Stevens : "When it gets tough, we haven't"

[Donoghus]

Execution has been sloppy as heck with this team.  I pin that on the players for the most part.  Those are the ones that are making the poor plays; errant passes, dribbling off limbs out of bounds, taking contested shots with 19 seconds left on the shot clock, missing layups, defensive lapses, etc...

Coaching can only go so far when you have players that are running around at times acting like their heads got chopped off.  Is is Stevens fault that Turner can't make a pass to save his life?  Is it Stevens fault that Rondo is making errant passes? Is it Stevens fault that Kelly is missing bunnies? 

Sure, some of this team's troubles has to be placed at Stevens' feet but I don't think you can blame a lot.

[PickNRoll]

You can't really argue with what he's saying but it seems like he's deflecting blame.

His rotation and substitution decisions are quite terrible and his coaching is clearly part of the problem on defense.  And maybe, just maybe, it's moronic to expect these players to perfectly execute an offense that it took even the Spurs several years to nail down.

Mike

I like Stevens and I think he will be a good coach!  However, I feel like the C's are pretty bad on offense coming out of a TO?  What do you guys think?

I think blaming the coach for execution out of a timeout is overdone.  The players have seen all of  these plays hundreds or thousands of times.  If they fail to execute, it has more to do with increased defensive pressure, or the simple fact that a side out is tougher to negotiate than dribbling the ball up the court.

Depends on the play, I think. I had a pretty dour outlook on Stevens' offense at the end of last season, but I haven't been able to watch more than 1-2 games this year, so I don't know if anything has changed.

Stevens : "The sun rises in the East, and sets in the West."

Stevens : "I'm better than Gordon Hayward at Starcraft."

Stevens : "Never fight a land war in Asia."

That's the second laugh you've gotten from me. I would give you another TP if not for the 1 hour rule.

Highlight of my Wednesday so far!

Steven's offense is a thing of beauty, if you ask me.  We practically lead the league in assists and FG%.  If we fail to execute on a sideout I don't put it on the coach. 

It's our defense and our seeming inability to execute when opposing defenses clamp down in the 4th quarter that's miserable.  We don't have a Paul Pierce "release valve" who just knows when we need a tough drive and a trip to the free throw line.

[D.o.s.]

Right -- like I said, I know we've basically flip-flopped our identity from last year (good D, terrible O), but I haven't had many chances to watch it in action. The last game I was actually able to watch was the second half of the Cleveland game.

[TheTruthFot18]

Olynyk = difficult to develop hard working mentality when key part of your interior game repeatedly climbs into the fetal position whenever he misses a few shots.

Stevens = alongside Olynyk as biggest culprit. Repeatedly favors offensively orientated lineups over defensive & rebounding orientated lineups. If you want more physical and mental toughness from your team, play the guys that bring it.

Wallace got a lot of minutes last night and he gives 0 production on offense. Overall what choice does BS have? Our 3 best defenders are focusing on offense. If they fell back more on defense our offense would have to funnel through Green, Sully, KO, and Turner/Thorton all game which would get ugly.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Offense doesn't seem like a problem for this team, and I think the idea of "focusing on offense kills the defense (and vice versa)" is a bit overblown—I mean, there's got to be a reasonable balance of offense and defense, right? There have been lots of teams in NBA history that were quite good on both ends of the court. Defense isn't as glamorous, so maybe a lot of the players on this team just aren't all that into it?

[Eja117]

Stevens : "The sun rises in the East, and sets in the West."

Stevens : "I'm better than Gordon Hayward at Starcraft."

Stevens : "Never fight a land war in Asia."

Yeah. He seems to sorta be getting a little Belichikian almost

[BballTim]

You can't really argue with what he's saying but it seems like he's deflecting blame.

His rotation and substitution decisions are quite terrible and his coaching is clearly part of the problem on defense.  And maybe, just maybe, it's moronic to expect these players to perfectly execute an offense that it took even the Spurs several years to nail down.

Mike

I like Stevens and I think he will be a good coach!  However, I feel like the C's are pretty bad on offense coming out of a TO?  What do you guys think?

I think blaming the coach for execution out of a timeout is overdone.  The players have seen all of  these plays hundreds or thousands of times.  If they fail to execute, it has more to do with increased defensive pressure, or the simple fact that a side out is tougher to negotiate than dribbling the ball up the court.

  I'd be willing to bet you'd see a lot less poor execution on those plays if we still had KG/PP/RA.

[PickNRoll]

Offense doesn't seem like a problem for this team, and I think the idea of "focusing on offense kills the defense (and vice versa)" is a bit overblown—I mean, there's got to be a reasonable balance of offense and defense, right? There have been lots of teams in NBA history that were quite good on both ends of the court. Defense isn't as glamorous, so maybe a lot of the players on this team just aren't all that into it?

