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ocho
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 Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:55 pm Post subject: Finding Our Next Coach: The Candidates |
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Thought it would be good to gather some information on our potential next head coach. Get to know the candidates a bit. Of course, these are candidates I would like to see the Lakers take a look at. They traditionally have a different approach than the one I'd like them to take, which leads to a Mike Dunleavy interview each time out. Ideally I would like to see a young coach be hired. Someone who isn't beholden to a bygone era, who can be a long term figure for the team. Build an identity and a culture. Here are some people I'd like them to consider in no particular order.
Kenny Atkinson
Experience: Assistant Coach, Atlanta Hawks (under Mike Budenholzer). Assistant Coach, New York Knicks (under Mike D'Antoni). Head Coach, Dominican Republic FIBA team.
Pedigree: In New York he was credited for developing Jeremy Lin during the Linsanity days.
| Quote: | "I mean this guy wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning," Lin says. "I’ll text after a game at midnight, 1 o’clock when I go home and I’ll say, ‘Hey can I look at those turnovers. Can I look at the upcoming team? How they run pick and rolls?’ And he ’ll have the film ready when I walk into the facility the next morning.
"When I wasn’t playing much, we were working out before practice, and after practice he was picking apart my game, teaching me what it’s like to play in Coach D’Antoni’s system." |
He joined Atlanta under Larry Drew, but stayed on board when Coach Bud was hired. From Kevin Arnovitz' piece on top coaching candidates:
| Quote: | "After four seasons under Mike D'Antoni in New York, Atkinson has flourished in Atlanta as far more than a player-development guy. He's earned a reputation as an affable teacher who is both cerebral and a high-level communicator. He thoroughly enjoys getting on the floor with a player and sees that individual development work as a collaboration between player and coach."
"After a nice college career as a point guard at Richmond, Atkinson had a long career in Europe, where he stayed to coach before heading to New York. He's worldly, with a curiosity for forward-thinking ideas, everything from injury prevention to analytics. He's someone who would look for new solutions as a head coach rather than insist he has every answer and rely on tired conventional wisdom." |
Another quote from Rick Adelman:
| Quote: | | If you get to Phillips Arena early enough before games, you’ll see Atkinson and Darvin Ham in their sweats helping drill and warm up their players. He is a player’s coach. According to former Timberwolves coach Rick Adelman, “There is nobody better than Kenny at developing players.” |
Atkinson on practices:
| Quote: | | “I think the league is really trending toward shorter practices and more quality individual time,” Atkinson said. “It’s the difference between being in a class with 30 other kids and getting one-on-one tutoring for 20 or 30 minutes.” |
Here's a video of him coaching the Hawks Summer League team:
LINK
Becky Hammon
Experience: Assistant Coach, San Antonio under Gregg Popovich. Head Coach, Spurs Summer League, 2015.
Pedigree: Former 6x WNBA All Star PG. Experience under the Coach Pop tree and well respected by players. She was tasked last season with working with the Spurs point guards. Corey Joseph and Patty Mills had career seasons. Coached the Spurs' Summer League team this season and won the SPL Championship.
The Guardian:
| Quote: | Everything in basketball is about adjustments. The best coaches are the ones who can change things when they don’t work. Popovich is a master at adjustments. Players notice which coaches are the effective at switching plans. Those who make the best decisions are usually the ones who are most respected.
In two weeks Hammon has made dozens of adjustments. Once, in a game where the Spurs defense was having trouble with an opposing team’s screens, she told the players to switch the way they were playing the screens. The next several possessions the opponent got nothing.
The value of a simple change in handling another team’s screens is immense. When it works the coach gets immediate buy-in. If the Spurs weren’t listening before, they were after that. And that made it easier for Hammon to make other adjustments – like moving small forward Kyle Anderson, last year’s first round draft pick – to power forward. The benefit was immediate. On Sunday, Anderson was named the summer league’s most valuable player. |
Video of Hammon featuring quotes from Spurs coaches and players:
LINK
Luke Walton
Experience: Interim Head Coach, Golden State Warriors. Assistant Coach under Steve Kerr.
