Thanks Mr. Stotts. Thanks a lot.
Man, I was looking forward to the Bucks season this year. Look back in my previous posts. Expectations were high. Well those are gone, in fact they vanished about three months ago. Now on the eve of the NBA playoffs the Milwaukee Bucks are facing the foaming at the mouth Detroit Pistons. The pride of the Motor City is about devour the boys from the big sausage.
Where did we go wrong? We had the first pick, we signed a big name free agent, we even pulled a late pre season move that got us depth at the center position. Not to mention the already young nucleus that was in place. Somewhere something went horribly wrong. We should've seen it coming. How man last second shots can a team make? How poor of defense can you play before it starts catching up on you? In the NBA what goes around comes around. It's such a bad cliche but it's so true. The Bucks played by the skin of their teeth early on, and they lost the same way down the stretch. I think the Bucks problems started before any of the aforementioned deals were made. Before the number one pick. It all went bad last June.
We fired Terry Porter, a good coach, and an even better guy. Talk about a screw job. Now I'm not saying the Bucks would be any better this year with Porter, but it set percedant. Porter did a good job. Two years ago he took a Bucks team with much less talent to the same place Stotts took this team. And I'd argue, along with most of Milwaukee that this 2006 team has WAY more talent. Stotts lost the team. The never played defense, they never played disciplined, and they never looked well coached. For those who think an NBA coach doesn't make a difference look at the Lakers. Enough said.
This season falls squarely on the shoulders of Stotts. He didn't get it done. A coaches job is to get the most out of their players. That was not achieved. The Bucks have Bogut, and Magloire. Do they run any offense through them, no. They jump shoot. Was defense emphasized? No. The Bucks had a chance to get the five seed all they had to do was beat the Raptors, and the Hawks. Oh yeah, at home. They didn't. Both games, blow outs. I guess when it's all said and done I'm disappointed. Did I think the Bucks would win it all? No. But I thought they'd be better than Cleveland, and the Nets. Clearly they weren't. Was it personal? Sure a little. But I think poor coaching sunk this ship. Hopefully Terry Porter is still available.
posted by laughjon at 20.4.06
4 Comments:
As Bill Simmons put it; "Before I anointed the Bucks as my sleeper for the second half, I probably should have monitored their coach for a few games. Good golly. If Terry Stotts ever helms another NBA team after this season, that's going to be a bigger upset than Anne Hathaway getting naked in consecutive movies."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060317
I say bring back Nellie, or maybe Del Harris can coach the team his son GMs.
Sadly, I don't think they'll fire Stotts unless a bigger name coach is available. And when you think about it, why would they fire Stotts if that were not the case?
Sure he's a terrible coach, but they'd go through the same song and dance.
The biggest element that should have tipped us off was the whole Flip Saunders thing. Which was really the whole Larry Brown thing. If he weren't a coaching whore, looking for greener grasses everywhere he grazed, then we would have Flip coaching us. And be a 4 or 5 seed.
Sadly, I don't think they'll fire Stotts unless a bigger name coach is available. And when you think about it, why would they fire Stotts if that were not the case?
Sure he's a terrible coach, but they'd go through the same song and dance.
The biggest element that should have tipped us off was the whole Flip Saunders thing. Which was really the whole Larry Brown thing. If he weren't a coaching whore, looking for greener grasses everywhere he grazed, then we would have Flip coaching us. And be a 4 or 5 seed.
Here's a game to play Jon:
I'm gonna make a prediction to what your next blog is gonna be about. But i'm going to hide the prediction in a previous post (the HBO one). So write what you were going to write and then go see if i was right.
Of course, now I'm afraid that you're going to write a different blog because you don't want me to be right, but you should look at it this way: We're a team in this game, so we either both win or both lose. So you should write what you were originally going to write before you read this. That being said, you should also not try to write what you think that i think you're going to write just to try and make us right so we win the game. Basically what i'm saying is that proceed in writing as if you'd never read this, so that it has no influence one way or the other on what you write.
And...go.
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