Yeah, like how he underperformed on his way to beating a Nuggets team with two of his starters out, and with no homecourt, right? Moron
We still have one problem!
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Yeah, like how he underperformed on his way to beating a Nuggets team with two of his starters out, and with no homecourt, right? Moron
How many rings has he won? I suspect he is just about the longest term pro coach ever without a ring. That's the point.
Funny how you attribute those wins against Denver to Sloan and continue to demean Fes at every opportunity. You know the guy who became the starter. Might as well have been playing with 4 guys.
The problem with Sloan is that he's a pretty darn good coach... If he sucked like 98% of persons who've tried his profession while he's been at it, it would be easy for us fans to see it and we'd at least get to biotch in unison.
InGameStrat - you can't say "Sloan becnched KK FOR NO REASON" and expect us to take you seriously. Sloan had a reason, which i've explained to you many times. At least say, he benched KK for the reason that sloan thought the best way to win and win as many games as possible was to stay with his best players and not take any game-practice-time away from them and give it to KK." That is why he did it and you can say that is a bad idea. But it wasn't for NO reason.
You also note that Popovich did sit Tim Duncan down a few times to 'teach him a lesson' of sorts to play D. Do you think that the situation wtih Carlos Boozer last year was the same state in his relationship with the Jazz as TimD was/is with the Spurs? No. So your response is "what about previous years. If Sloan really believed in D, he should have sat Boozer's big A on the bench and taught him a thing or to." Well if there's one thing we know it is that Carlos would have been fine with that. He would have understood and done right by the team. And then he'd come back better than ever and not tank his trade value or or screw up the locker room or anything. He's a consumate team player... like Tim D appears to be.
OP, ZMAN and other Sloan detractors: I would doubt that any one here thinks that Sloan is a god of any sort or that he's the best ever - even the major Sloan apologists like myself. So your hyperbole just makes your case worse. I challenge you to make an argument why any coach out there would be a better suggestion that Jerry. It has to be better than "I don't know, but if we had any brains, we'd find someone..." Maybe you could explain how easy it would be to take a group of prima donnas and get them to operate together in a ultra efficienct team mode. Maybe you could explain to us why Jerry's theory on prefering short range shots over a model with more emphasis on the 3-ball is a bad idea? Help us to understand why 'getting players who play your system - You know, which is like a doctor seeing healthy patients" is a bad strategy.
Fill us in and we can then begin to understand why we are so ignorant to think Jerry is worthy keeping.
InGameStrat - you can't say "Sloan becnched KK FOR NO REASON" and expect us to take you seriously. Sloan had a reason, which i've explained to you many times. At least say, he benched KK for the reason that sloan thought the best way to win and win as many games as possible was to stay with his best players and not take any game-practice-time away from them and give it to KK." That is why he did it and you can say that is a bad idea. But it wasn't for NO reason.
You also note that Popovich did sit Tim Duncan down a few times to 'teach him a lesson' of sorts to play D. Do you think that the situation wtih Carlos Boozer last year was the same state in his relationship with the Jazz as TimD was/is with the Spurs? No. So your response is "what about previous years. If Sloan really believed in D, he should have sat Boozer's big A on the bench and taught him a thing or to." Well if there's one thing we know it is that Carlos would have been fine with that. He would have understood and done right by the team. And then he'd come back better than ever and not tank his trade value or or screw up the locker room or anything. He's a consumate team player... like Tim D appears to be.
OP, ZMAN and other Sloan detractors: I would doubt that any one here thinks that Sloan is a god of any sort or that he's the best ever - even the major Sloan apologists like myself. So your hyperbole just makes your case worse. I challenge you to make an argument why any coach out there would be a better suggestion that Jerry. It has to be better than "I don't know, but if we had any brains, we'd find someone..." Maybe you could explain how easy it would be to take a group of prima donnas and get them to operate together in a ultra efficienct team mode. Maybe you could explain to us why Jerry's theory on prefering short range shots over a model with more emphasis on the 3-ball is a bad idea? Help us to understand why 'getting players who play your system - You know, which is like a doctor seeing healthy patients" is a bad strategy.
Fill us in and we can then begin to understand why we are so ignorant to think Jerry is worthy keeping.