Pedigree: Top assistant on the league's best team, and getting HC reps this season with Kerr being sidelined. Played for Lute Olson and Phil Jackson.
Some quotes:
| Quote: | Bob Myers: "Luke is one of these people who was born with an innate understanding of the game of basketball, and he's respected," Myers said.
Draymond Green: "Sometimes you may be thinking something that everybody else may not see. But if you go to Luke and talk to him, he knows exactly what you're talking about. "I think it's one of those things that you just can't teach. Like he's that type of basketball smart." |
| Quote: | | Klay Thompson: "We all respect Luke. We all really enjoy playing for him. He's got a great mind for the game; you saw it when he played, and it's easy to see when he coaches." |
Interview with Luke Walton:
LINK
Snippet on breaking down Memphis:
| Quote: | -Q: So what are your thoughts about your Memphis scout? What are you telling the team about the Grizzlies?
-WALTON: Memphis, they’re a veteran team that’s been in the playoffs. So they do what they do and they do it very well.
For example, I would preach to the team, the weak side duck in by Zach Randolph–they look for it all game long. Zach Randolph will start setting you up before you even realize the ball’s getting swung.
High-low, any time you’re fronting, Marc Gasol is going to flash high, look to go high-low. And if they go to the post and Marc has made his way high, he’s always looking to set a little flare screen for the guard.
So just like tendencies of what they do they well and what they do a lot.
Tony Allen’s always looking to play passing lanes. Things like that to just put in their minds so when they’re playing and everything’s going 100 mph, they have something to fall back on.
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Joe Prunty
Experience: Assistant Coach, Milwaukee Bucks under Jason Kidd. Head Coach, Great Britain FIBA Team. Came up in the Spurs system and won 2 titles as Assistant under Popovich. Also had stints with the Blazers, Mavs, and Nets. Major knock: also served under Byron Scott in Cleveland.
On coaching Britain's FIBA team:
| Quote: | The Brits were in the midst of losing six straight games in the Eurobasket "friendly" competition and were without four top players had at one point or another worn the Queen's livery: Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, Joel Freeland and Pops Mensah-Bonsu, one of FIBA's top players. Maybe best not to draw too much attention to it.
That all changed Wednesday when GB beat a good Israeli team in FIBA Eurobasket's opening day of action. It was the biggest upset of the day and Prunty was getting a lot of credit for it. ESPN's Mark Woods profiles Prunty and his British team, noting as well that Jason Kidd had personally recruited the 18-year NBA veteran. |
Ben Golliver, covering Prunty as a Blazers Assistant:
| Quote: | On Wednesday I wrote about some of the defensive adjustments assistant coach LINK (and former Dallas assistant) Joe Prunty was implementing. Tonight, we saw all of them.
LaMarcus Aldridge got up into Dirk Nowitzki's body early and often, getting an early touch foul as feared but disturbing Dirk on multiple possessions. "We were just trying to be physical," Aldridge told me after the game. "Not let him get comfortable, not let him find his balance." It worked: Dirk finished with just 15 points on 5 of 13 shooting.
The Blazers also aggressively played the high pick and rolls, daring the Mavericks to look for secondary options like Shawn Marion and Caron Butler and physically preventing Nowitzki from establishing his preferred position at the top of the key. Importantly, they limited Dirk to just 4 free throw attempts for the entire game (and gave up just 9 total free throw attempts to the Mavericks).
