re: Will Wade- Hit Piece- Recruiting

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t here's what confuses me, you said earlier that he and his wife were still together and that the whole family was close. His wife accepting back door deals without his knowledge doesn't really match that.

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That is what baffles me also. Doing the season, if you would have told me this was going to happen, I would have told you, you're smoking crack. But now that I think about it, I always saw his wife in the presence of Ms. Julie (the head of the PUMA Circuit) quite often. I never really saw Coach Rafer in the presence of Ms. Julie.

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Not saying there's any way for you to really know whats going

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Since the end of the season, I can't speak on what happenned to the family dynamics. I know I saw a very close knit family doing the circuit season.

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appreciate the knowledge you've given,

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Thank you. I'm only speaking from my very close interactions with Coach Rafer, Reese, and his wife from this spring/summer season.

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What are his other issues?

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Professionalism, lack of self discipline, disregard for authority, lying, ...etc. should i go on?

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your oh-so-well thought out novels

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My post was 3 letters

Madking and alt26 are by far the best basketball posters on this board and it ain’t even close

Hence the problem...


3 letters...



Prolly confused him.

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his players have amounted to nothing after they left, they were really not that good. so many of them had a terrible flaw or they could only do one thing well.

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I didn't say the talent was great. What I did say was I never saw anything that he did as a coach to make me think he was a good coach. Never outside of the 2 week stretch I mentioned did he seem to elevate the talent he had to overachieve.

I always found his substitution rotations odd, the combinations he chose to play with, who he played together, when and how much. I almost always has issues with it, Brady would often question it on air an even questioned CMM about it a few times and the answers for me did not seem to address it. And his teams ALWAYS seemed to lack toughness, which he never seemed to address in his 4 years there.

Oh well, it really doesn't matter which of us is right on that, he did not have the chops to do the type of fundraising it takes in today's game, so if you think it's all about the players and he was a great coach, it never would have worked anyway because he was never going to go the extra mile to help to raise funding for his roster.....to his detriment.

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- His rotations were poor
- one note offense with no variation
- poor defense on every level fundamentally
- no variety on defense
- no identity on either side

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That, and he just never seemed to have any real feel for the game flow. Whatever the game plan was at the beginning is what it remained throughout the game, regardless of how the game was going. He rarely tried to change the pace of a game or throw something different at an opponent, even if just for a few possessions, if what LSU was doing wasn't working. If adjustments did come, it was only after LSU was down 20+ in the second half when it was too late. There were times when LSU may have been within remote striking distance late in games and he would almost seemingly concede defeat by not trying to press, create turnovers or more possessions. He would just run the same thing and hope it might work before the time ran out (which rarely happened).

There were many, but two games (ironically against the same team) stick out in my mind. In 2024 LSU played Mississippi St. coming off of back to back wins over ranked South Carolina and Kentucky. It was the high point of the McMahon tenure and LSU found themselves on the fringe of the NCAAT conversation. MSU was a very methodical, half-court, slow tempo team that had a big frontcourt and 1 freshman guard who could score. MSU wanted a half-court rock fight and McMahon happily obliged, leading to a blowout and basically the end of any NCAAT talk. At no point in the game did McMahon ever thing to extend his defense or try anything to increase the tempo or change the gameflow, which could have favored LSU and was the opposite of how MSU wanted to play. He just sat there, arms folded and watched MSU slowly choke LSU out. The game plan was the game plan and there were no deviations...not matter how ineffective the plan was.

3 weeks later LSU played MSU in the SEC Tournament. It was a sloppy game at first, but midway through the first half he inserted Hunter Dean...who changed the entire flow of the game. He was scoring, rebounding, defending, and giving LSU the energy to run out to a 10 point halftime lead. So you stick with that hot hand to start the second half right? No. The original starting 5 was back on the court, including an ineffective Will Baker, because you just don't deviate from the plan. The same starting 5 always starts the second half, no matter how it played in the first half. Predictably, LSU started slow, MSU quickly erased the lead, and all momentum had been lost by the time, 8:00 later, McMahon thought it might be a good idea to insert the guy who changed the game in your favor in the first half.

So many times a guy would get hot and then he would be subbed out because that was the predetermined plan. That guy would go to the bench, get out of the rhythm he was in, and never play as well again the rest of the way. Yes, maybe the plan was to sit him at the 12:00 or 8:00 mark. But if a guy is hot you don't take him out. You let it roll until either (a) he cools off or (b) he's just so exhausted he needs a break. But that was McMahon. The game plan said he comes out at the 8:00 mark so that's what you do...regardless of the actual gameflow.

It blows my mind that their are people that legit think McMahon is a good coach

Yea gotta agree Mad and alt both bring a lot of good basketball post.