after reading the above, i understand the coach's thinking on not playing starters. a loss is a loss, practice serves the team better right now. fine.
but that the players did not realize that means the coach did not communicate this well to the team. that is a failure on the coaching staff. moves such as this need player buy in.
poor communication with players by coaches creates the need for player-only-meetings...which is not a good sign.
I disagree with this.
There is always a lot of talk about tanking ruining culture on teams but it usually doesn't happen that way because tanking mostly happens higher up. Something like this though, the coach basically giving up, can breed a losing culture, I think. Can you imagine Brad Stevens just throwing a game away before it was absolutely decided?
That said, I wonder what the players were thinking about when they were thinking about not coming to practice. In Protest? They're the ones who got their butts beat.
This sounds like a bad stew brewing in Chicago.
When is a game “absolutely decided” though?
I mean, at what point did you think to yourself “there’s no way we lose this game?” Chances are, it was pretty early. They were absolutely pathetic on every level to start the game.
I’m ok with what he did, and I’d be ok with Stevens doing it to our guys. I guess the only difference is guys like Horford, Irving, Baynes/Morris/Smart/Hayward would understand it.
His roster is full of kids like Parker and LaVine who don’t care about winning and losing but putting up 20+.
It felt like we could have rattled off a 20-6 run or whatever against the starters any time we really wanted. Yes we are a better team, but they showed no indication they came to play.