After the game, Nate McMillan singled out Prunty and his assistant coaching staff for their work on the scouting reports and noted, with more pride and forcefulness than usual, "we executed the game plan tonight." |
Strategizing for that game:
| Quote: | | As you might expect, much of Prunty's instruction was focused on dealing with Dirk Nowitzki on various parts of the court. While the primary focus was on the player set to defend Dirk everything was presented from a 5 man unit perspective. Together, the starting unit walked through how they plan to collapse into the lane when Dirk gets the ball in some of his favorite spots and Prunty offered specific instructions regarding how to close out on the Mavericks' shooters once Dirk kicks the ball out of the post and it rotates. Andre Miller, for example, was instructed to close out hard on the sharpshooting Jason Terry after sagging near the paint on the weakside. And, if possible, Miller should close out on Terry in such a way that forces Terry to dribble to his left (his off hand). |
Kevin Ollie
Experience: Head Coach, UCONN.
Pedigree: Former player with great rep. Widely regarded players coach with relationships throughout the NBA. Also an LA kid who attended Crenshaw High School.
Durant and Westbrook:
| Quote: | But that team, a seven seed that is one win from the Final Four, isn’t the only place you can see Ollie’s impact. Even though he spent only one season with the Thunder, he influenced what we see today. He provided Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and others an example of how to lead. He showed how to approach each day and every situation. He left fingerprints that are still visible.
“Huge,” Westbrook said of Ollie’s influence. “Kevin’s one of the greatest guys I know in this league.”
The Thunder has always been intentional about bringing in influential veterans, solid citizens with good character who will rub off on younger guys. Malik Rose. Desmond Mason. Joe Smith. Royal Ivey. Derek Fisher now.
But during an interview with Bill Simmons during All-Star Weekend, Durant talked glowingly about Ollie. The Thunder superstar had actually been asked about Fisher, but instead, he brought up and singled out Ollie.
“Kevin Ollie, he was a game-changer for us,” Durant said. “He changed the whole culture, I think. He might not say it, but I think he changed the whole culture in Oklahoma City.”
How so?
“His mindset, his professionalism every single day,” Durant said. “And we all watched that. We all wanted to be like that.” |
UCONN Blog on Ollie's strengths:
LINK
On similarities between Ollie and Hoiberg:
| Quote: | Coach [Ollie] has been in the NBA a lot of years," guard Shabazz Napier said. "And his ideas on how to run an offense come from that. A lot of things come from Coach Calhoun, too. You intertwine those two things, and he's just putting us in great positions to show what we have."
It's more complicated than to say that both UConn and Iowa State like to run. They are pure-college teams that also like to play uptempo. Both have NBA-thick playbooks to draw upon after timeouts. They run a lot of pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop on offense, and implement multiple ways to defend against those plays. They try to isolate their best players.
"With our NBA experience, I think we coach the same," said Ollie, who played in 13 NBA seasons. "We try to manipulate the defense, try to go to different matchups."
Both teams emphasize stretching the defense and ball movement, side to side.
[Ollie] has a pro style of offense," Boatright said. "It's not a pass-and-cut type of deal. It's a lot of pick and roll. Iowa State definitely runs a pro-style offense, too, through DeAndre Kane — he's a big guard and they try to isolate him a lot." |
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yinoma2001
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy.
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bandiger
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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Nice post man. Props to you.  |
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ocho
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| yinoma2001 wrote: | | Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy. |
In addition to Luke, I probably should have included Tyronn Lue, who also is "one of our own" and is a well regarded candidate. |
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Username
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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Kevin Ollie was my top choice but I'm really liking the sound of this Kenny Atkinson guy.
I'm not sure about Luke yet. I just don't think he's ready. |
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jonnybravo
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| yinoma2001 wrote: | | Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy. |
I also think my gut is that Luke would have strong assistants who he would lean on for X's and O's while he's there to communicate and motivate.
He doesn't strike me as at all insecure about himself like (bleep)-head Blockbuster. |
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KeepItRealOrElse
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes great thread. Didn't know about Atkinson, but now he's right up there on my list. Walton and Atkinson would turn this offense around in a day. And their teams are great at D too. |
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dood23
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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Reading how Luke broke down Memphis has moved him from priority number 1 to priority number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Then everyone else.
Also reading how he adjusted GSW against the Pelicans in the playoffs. We need this guy.