InGameStrategy
Well-Known Member
To Sloan's credit, he outperformed the Denver Nuggets' head coach.
Partly because the Denver Nuggets' head coach wasn't there.
https://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5054537
Also, Sloan can thank Okur's injury, rendering unfeasible the counterproductive temptation to play MO against a more athletic Nuggets frontcourt.
Fesenko did OK for Okur in most but not all of the Denver games, and Millsap was a beast. Boozer was huge also for most of the series.
But the key difference between the losses in the regular season and the wins over Denver in the playoffs is the absence of a competent coach on the opposing bench. Also, K-Mart's contribution or lack thereof had a huge correlation with Denver's winning and losing.
Sorry, AD. Even your own player hinted that the team would've been better with Karl on the sideline. (No excuses, right?)
https://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=16852
Which also bolsters my claim that effective coaching--including in-game coaching--makes a difference.
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InGameStrategy
Well-Known Member
To bench a player and give him zero minutes for months, even when the outcome of the game is not in question, does warrant a reason after he had been developing and contributing. Reducing that player's minutes does not.
For the past two years, Millsap could've continued to develop with a few of his MPG allocated to the bigs, especially given that a legit big was a bigger need than a backup PF. Or those minutes could've come from benching Boozer or Okur until the next whistle when they dogged it. What is puzzling is that such an approach would seem like classic Sloan: sitting down a player when he's not defending. Sloan sometimes trimmed Okur's minutes when MO was not effective, but it didn't seem to be directly communicated or associated with dogging it. And in Boozer's five or six years with the team, I don't remember Sloan ever subbing out Boozer when CB was daydreaming on D.
Sloan's "reason" was probably to continue developing Millsap. But the flaw was in minutes allocation. The goals of developing PM and a developing a paint-protecting big were not mutually exclusive. In the 2008-09 season Fes got even fewer minutes than Kouf--a fraction of KK2's time--even though KF was arguably the better talent physically. It was probably comfortable to play Millsap because he's such a consistently hard worker, Harpring-style.
In the Laker series, Utah paid for not having developed Fesenko, who ended up having a neutral to net positive effect in every second-round game but didn't have the experience to really make a bigger impact than that.
Going forward, KK2's progress will be interesting. Cleveland has expressed interest in Kouf, and with Big Z gone, there might be an opportunity for development minutes if he ends up there. I hope that the Jazz recognize that bringing back Fes is important for depth at C.
If you're suggesting (via sarcasm) that Boozer would've reacted negatively to being benched for dogging it (and I have consistently suggested for only for a few minutes or until the next whistle), then you're letting the inmates run the asylum and are also implying that Sloan is less capable than Popovich to develop appropriate relationships with his players in which the coach is comfortable with rewarding and punishing players as appropriate.
Also, if Boozer had pouted about being benched, then it would've hurt his value, especially in a contract year, especially if Millsap had been able to show that he was replaceable. Because Sloan played Millsap and Boozer together, such a replaceability was less clear.
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Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
How about a doctor whose patients have more than a 50-50 chance of surviving?
I think it goes both ways. Larry H. was too cheap to go out and get a couple of players to put the Jazz over the top. All of the Jazz teams were fatally flawed, whether it was a SG who couldn't shoot, lack of a decent center, an under-talented SF and/or a terrible bench.
Who was the last dominant center the Jazz had? Umm, no one. Gasol, Duncan/Robinson, Shaq, Hakeem. A lot easier to win when you have one of those players as one of your "Big 3." We haven't exactly had a ton of superstars since Stockton/Malone. And they were unlucky enough to face MJ's Bulls - a team that was more complete than the Jazz. And a team that had one of the greatest clutch performers of all-time.
Boozer ain't a superstar. Neither is Memo. Deron is on the cusp. Tell you what...having an all-star PG and a legitimate low-post threat, surrounded by 3 other quality starters and some solid bench players is going to make Sloan look much more intelligent this season.
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
Bell definitely wouldn't have. KOC admitted as much.
Jefferson may have come anyway, as long as Deron were still here. And as long as the offense favored his game. That's a key. Minny has switched to the triangle, which doesn't fit Al's game. So if Sloan weren't the coach, it would need to be someone with a similar type offense.
