What Monty Learned at Summer Camp

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yeah, not until fricking March

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That move felt like it was forced from the front office too, but let's try and keep an open mind and hope that he did learn from the Tyreke experience and Team USA. Monty's rigidness in roles for players has been well documented, probably stemming from his own career as a role player. Maybe he's finally seeing the light and will stop trying to pound square pegs into round holes.

If he means what he says, this may be the best news all offseason.

Agreed. I'm very optimistic after reading that article. Coaches have a learning curve too just as young players do. Monty's time around team USA can only help his development as a head coach.

#fireMonty
#hireKarl

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I can already feel myself getting angry whenever Monty has Jrue at the 1 and Reke at the 2 or 3.

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Do you enjoy being miserable or something?

Very interesting read on NBA coaching and how it is perceived. It's long, so I'll put highlights. But well worth the read

The Coach's Lament: Perception, Reality, and Role of an NBA Coach

Anonymous "Coach" is in italics when not clear he is being directly quoted.

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For a variety of reasons, the image of a coach is of a quasi-mythical figure who molds men into highly disciplined, single-purposed entities. This simply doesn’t reflect the reality of the job: players have their own agendas; managements goals and incentives aren’t always perfectly aligned with those of a given coach; the intense scrutiny of the modern media environment can discourage innovation and experimentation all while the rigors of the NBA schedule limit a coach’s time far more than is commonly understood.

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Frustrated with how “coaching” translates from the court through the TV and into the broader media, I went looking for some answers. During the first round of the 2014 playoffs, I spoke at length with an NBA coaching insider; in exchange for anonymity, he spoke with great candor. Coach (as I’ll refer to him hereafter) discussed the contrast between what viewers expect, what they see, and what actually happens within a team.

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“People’s ideas of coaching are rooted in movies or television,” said Coach. “[Fans] grow up believing the coach is an all knowing deity that is in charge of inspiring, motivating, teaching you the life lessons. It’s a very stereotypical expectation of coaches based on the fiction fans have seen. This ‘Coach Carter’ model simply doesn’t apply.”

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broadcasters are prohibited from televising the strategic guts of these conversations. As Coach explained:

They are not allowed to show the actual real work, so all you get is the platitudes and them exhorting the guys. You don’t hear the actual meat of it: “OK guys, DeRozan has just taken us off the dribble going right 3 times, we need to do a better job downing him on the pick and roll, sending him to the big and then sending help if Amir Johnson pops.” You don’t get any of that stuff. All you get is “Guys, run back on D, get on the boards.” It’s very misleading.

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According to Coach, it’s not as simple as issuing an ultimatum: “A lot of people think ‘coaching’ as changing how guys play or influencing guys through punishment. That works in high school: ‘I benched my starter to teach him a lesson.’ But that’s just not realistic in the NBA where you’re coaching for your own job all the time and you have to play talent to win.”

In fact, a Bear Bryant-style hardline method is likely unworkable on the NBA level. When I asked about one recent, short-lived and very unsuccessful coach, the biggest issues Coach identified were that he “tried to operate with an old school ‘my way or the highway’ approach” and had an “abrasive personality” leading to “an adversarial relationship with a lot of the players.” The players were unsurprisingly less than fully committed to this coach’s vision, and this lack of buy-in was reflected in the team’s poor record and resulting search for a new headman.

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Most coaches are, by nature, control freaks, and it’s difficult to let go of that. The best coaches are ones that put players in a position to succeed but are then able to step back and look at the picture and let players play. The most overused phrase in the NBA right now is “we’re going to change the culture.” The best coaches are very adept at establishing culture and relating to players. But to change a team’s culture ends up being more on the players. The leadership within the locker room is, for the most part, the most important thing. Coaches don’t have the time to be Dr. Phil. It’s putting the players in a position to reinforce the coach’s beliefs about how the team is going to play. The players holding themselves and their teammates responsible is the best way to do it.

The biggest complaints people have with some coaches is the idea they doesn’t put [the players] in a situation where the talent can excel as best it could. A lot of those complaints are probably legitimate but once the players get out on the floor, it’s tough [on the coach] because they players play the way they play. As a coach you hope they play the way you have specified. So while a coach can put together a philosophy and a game plan, often times it’s very difficult to see that through. There are a bunch of other factors that come into play.

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During the regular season, wholesale modifications and adjustments simply aren’t plausible:

CELTICS ASSISTANT GM MIKE ZARREN: “HOW MANY PRACTICES HAVE WE HAD IN 2014 SO FAR [AS OF MARCH 11], FIVE?”
CELTICS HEAD COACH BRAD STEVENS: “NONE. NONE THAT YOU WOULD CONSIDER TO BE A REALLY HARD HOUR-AND-A-HALF PRACTICE

You establish your philosophy in training camp, and then get reps early in the year in terms of your actions offensively and your schemes defensively. From there, for most of the year it’s a matter of trying to tweak as you go. You don’t really have time to get repetitions in to change things on a large scale. You have maybe a walkthrough or a shootaround and based on the advance (scouting) report, you might say, ‘We’re going to blitz player X on a pick-and-roll, on everyone else show-and-recover.’ You’re just tweaking things because it’s very difficult to pull a 180 when you don’t have time to get any reps or have the personnel to change things. The best you can do is to come up with small tweaks that put your players in better positions

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It’s not complicated: the easiest way to be a good coach is to have good players. Or, as Coach put it succinctly, “You can mold and prepare talent, but if you don’t have the talent to begin with, you’re at a distinct disadvantage.”

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Though Coach understands this “what an idiot” knee-jerk response, he cautioned that this reaction is based on a faulty understanding.

It goes back to one of the first things we talked about, which is ‘coaches are all-powerful beings. People think and NBA coach can change the course of the game through one action or one tough speech or recognizing something that is happening on the floor that no one has ever recognized before and making that strategic adjustment. That’s simply not a realistic way of looking at it, but it’s the way a lot of people imagine coaching to work. It’s much more the small changes and tweaks that help the team, especially through a playoff series, where you can make adjustments not only in a game but as you go from game to game.

It gets down to how people think coaches should act. You get back to early in the year, when Jason Kidd was getting crucified, and I had no idea at that point whether he could coach or not, but I wasn’t hopping on him when the Nets were getting killed. But people were getting on him because he sat (on the bench) for a lot of the time, because he wasn’t demonstrative, because he wasn’t yelling at people. This is a big difference between college coaching and pro coaching. Fans confuse being animated, gesticulating, yelling with coaching, they see that as coaching. ‘Why isn’t he yelling, why isn’t he getting upset?’ and they think of that as coaching as opposed to the actual work and preparation that happens, the teaching that truly is coaching.

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If I see him hanging around on the wing without the ball when we are on O, I am going to be livid.

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He's not going to run every play, and if his starting stats are any indication, he's a better option than Aminu. On top of being a threat to drive to the basket if the ball is swung to him, Tyreke shot 33.8% from 3 his last year in Sacramento and 32.5% after he became a starter for the Pelicans. Aminu shot 21% and 27% from 3 the last 2 seasons. I'm not saying Tyreke is a floor spacer, but I don't think he'll be completely ignored or get a PF guarding him (meaning a SF on Ryno) like Aminu did. Just give it time before you start throwing things at the TV.