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Last edited by dood23 on Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:05 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ocho
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| KeepItRealOrElse wrote: | | Yes great thread. Didn't know about Atkinson, but now he's right up there on my list. Walton and Atkinson would turn this offense around in a day. And their teams are great at D too. |
Some really smart team is going to hire him and I would like it to be us. |
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44TheLogo
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| i second the Tyronn Lue option. I would be happy with any of the options as they'd all be better than Scott's incompetent ass |
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rybee
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| I think Luke would be a good choice. |
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yinoma2001
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| jonnybravo wrote: | | yinoma2001 wrote: | | Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy. |
I also think my gut is that Luke would have strong assistants who he would lean on for X's and O's while he's there to communicate and motivate.
He doesn't strike me as at all insecure about himself like (bleep)-head Blockbuster. |
Yup. It's the insecurity/'don't challenge my authority' that bothers me the most about the Parking Brake. Then he adds his own son to the mix and who on that staff will speak truth to power to Scott?
I can see a guy like Luke bringing in someone who was an ex HC to be an assistant to help him.
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22
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Great thread ocho. Luke, Atkinson, Becky at this juncture for me |
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Iconic
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| I honestly could care less who we hire next, when you have the worst coach in NBA history anyone will be an upgrade |
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ocho
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| yinoma2001 wrote: | | jonnybravo wrote: | | yinoma2001 wrote: | | Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy. |
I also think my gut is that Luke would have strong assistants who he would lean on for X's and O's while he's there to communicate and motivate.
He doesn't strike me as at all insecure about himself like (bleep)-head Blockbuster. |
Yup. It's the insecurity/'don't challenge my authority' that bothers me the most about the Parking Brake. Then he adds his own son to the mix and who on that staff will speak truth to power to Scott?
I can see a guy like Luke bringing in someone who was an ex HC to be an assistant to help him. |
I wouldn't rule out Luke, if offered a HC job, looking to take Ron Adams with him. Another major plus. |
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yinoma2001
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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This is kind of like the calm in the eye of the hurricane.
Now we have to return back to the hurricane unfortunately.
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Jim99187
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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| my choice has always been Luke |
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danzag
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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| I just want someone YOUNG. No more old school bullsh-t. |
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32
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:08 pm Post subject: |
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I like Kevin Ollie if he wants to leave Uconn. He coached them to a National Chamionship. I also heard Durant likes him a lot. It could be enough to lure him here as a free agent next year. Also he is an LA guy. Grew up in South Central and went to Crenshaw HS.
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kenkoy
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:11 pm Post subject: |
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| ocho wrote: | | yinoma2001 wrote: | | Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy. |
In addition to Luke, I probably should have included Tyronn Lue, who also is "one of our own" and is a well regarded candidate. |
Ty Lue would be a good hire for the Lakers. Pretty intense, fiery guy who can install discipline and hopefully preach/demand team basketball. He also played as a PG, which should be a plus for DLo and Clarkson.
Another guy I'm hoping they try to bring in as an assistant coach (if he's willing) would be Rick Fox. Smart guy, systems oriented, tough, and bleeds purple and gold. |
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yinoma2001
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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| kenkoy wrote: | | ocho wrote: | | yinoma2001 wrote: | | Excellent thread. My first option is Luke only b/c Lakers will value the "known" name, if it has to be an up and coming guy. |
In addition to Luke, I probably should have included Tyronn Lue, who also is "one of our own" and is a well regarded candidate. |
Ty Lue would be a good hire for the Lakers. Pretty intense, fiery guy who can install discipline and hopefully preach/demand team basketball. He also played as a PG, which should be a plus for DLo and Clarkson.
Another guy I'm hoping they try to bring in as an assistant coach (if he's willing) would be Rick Fox. Smart guy, systems oriented, tough, and bleeds purple and gold. |
Love Rick Fox, but doesn't strike me as a guy who wants to be a coach, get paid a fraction of what he's getting now while doing 10x the work.
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gill2k
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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Wow! Awesome breakdown Ocho! That was actually great to read... and for a moment it made me forget who the current coach is.
