Joe says this team gets bored with the simple things. Well no duh, they take teams for granted.
Gets bored with the simple things 
??
Are you kidding me ? It is the simple things, the fundamentals performed well, game after game, possession after possession with the mental toughness to keep that focus that makes teams successful - in any sport.
It happens. These are human beings, not robots. Have you seen what’s going on with the Warriors this year. Should Kerr be fired?
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Oh, come on. Apples and oranges, man. Kerr is literally a 9 time NBA champion between playing and coaching and has substantial NBA experience winning with lots of buy-in.
Joe is a 34 year old with no NBA playing experience and three years assistant coach experience - that’s it. It’s completely fair to question him given his questionable decision-making thus far.
While I don’t think firing him is the right move given there’s not a great replacement at this point - though I am intrigued by both Stoudamire and you still have Sam Cassell, too - the interim title should absolutely stay on the rest of the season. He’s far from proven himself as the future.
The point I was trying to get a across is that the coach can only do so much. People want Mazzula’s head on a spike for these losses, even though the team is still in first place. Then you have an accomplished coach like Steve Kerr who still hasn’t been able to get the defending champion Warriors to right the ship. The players are 95% responsible for the results.
I'm sorry, but I find that to be a completely ridiculous claim. Between all of the out of game stuff (overall offensive/defensive philosophy; individual gameplans; developing trust, discipline, and accountability with your players, etc.) and the in-game stuff (rotations; play-calling; timeout calling; adjustments to what's going on in the game), saying that players are 95% responsible is ludicrous.
I guess then in your opinion it's the players' faults and just a coincidence that our defense has been substantially worse since the switch from Ime to Joe and his new defensive philosophy?
Then explain why the Warriors are a .500 team more than halfway through the season under Kerr. New coaching philosophy and game plan? Is he not calling timeouts like he used to? They have one of the worst defenses in the league this year after having one of the best last season. What did the Kerr do to cause this drop off in performance?
For them, like for us when we lose games to lesser teams, I think it's all in the head. Especially the younger players. There's a big delta in their performances in wins vs losses, compared to the likes of Curry, Klay and Dray who are more consistent. They're struggling to get themselves up to the level they were at last season. I doubt Kerr has changed at all, other than trying to do a lot more to motivate them to at least get to the playoffs where he hopes they will "switch on".
I think the coach v players thing really comes down to what kind of influence someone feels the coach has - I think most people agree the coach (and his staff) has a lot of influence off court, in terms of managing the team in practice and managing the players, keeping motivation up, making sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, etc. It's the coach's in game influence where everyone has a different opinion.
Looking at different sports, NFL coaches have a huge influence in game - they call plays, set up lineups, determine the tactics for each individual down. The players basically just have to execute. Occasionally you will have a Mahomes who is great at improvising but largely the coach is moving them around like chess pieces. Then you look at the other extreme, soccer is the type of sport where once the ball is kicked off the coach is largely reduced to yelling at the players on the sideline. The players basically improvise on the field, they might have set plays off set pieces but when the ball is in play and moving up and down the field the players are in control.
Basketball is obviously in the middle, because it's the kind of game where you can be very structured and have a heavy hand as a coach, call timeouts a lot, basically tell players what to do, which plays to run, etc. You can also leave a lot in the players hands and let them take charge, obviously not to turn it into a streetball game but where they choose and execute the plays they've run in practice without having to constantly tell them what to do. There's really no right or wrong approach, other than one that is vindicated by results. But people who prefer the former approach will find Joe's in game management drives them crazy, and vice versa for the latter.
One thing's for sure - when the team is winning it's because of the players, when it's not it's usually because of the coach
Topic: Knicks (26-23) at Celtics (35-14) Game #50 1/26/23 (Read 28758 times)