I’ve been a huge DL proponent. I believe it’s about taking the right shots and not just judging everything in hindsight. I believe trying to keep Hayward was a good shot, and perhaps there were indications we should have seen, but I don’t know. It was right to move that team forward. I believe George Hill was the right move. Hell, I think Derek Fisher was a dynamite move, despite how it ended up, and he was a big part of our WCF run, even though he couldn’t throw it into the ocean when he played for us.
But, I’m starting to have some real doubts about DL’s shot selection. Or, rather, his clock management that’s leaving us with bad shots, but we rationalize how they aren’t bad shots because “we didn’t have much time on the clock and so we took what we got,” and not putting together the entire context of all the decisions that led to passing up good shots to ultimately settle for garbage right before a shot clock violation.
I didn’t care for KOC’s management philosophy. He was so average that he was bad. He had good moves, bad moves, and average moves, but he overvalued things that had little impact on our progression, and brought the same team back three years in a row to be beat by the Lakers in successively less games each year. People rationalized that because LA won championships one or two of those years. Cool. I’m deathly afraid that this is what DL is turning into. I recall an off-season where KOC said “re-signing Jarron Collins is our biggest priority this summer,” and while Favors is better than Collins, these Tony Jones comments essentially have that same vibe — “Hey, trust us, magic will somehow happen because we see what you can’t.”
I worry that this summer will be DL’s “Harpring and Collins FTW!!!1”