And then reality sets back in... 
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greenfrog
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Would MDA consider being an assistant to Luke? He's gotta be bored. |
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Username
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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| 32 wrote: | | I like Kevin Ollie if he wants to leave Uconn. He coached them to a National Chamionship. I also heard Durant likes him a lot. It could be enough to lure him here as a free agent next year. Also he is an LA guy. Grew up in South Central and went to Crenshaw HS. |
It's fun to throw names back and forth, but ultimately I would just sit down with Durant and say "what coach do you want us to hire for you, and who on this team do you think you can win a championship with?" and let him determine our future. |
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LoyalLakerfan44
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:18 pm Post subject: Re: Finding Our Next Coach: The Candidates |
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| ocho wrote: | Thought it would be good to gather some information on our potential next head coach. Get to know the candidates a bit. Of course, these are candidates I would like to see the Lakers take a look at. They traditionally have a different approach than the one I'd like them to take, which leads to a Mike Dunleavy interview each time out. Ideally I would like to see a young coach be hired. Someone who isn't beholden to a bygone era, who can be a long term figure for the team. Build an identity and a culture. Here are some people I'd like them to consider in no particular order.
Kenny Atkinson
Experience: Assistant Coach, Atlanta Hawks (under Mike Budenholzer). Assistant Coach, New York Knicks (under Mike D'Antoni). Head Coach, Dominican Republic FIBA team.
Pedigree: In New York he was credited for developing Jeremy Lin during the Linsanity days.
| Quote: | "I mean this guy wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning," Lin says. "I’ll text after a game at midnight, 1 o’clock when I go home and I’ll say, ‘Hey can I look at those turnovers. Can I look at the upcoming team? How they run pick and rolls?’ And he ’ll have the film ready when I walk into the facility the next morning.
"When I wasn’t playing much, we were working out before practice, and after practice he was picking apart my game, teaching me what it’s like to play in Coach D’Antoni’s system." |
He joined Atlanta under Larry Drew, but stayed on board when Coach Bud was hired. From Kevin Arnovitz' piece on top coaching candidates:
| Quote: | "After four seasons under Mike D'Antoni in New York, Atkinson has flourished in Atlanta as far more than a player-development guy. He's earned a reputation as an affable teacher who is both cerebral and a high-level communicator. He thoroughly enjoys getting on the floor with a player and sees that individual development work as a collaboration between player and coach."
"After a nice college career as a point guard at Richmond, Atkinson had a long career in Europe, where he stayed to coach before heading to New York. He's worldly, with a curiosity for forward-thinking ideas, everything from injury prevention to analytics. He's someone who would look for new solutions as a head coach rather than insist he has every answer and rely on tired conventional wisdom." |
Another quote from Rick Adelman:
| Quote: | | If you get to Phillips Arena early enough before games, you’ll see Atkinson and Darvin Ham in their sweats helping drill and warm up their players. He is a player’s coach. According to former Timberwolves coach Rick Adelman, “There is nobody better than Kenny at developing players.” |
Atkinson on practices:
| Quote: | | “I think the league is really trending toward shorter practices and more quality individual time,” Atkinson said. “It’s the difference between being in a class with 30 other kids and getting one-on-one tutoring for 20 or 30 minutes.” |
Here's a video of him coaching the Hawks Summer League team:
LINK
Becky Hammon
Experience: Assistant Coach, San Antonio under Gregg Popovich. Head Coach, Spurs Summer League, 2015.
Pedigree: Former 6x WNBA All Star PG. Experience under the Coach Pop tree and well respected by players. She was tasked last season with working with the Spurs point guards. Corey Joseph and Patty Mills had career seasons. Coached the Spurs' Summer League team this season and won the SPL Championship.
The Guardian:
| Quote: | Everything in basketball is about adjustments. The best coaches are the ones who can change things when they don’t work. Popovich is a master at adjustments. Players notice which coaches are the effective at switching plans. Those who make the best decisions are usually the ones who are most respected.
