Ok, I have tried to be patient and give this a chance, but there are too many things going wrong right now. Let's just review the facts:
1 - Our star player is underperforming and is not playing at a consistently elite level. I know he had some injury issues, but a coach is supposed to help his best players play at their peak. Quite frankly, none of our "stars" look great.
2 - Our young players are exciting, but erratic and making too many mistakes. A coach is supposed to teach these fundamentals, yet our young players turn the ball over too much and have poor shot selection on top of their inconsistency.
3 - We have a coach who is supposed to be a genius and know his offense and defence, yet we have only scored 100 points or more in 4 of the last 12 games and even had 78 in one of them. Yuck! During this same stretch, the opposition has scored over 100 8 times (one other game they had 99, so almost 9 of 12). Basically our coach can't get the team to play defence and his wide open offense isn't clicking with out players. Frankly this team looks ill prepared at times.
4 - Our record is terrible, there's no way we're going to make the playoffs in the tough Western Conference. Right now we are 11-16, which puts us 5 games under .500 and is no where close to making the playoffs. Furthermore, we have trouble holding leads and have lost too many games in the 4th quarter. This team isn't good and that reflects on the coach. I know that he is new, but I already think letting go of our old coach was a mistake.
On top of all of this there's players grumbling on the bench. Petrie's no help, he traded our best player for a disgruntled star and some of his draft picks look really questionable right now. His big free agent acquisition is too old to get better and looks shaky at times already. All this and we have no shotblockers, I think Petrie has lost it. And while we won't make the playoffs our record will still be too good to get a top pick like we need and allow us to draft a young big man. So why are we hanging onto a mediocre coach who we got off the trash heap from the Warriors after he couldn't even get them into the playoffs and had similar problems there?
I think our action plan needs to be firing the coach immediatley. I don't know who this Rick Adelman guy is, but he's not getting the job done. If we fire Adelman we can try to trade some of our stars and tank. If we get the top pick we can draft Elton Brand to be our future center and give us the shotblocker we need. If we do this, we might have a chance in 1999-2000.
Ok, obviously this post was sarcastic; however, there have been a lot of posts about firing Muss recently or at least questioning the replace Adelman with him. I think we all need to take a step back and remember that he has only been coaching this team for 23 games (well, they're playing 24 right now) and it takes time for teams to gel and adjust. While the comparison isn't 100% perfect, I think it serves as a good reminder that the Rick Adelman era started off very shaky and a lot of people had major doubts at that point about whether or not that team would be any good. The biggest difference between now and then is the fan base. If Muss had led the team to this record after 15 stright losing seasons we would have the same cautious optimism we had back then. Right now we have all been so fortunate to by watch so many good playoff teams that people are naturally overreacting to a rough start to the season.
As a final thought, let's actually give Muss a full season before we start talking seriosly about whether or not he's a good coach or a good fit. Let's see if the team shows improvement over the next 59 games or if the team quits on him and limps to the finish line. Right now we are only 1 game back of the last playoff spot and definitley have the potential to make a major push just like we did in 1998-1999. Right now it is way too early to draw any real conclusions about this team or this coach, let's revisit this some time in April when we can actually start to draw some accurate conclusions.
(edited with some bold and italic text based on suggestions below, sorry if this post went on too long before getting to the "punch line")
1 - Our star player is underperforming and is not playing at a consistently elite level. I know he had some injury issues, but a coach is supposed to help his best players play at their peak. Quite frankly, none of our "stars" look great.
2 - Our young players are exciting, but erratic and making too many mistakes. A coach is supposed to teach these fundamentals, yet our young players turn the ball over too much and have poor shot selection on top of their inconsistency.
3 - We have a coach who is supposed to be a genius and know his offense and defence, yet we have only scored 100 points or more in 4 of the last 12 games and even had 78 in one of them. Yuck! During this same stretch, the opposition has scored over 100 8 times (one other game they had 99, so almost 9 of 12). Basically our coach can't get the team to play defence and his wide open offense isn't clicking with out players. Frankly this team looks ill prepared at times.
4 - Our record is terrible, there's no way we're going to make the playoffs in the tough Western Conference. Right now we are 11-16, which puts us 5 games under .500 and is no where close to making the playoffs. Furthermore, we have trouble holding leads and have lost too many games in the 4th quarter. This team isn't good and that reflects on the coach. I know that he is new, but I already think letting go of our old coach was a mistake.
On top of all of this there's players grumbling on the bench. Petrie's no help, he traded our best player for a disgruntled star and some of his draft picks look really questionable right now. His big free agent acquisition is too old to get better and looks shaky at times already. All this and we have no shotblockers, I think Petrie has lost it. And while we won't make the playoffs our record will still be too good to get a top pick like we need and allow us to draft a young big man. So why are we hanging onto a mediocre coach who we got off the trash heap from the Warriors after he couldn't even get them into the playoffs and had similar problems there?
I think our action plan needs to be firing the coach immediatley. I don't know who this Rick Adelman guy is, but he's not getting the job done. If we fire Adelman we can try to trade some of our stars and tank. If we get the top pick we can draft Elton Brand to be our future center and give us the shotblocker we need. If we do this, we might have a chance in 1999-2000.
Ok, obviously this post was sarcastic; however, there have been a lot of posts about firing Muss recently or at least questioning the replace Adelman with him. I think we all need to take a step back and remember that he has only been coaching this team for 23 games (well, they're playing 24 right now) and it takes time for teams to gel and adjust. While the comparison isn't 100% perfect, I think it serves as a good reminder that the Rick Adelman era started off very shaky and a lot of people had major doubts at that point about whether or not that team would be any good. The biggest difference between now and then is the fan base. If Muss had led the team to this record after 15 stright losing seasons we would have the same cautious optimism we had back then. Right now we have all been so fortunate to by watch so many good playoff teams that people are naturally overreacting to a rough start to the season.
As a final thought, let's actually give Muss a full season before we start talking seriosly about whether or not he's a good coach or a good fit. Let's see if the team shows improvement over the next 59 games or if the team quits on him and limps to the finish line. Right now we are only 1 game back of the last playoff spot and definitley have the potential to make a major push just like we did in 1998-1999. Right now it is way too early to draw any real conclusions about this team or this coach, let's revisit this some time in April when we can actually start to draw some accurate conclusions.
(edited with some bold and italic text based on suggestions below, sorry if this post went on too long before getting to the "punch line")
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