re: Anyone else warming up to Monty??

It is logical. There are a handful of coaches that are difference makers, Monty is not one of them. The real trick is identifying who's an upgrade. Firing him to bring in Avery would be stupid, but I could live with the next Steve Kerr. It may not even be Steve Kerr, he brought in the best OC and DC his owner could buy, I'd take Avery if he did something like that.

Mark Jackson's undoing in part was wanting credit and being afraid of hiring the best assistants. Monty has a similar problem, now I think Monty's assistant situation is built on seeking comfort and trust rather than ego, but I also think one of his biggest problems is he needs one of his top 2 assistants to not be his assistant coaches in Philly.

For all the talk about Monty being Pop Jr., he spent 1.5 years with Pop as a player and 1 year about as low as you can get on the coaching totem pole. He's a Larry Brown disciple (granted so is Pop). His 2 top assistants are Larry Brown disciples. I'm not trying to say that's inherently a bad thing, just that I think that's a lot of potential group think and some outside influence would be good. Replacing Malone with Hanners was a mistake, and I honestly like Hanners, he seems like a good coach.

Was the defense top 10 when Malone was here because CP3/Ariza/Okafor were better than Jrue/AD/Asik, or is it because Malone was here? I really wish we could start the season over with the current roster and see how much of a difference having legit SFs makes.