In two weeks Hammon has made dozens of adjustments. Once, in a game where the Spurs defense was having trouble with an opposing team’s screens, she told the players to switch the way they were playing the screens. The next several possessions the opponent got nothing.
The value of a simple change in handling another team’s screens is immense. When it works the coach gets immediate buy-in. If the Spurs weren’t listening before, they were after that. And that made it easier for Hammon to make other adjustments – like moving small forward Kyle Anderson, last year’s first round draft pick – to power forward. The benefit was immediate. On Sunday, Anderson was named the summer league’s most valuable player. |
Video of Hammon featuring quotes from Spurs coaches and players:
LINK
Luke Walton
Experience: Interim Head Coach, Golden State Warriors. Assistant Coach under Steve Kerr.
Pedigree: Top assistant on the league's best team, and getting HC reps this season with Kerr being sidelined. Played for Lute Olson and Phil Jackson.
Some quotes:
| Quote: | Bob Myers: "Luke is one of these people who was born with an innate understanding of the game of basketball, and he's respected," Myers said.
Draymond Green: "Sometimes you may be thinking something that everybody else may not see. But if you go to Luke and talk to him, he knows exactly what you're talking about. "I think it's one of those things that you just can't teach. Like he's that type of basketball smart." |
| Quote: | | Klay Thompson: "We all respect Luke. We all really enjoy playing for him. He's got a great mind for the game; you saw it when he played, and it's easy to see when he coaches." |
Interview with Luke Walton:
LINK
Snippet on breaking down Memphis:
| Quote: | -Q: So what are your thoughts about your Memphis scout? What are you telling the team about the Grizzlies?
-WALTON: Memphis, they’re a veteran team that’s been in the playoffs. So they do what they do and they do it very well.
For example, I would preach to the team, the weak side duck in by Zach Randolph–they look for it all game long. Zach Randolph will start setting you up before you even realize the ball’s getting swung.
High-low, any time you’re fronting, Marc Gasol is going to flash high, look to go high-low. And if they go to the post and Marc has made his way high, he’s always looking to set a little flare screen for the guard.
So just like tendencies of what they do they well and what they do a lot.
Tony Allen’s always looking to play passing lanes. Things like that to just put in their minds so when they’re playing and everything’s going 100 mph, they have something to fall back on.
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Joe Prunty
Experience: Assistant Coach, Milwaukee Bucks under Jason Kidd. Head Coach, Great Britain FIBA Team. Came up in the Spurs system and won 2 titles as Assistant under Popovich. Also had stints with the Blazers, Mavs, and Nets. Major knock: also served under Byron Scott in Cleveland.
On coaching Britain's FIBA team:
| Quote: | The Brits were in the midst of losing six straight games in the Eurobasket "friendly" competition and were without four top players had at one point or another worn the Queen's livery: Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, Joel Freeland and Pops Mensah-Bonsu, one of FIBA's top players. Maybe best not to draw too much attention to it.
That all changed Wednesday when GB beat a good Israeli team in FIBA Eurobasket's opening day of action. It was the biggest upset of the day and Prunty was getting a lot of credit for it. ESPN's Mark Woods profiles Prunty and his British team, noting as well that Jason Kidd had personally recruited the 18-year NBA veteran. |
Ben Golliver, covering Prunty as a Blazers Assistant:
| Quote: | On Wednesday I wrote about some of the defensive adjustments assistant coach LINK (and former Dallas assistant) Joe Prunty was implementing. Tonight, we saw all of them.
LaMarcus Aldridge got up into Dirk Nowitzki's body early and often, getting an early touch foul as feared but disturbing Dirk on multiple possessions. "We were just trying to be physical," Aldridge told me after the game. "Not let him get comfortable, not let him find his balance." It worked: Dirk finished with just 15 points on 5 of 13 shooting.