The way I see it, defense is as strong as your weakest link.  That applies at the team and individual level.  If Olynyk is on the floor the entire team suffers.

I see mental lapses even by our best defenders.  Bradley, for example, is a superb athlete and understands all of the rotations well.  However, he has somewhat poor court sense.  You'll frequently see him outwitted when he looks away from his man at an inopportune moment or runs into a pick that he didn't anticipate.  The sum total of his defense is somewhat less robust than you would expect if you look at his physicals.  Turner is even more guilty.  Sullinger, on the other hand is not such a great athlete but almost never has a mental lapse.  His defense, in total, winds up being average or better, but he simply doesn't have the physical talents to be a strong help defender.  Thornton and Wallace have good court sense but are limited by size and age, respectively.  Green is a bit of a physical anomaly -- I'd liken him to a car that's geared very high.  He appears to be very explosive in the open court, but subpar in the "game of inches" that Tommy describes.  He isn't as good as you'd expect at cutting off angles or challenging shots.

This is what excites me about Smart.  He appears to have A+ physicals and A+ court awareness.  A very rare combination.

[PickNRoll]

You can't really argue with what he's saying but it seems like he's deflecting blame.

His rotation and substitution decisions are quite terrible and his coaching is clearly part of the problem on defense.  And maybe, just maybe, it's moronic to expect these players to perfectly execute an offense that it took even the Spurs several years to nail down.

Mike

I like Stevens and I think he will be a good coach!  However, I feel like the C's are pretty bad on offense coming out of a TO?  What do you guys think?

I think blaming the coach for execution out of a timeout is overdone.  The players have seen all of  these plays hundreds or thousands of times.  If they fail to execute, it has more to do with increased defensive pressure, or the simple fact that a side out is tougher to negotiate than dribbling the ball up the court.

  I'd be willing to bet you'd see a lot less poor execution on those plays if we still had KG/PP/RA.

Exactly.  Execution comes down to reps and composure.  Some guys are born with it.  Some guys can learn it.  Some guys never will -- they just don't have the right physical or mental makeup. 

[nacceltic]

OK, I've seen enough of a "sample size" and have to go on a tangent here...This season has been a broken record and most of it has to do with the guys on the floor, but some of it also has to do with the coaching...I'm not a Stevens "hater", but there are criticisms to be had:

1) Leaving Rondo defending the best penetrating guard on the opposing team for far too long night after night

2) Continuing to stubbornly play Evan Turner in a position where he handles the ball too much, even though he's a human TO machine...

3) Confusing substitution patterns at times (IE: Last night, no offense to be found, but Marcus Thornton sits on his rear, while they lose the lead)

This team has been plagued by the same things all year: Lack of consistent defense, too many turnovers and a thousand bad possessions in the final quarter...Many of those things can be corrected by the players, but they can also be corrected by the coach.

As crazy as it might have sounded before the year began, this team NEEDS Marcus Smart back...The defense will improve and Evan Turner will not be handling the ball as much.

[BballTim]

Execution has been sloppy as heck with this team.  I pin that on the players for the most part.  Those are the ones that are making the poor plays; errant passes, dribbling off limbs out of bounds, taking contested shots with 19 seconds left on the shot clock, missing layups, defensive lapses, etc...

Coaching can only go so far when you have players that are running around at times acting like their heads got chopped off.  Is is Stevens fault that Turner can't make a pass to save his life?  Is it Stevens fault that Rondo is making errant passes? Is it Stevens fault that Kelly is missing bunnies? 

Sure, some of this team's troubles has to be placed at Stevens' feet but I don't think you can blame a lot.

  I think one sign of the bad execution is the team's shot clock usage on 82games. They have the team's percentage of shots taken and made at different stages of the shot clock. We take a lot of shots early in the clock but make them at a noticeably lower clip than we do in the 11-15 second range, which is fairly unusual. So I clearly agree about the "bad shots early in the clock" comment. At least part of this has to be coaching. I also agree with the "Evan Turner" comment. If you have more than one player on the court who's prone to bad decisions in crunch time on the court at once you're going to be in trouble no matter who your coach is.

[PickNRoll]

OK, I've seen enough of a "sample size" and have to go on a tangent here...This season has been a broken record and most of it has to do with the guys on the floor, but some of it also has to do with the coaching...I'm not a Stevens "hater", but there are criticisms to be had:

1) Leaving Rondo defending the best penetrating guard on the opposing team for far too long night after night

2) Continuing to stubbornly play Evan Turner in a position where he handles the ball too much, even though he's a human TO machine...

3) Confusing substitution patterns at times (IE: Last night, no offense to be found, but Marcus Thornton sits on his rear, while they lose the lead)

This team has been plagued by the same things all year: Lack of consistent defense, too many turnovers and a thousand bad possessions in the final quarter...Many of those things can be corrected by the players, but they can also be corrected by the coach.

