My thoughts are that they coexisted fine last year. People forget that Irving was around for a large part of the year last year and was a big part of us getting the No2 seed.
What has changed is that Tatum, Brown and Rozier had great performances in the playoffs when Kyrie and Gordon were injured and Gordon coming back this season and Mook and Smart starting squeezed them out of playing time.
That’s affected our entire season, nobody knows who the No2 or 3 guy is we have 6 players who think they are that and it’s affected our chemistry for most of the season.
I love how everyone glosses over the fact that our "great coach" made a pretty dumb decision that sank this team's season before the season even started.
the decision to start hayward over anybody was about the dumbest move he could have done. everything after that was a result of this decision.
everyone brings up what hayward is making as a reason why he should start or why he should get more mins. over anyone when in reality it's just an excuse for our coaches bad effing decision.
in reality knowing hayward wasn't ready now had stevens just came out and said i'm putting the best 7-8 guys that are ready to go every night in order to win - no one would have complained.
instead he sacrificed this team's season because Hayward is making so much money... I thought this game was about winning championships, not sacrificing a whole team's season.
oh and in the process our great coach may have stunted the growth of or flat out ruined our promising young core.
hope it was worth it.
That was definitely a dumb decision, but I wouldn't say he did it because Hayward was on a max. The logic was probably to return to the starting lineup we had at the start of last season, which was Kyrie-Jayson-Jaylen-Al-Gordon. If you do a search for posts at the start of the season that was the common consensus with people here as well. It was probably also to give Gordon some confidence. Obviously hindsight is 20-20 but clearly Gordon wasn't anywhere close to 70% let alone 100% so it had a big impact on production. But Jaylen was in the starting lineup, he just struggled in the beginning.
To me Brad's biggest failing was the inability to establish a clear hierarchy and a set of roles for players. What he tried to do was a Spurs-2014 style ensemble cast where everyone chipped in. But the circumstances of that team was different - there was an all time great in the twilight of his career (Duncan), a couple of established stars (Parker and Manu), some solid role players who understood their (Diaw, Mills, Belinelli, Green) and a rising star (Kawhi). If you look at our team, it's different - there's a couple of established stars (Kyrie and Al), a star trying to come back from a bad injury (Gordon), a couple bench players who got elevated (Mook, Smart) and three rising stars who had the world at their feet after making the ECF (Tatum, Brown and Rozier). It was never clear who the No2 or 3 guys were behind Kyrie - is it Mook? Jayson? Jaylen? Gordon? Al? Then JB gets benched while JT doesn't, that had to sting. And they all have to lose minutes because of Gordon and Gordon's minutes were terrible early in the season.
Brad hasn't been able to solve the problem of too many mouths. As for Kyrie, he has to take some blame for his public statements and reluctance to commit destabilizing the team but let's remember
he was here last year. He hasn't changed from last year to this year, he was mouthing off to the press then too. We're getting the same Kyrie this season that we got last season - we were 46-21 when he was shut down.
Think about what has changed between last year and this year. We had some great talented youngsters that overachieved and this year they (two of them at least) had to take a back seat because a guy who wasn't involved last year at all came back and another was promoted off the bench to start. That's the issue.
I'm sure there's resentments there, that's why they don't trust each other - it's obvious on defense that they don't always talk when switching and if you are going to be a switching defense you NEED to trust each other and communicate. Or when the ball doesn't move. There's probably some entitlement there too because of the success last year, and that success might have made it hard for them to listen to their vet teammates. Then you have the guys like Gordon who is just a shadow of his former self but is taking up minutes. They rarely pass the ball to him probably because they've lost faith in him being able to deliver.
Topic: Can Kyrie Irving and Coach Brad Stevens co-exist? (Read 9177 times)