Messina in 2012/13. Messina was the head coach of CSKA Moscow at the time. He's now coaching Olimpia Milano. They also participate in the Euroleague.

P.S. I don't expect us to fire Udoka anytime soon.

Didn't Messina win the Champions League with CSKA Moscow? I've always thought that was the equivalent of winning the championship with the '01 76ers against teams like the early-2000s Lakers, the mid-2000s Spurs, etc.

Hopefully we'll hire any one of the guys we've suggested though

As non-Americans, you have to realize, foreign coaches, no matter how good, just aren't going to happen in the NBA. Especially if they aren't 100% fluent in English. Head coaching in the NBA, where NBA stars have all the power in the locker room, is a completely different dynamic than you see in any league outside of the NBA, moreso with foreign leagues.

So, sorry to say, you guys might pine for those great Euro, Australian and/or Chinese coaches over some of the guys getting chances in the NBA as head coaches, but it's just not going to happen.

NBA teams were reluctant to sign overseas players prior to the 90s. They are now reluctant to hire overseas head coaches. It's only a matter of time before a foreign head coach succeeds in the NBA and he opens the gates for everybody else. It goes without saying that foreign head coaches are just as good as american coaches, if not even better. Personally speaking, I fully believe that most Euroleague coaches are better tacticians than most NBA coaches. There are no elite-level athletes in Europe. Players rely more on BBIQ rather than on athleticism. Coaches have to come up with a game plan if they wanna succeed. The same goes for NCAA head coaches. Most of them are better tacticians than NBA coaches for the same reason. Fwiw, two of the best NBA head coaches today have worked overseas: Nick Nurse and Quin Snyder.

The language barrier ain't an issue. Pretty much everybody is a fluent english speaker nowadays. Dealing with stars ain't an issue either. There are stars outside the US too. They aren't equally talented, but they are stars in their own country. Some coaches are great man managers. Some aren't. The same goes all around the world, including the US. Anyway, I don't expect us to hire an overseas head coach. Just saying.

@somebody
Messina won the Euroleague with CSKA Moscow in 2006 and 2008. CSKA is pretty much always among the favorites to win the title. They had a very talented roster at the time (at the Euroleague level). Everybody expected them to make a deep run in the competition. Messina also won 2 Euroleague titles with Virtus Bologna in 1998 and 2001. Again, both times he was coaching very talented players. For instance, the 2001 Virtus team had 24-year-old Manu Ginobili.

Ah okay. Well at least he didn't drop the ball!

[johnnygreen]

I had a bad feeling, when the team was essentially popping champagne after beating the Houston Rockets in their third game.

[Somebody]

I'm not sold on him, but he's new and his team has been dealing with injuries almost since training camp. Any team that loses its #2 player for a significant amount of time is going to struggle.

Positives- they play hard defensively for him - most of the time. They sure didn't on this trip after the first two games.
Seems to have the team's respect.

Negatives - offensively they're still a work in progress, not overly impressed with his X/O ability. Hasn't committed to developing Romeo & Nesmith I think to the extent that he probably should. And he's buried Pritchard making him essentially excess baggage - at the expense of giving all the minutes to someone who likely won't be here after the trade deadline. 

So the jury is very much still out on him - in my view anyway.

My view too. Not too impressed thus far but there are qualifying factors as you mentioned. And all the "we want resultz and chip naoooo" people will yell at me for this but I really think you need to give new coaches a long rope when it comes to judging them, unless there are significant extraneous things (e.g. off-court issues or fit issues like Urban Meyer with Jacksonville). Most people don't want to be judged on the basis of a couple of months of work, unfortunately coaches aren't given that luxury but I really do think it takes time, especially with a person new to the head coaching role to begin with. I'm sure Brad and Wyc know this and they have given Ime till the end of the year at the very least and they're looking for growth through the year.

When the team are making shots, and switched on defensively, they look like they could beat anyone. But when they miss shots, or take stupid shots and miss, and let it affect their defense, then their poor defense affects their shot selection and the way they move the ball, they look terrible. Unfortunately making shots or not should not affect their defense, but it does, which is Ime's No.1 thing he has to fix - the mentality of this team. He has to get them to play defense no matter if they are missing shots or not. That is what has ailed this team for years.

The Xs and Os part, I will withhold judgment until he can fix the team's mentality. Same with the playtime distribution, which I'm sure could be better. But he has to make them have a more consistent approach to the game from a process point of view.

Pretty sure you wouldn't do that if our coach was Mourinho

[PhoSita]

Continue to feel that Ime is not the guy, and it was a mistake not to hire more of a proven development coach like Kenny Atkinson.

I will admit I was optimistic about the hiring at first.  Wanted to like him, and I could see the rationale behind it. But it's quickly become clear that he doesn't have a lot of coaching chops apart from, perhaps, building relationships with players.  That's a very important skill for an NBA HC, but you kinda have to be good at the game strategy, rotations, playcalling etc, too.

But as I've said before, Ime was the guy the players wanted. Brad resigning / moving-on-up was partly due to the players wanting somebody more like them. A former player whose voice in the locker room would carry more weight. Well, they got the guy they wanted. I guess if they're happy with him then hiring Ime achieved the desired end.