As crazy as it might have sounded before the year began, this team NEEDS Marcus Smart back...The defense will improve and Evan Turner will not be handling the ball as much.

To play Steven's advocate

1. You might have noticed a guy named Korver last night.  Guarding him is important too.
2. Turner is untenable as a rotation player.  He's actually really good as an ISO player, but he's a terrible decision maker.  How do you utilize such a player in a read and react system?  Answer: you can't.
3. This is just observational bias.  The team has so many weaknesses that you can make a seemingly sound argument for subbing out almost any player at any time.  We're bad at too many things.  It's not the rotations.

I agree though, we need Marcus.

[BballTim]

OK, I've seen enough of a "sample size" and have to go on a tangent here...This season has been a broken record and most of it has to do with the guys on the floor, but some of it also has to do with the coaching...I'm not a Stevens "hater", but there are criticisms to be had:

1) Leaving Rondo defending the best penetrating guard on the opposing team for far too long night after night

2) Continuing to stubbornly play Evan Turner in a position where he handles the ball too much, even though he's a human TO machine...

3) Confusing substitution patterns at times (IE: Last night, no offense to be found, but Marcus Thornton sits on his rear, while they lose the lead)

This team has been plagued by the same things all year: Lack of consistent defense, too many turnovers and a thousand bad possessions in the final quarter...Many of those things can be corrected by the players, but they can also be corrected by the coach.

As crazy as it might have sounded before the year began, this team NEEDS Marcus Smart back...The defense will improve and Evan Turner will not be handling the ball as much.

  Rondo generally doesn't spend the bulk of the game guarding the best penetrating guard on the other team, and when he does he's usually does pretty well against them. Last night, for instance, Teague got into the lane about as many times with AB guarding him as he did with Rondo guarding him despite Rondo guarding him for about 3x as many possessions. He also did a great job keeping Thomas in check in the Suns game. I haven't seen every minute of every game recently but I don't think Rondo's doing that bad a job on defense and I know that Bradley spends more time guarding opposing pgs than Rondo.

  Also, while Turner is a TO machine, he was handling the ball more than Smart when the two of them were playing together this year. Hopefully that will change soon.

[BballTim]

You can't really argue with what he's saying but it seems like he's deflecting blame.

His rotation and substitution decisions are quite terrible and his coaching is clearly part of the problem on defense.  And maybe, just maybe, it's moronic to expect these players to perfectly execute an offense that it took even the Spurs several years to nail down.

Mike

I like Stevens and I think he will be a good coach!  However, I feel like the C's are pretty bad on offense coming out of a TO?  What do you guys think?

I think blaming the coach for execution out of a timeout is overdone.  The players have seen all of  these plays hundreds or thousands of times.  If they fail to execute, it has more to do with increased defensive pressure, or the simple fact that a side out is tougher to negotiate than dribbling the ball up the court.

  I'd be willing to bet you'd see a lot less poor execution on those plays if we still had KG/PP/RA.

Exactly.  Execution comes down to reps and composure.  Some guys are born with it.  Some guys can learn it.  Some guys never will -- they just don't have the right physical or mental makeup.

  Right, but some of our players fall into the "some guys can learn it" category and some fall into the "never will" category.

[MBunge]

You can't really argue with what he's saying but it seems like he's deflecting blame.

His rotation and substitution decisions are quite terrible and his coaching is clearly part of the problem on defense.  And maybe, just maybe, it's moronic to expect these players to perfectly execute an offense that it took even the Spurs several years to nail down.

Mike

I like Stevens and I think he will be a good coach!  However, I feel like the C's are pretty bad on offense coming out of a TO?  What do you guys think?

I think blaming the coach for execution out of a timeout is overdone.  The players have seen all of  these plays hundreds or thousands of times.  If they fail to execute, it has more to do with increased defensive pressure, or the simple fact that a side out is tougher to negotiate than dribbling the ball up the court.

  I'd be willing to bet you'd see a lot less poor execution on those plays if we still had KG/PP/RA.

Exactly.  Execution comes down to reps and composure.  Some guys are born with it.  Some guys can learn it.  Some guys never will -- they just don't have the right physical or mental makeup.

But on defense and coaching, are players getting the reps in practice?  Does Stevens emphasize it enough?

And coaches also need to adjust their schemes to fit their talent.  If after a whole off season, training camp, preseason and 15 regular season games, your team is complete garbage on defense, it might be time to simplify things.  It's better to have players be good in a mediocre defensive scheme than to have them utterly suck in a "better" and more complex defense.

I can't remember, but has Stevens even TRIED to use a zone?  Yeah, you can't be a good defensive team playing zone exclusively in the NBA, but it sure as heck can work for stretches during games.

Mike