The Blazers also aggressively played the high pick and rolls, daring the Mavericks to look for secondary options like Shawn Marion and Caron Butler and physically preventing Nowitzki from establishing his preferred position at the top of the key. Importantly, they limited Dirk to just 4 free throw attempts for the entire game (and gave up just 9 total free throw attempts to the Mavericks).
After the game, Nate McMillan singled out Prunty and his assistant coaching staff for their work on the scouting reports and noted, with more pride and forcefulness than usual, "we executed the game plan tonight." |
Strategizing for that game:
| Quote: | | As you might expect, much of Prunty's instruction was focused on dealing with Dirk Nowitzki on various parts of the court. While the primary focus was on the player set to defend Dirk everything was presented from a 5 man unit perspective. Together, the starting unit walked through how they plan to collapse into the lane when Dirk gets the ball in some of his favorite spots and Prunty offered specific instructions regarding how to close out on the Mavericks' shooters once Dirk kicks the ball out of the post and it rotates. Andre Miller, for example, was instructed to close out hard on the sharpshooting Jason Terry after sagging near the paint on the weakside. And, if possible, Miller should close out on Terry in such a way that forces Terry to dribble to his left (his off hand). |
Kevin Ollie
Experience: Head Coach, UCONN.
Pedigree: Former player with great rep. Widely regarded players coach with relationships throughout the NBA. Also an LA kid who attended Crenshaw High School.
Durant and Westbrook:
| Quote: | But that team, a seven seed that is one win from the Final Four, isn’t the only place you can see Ollie’s impact. Even though he spent only one season with the Thunder, he influenced what we see today. He provided Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and others an example of how to lead. He showed how to approach each day and every situation. He left fingerprints that are still visible.
“Huge,” Westbrook said of Ollie’s influence. “Kevin’s one of the greatest guys I know in this league.”
The Thunder has always been intentional about bringing in influential veterans, solid citizens with good character who will rub off on younger guys. Malik Rose. Desmond Mason. Joe Smith. Royal Ivey. Derek Fisher now.
But during an interview with Bill Simmons during All-Star Weekend, Durant talked glowingly about Ollie. The Thunder superstar had actually been asked about Fisher, but instead, he brought up and singled out Ollie.
“Kevin Ollie, he was a game-changer for us,” Durant said. “He changed the whole culture, I think. He might not say it, but I think he changed the whole culture in Oklahoma City.”
How so?
“His mindset, his professionalism every single day,” Durant said. “And we all watched that. We all wanted to be like that.” |
UCONN Blog on Ollie's strengths:
LINK
On similarities between Ollie and Hoiberg:
| Quote: | Coach [Ollie] has been in the NBA a lot of years," guard Shabazz Napier said. "And his ideas on how to run an offense come from that. A lot of things come from Coach Calhoun, too. You intertwine those two things, and he's just putting us in great positions to show what we have."
It's more complicated than to say that both UConn and Iowa State like to run. They are pure-college teams that also like to play uptempo. Both have NBA-thick playbooks to draw upon after timeouts. They run a lot of pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop on offense, and implement multiple ways to defend against those plays. They try to isolate their best players.
"With our NBA experience, I think we coach the same," said Ollie, who played in 13 NBA seasons. "We try to manipulate the defense, try to go to different matchups."
Both teams emphasize stretching the defense and ball movement, side to side.
[Ollie] has a pro style of offense," Boatright said. "It's not a pass-and-cut type of deal. It's a lot of pick and roll. Iowa State definitely runs a pro-style offense, too, through DeAndre Kane — he's a big guard and they try to isolate him a lot." |
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Missed probably the most important candidate, and that's Mark Jackson who literally built the Warriors. We need a coach with a proven winning record not question marks. The Lakers will not go through this again, so it's important to get someone with NBA experience but a guy that actually changed things around.
Besides I just don't think the Lakers are going to fire BS this season. I may happen before the next season but certainly not this season. There are a lot of reasons for this and people in this forum are like little spoiled kids that want their toy now forgetting how bad this team is. Scott is not a great coach I accept that, but I really have a hard time seeing another coach make better out of this group. |
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