Mike D'Antoni Discussion: post in 7 seconds or less

lakerswiz wrote:

khmrP wrote:what offense was there under Brown? It was just ISO Kobe and let him go to work.

You're not even able to identify the triangle offense that we ran for an entire decade and you want to act like you were able to dissect the type of offense being played?

seeing as how you're the only one here who thought Brown offense actually looked good, I take your jabs with a grain of salt.

I love Phil, but I can't say I agree that he'd have come in and magically fixed this defense. Assuming that would be forgetting how lost we looked defensively against Dallas in the '11 playoffs. Wide open 3 after wide open 3 after wide open 3 after...

Lakerman JSJ wrote:I love Phil, but I can't say I agree that he'd have come in and magically fixed this defense. Assuming that would be forgetting how lost we looked defensively against Dallas in the '11 playoffs. Wide open 3 after wide open 3 after wide open 3 after...

well i'll be the one to give it to dallas, they really did not miss a single shot that series it seemed like

but that was a tired lakers team

lakerswiz wrote:

Lakerman JSJ wrote:I love Phil, but I can't say I agree that he'd have come in and magically fixed this defense. Assuming that would be forgetting how lost we looked defensively against Dallas in the '11 playoffs. Wide open 3 after wide open 3 after wide open 3 after...

But no one is saying it would magically have been fixed. (well maybe some are, but I haven't seen anyone mention instant #1 seed)

It's just that it would be different. We'd have some structure. A little more discipline. Oh and respect. I think the incredible amount of respect that players had for Phil is highly underrated too (at least when compared to Dan Tony).

Oh and the pace of the game would be so incredibly different the impact on the games would be vast.

I really don't think we'd have seen any more success with Phil. You're right about the pace and you're right about the respect, but it'd take literally the entire season to get part of the Triangle down and in the mean time we'd be losing games pretty much the same way we're losing now. Phil wasn't a defensive mastermind either like JSJ said. We'd still be giving up plenty of points.

Not to mention, Phil couldn't save us from these God **** injuries. I know I'm harping on that and it seems like I'm making excuses, but f*** we've had some awful luck. And on top of the awful luck we're playing really awful basketball.

Ugh...

lakerswiz wrote:

khmrP wrote:

lakerswiz wrote:

khmrP wrote:what offense was there under Brown? It was just ISO Kobe and let him go to work.

You're not even able to identify the triangle offense that we ran for an entire decade and you want to act like you were able to dissect the type of offense being played?

seeing as how you're the only one here who thought Brown offense actually looked good, I take your jabs with a grain of salt.

Please show me where I ever said that offense looked good.

You keep putting words into my mouth. You keep dodging anything you originally posted about. You have really no idea about anything you've ever talked about on this site. And again, I never even said the offense looked good.

0-4 before finally getting a marginal win against the worse team in the league at the time in Det where he had to put back starters in the 4th with a double digit lead only to follow it up with a shalacking by the Jazz and some how your Nostradamous vision would suggest we would've been top 8 seed with Brown under the helm? WOW just WOW

lakerswiz wrote:We'd at least be in the top 8 seeds.

And the time it takes to implement the triangle is widely overrated and over-hyped.

I don't agree at all. It took Lamar Odom years to figure it out, I don't think Artest knows it at this point in his career, It took most of our role players years to figure it out. There's two guys that the Lakers have had in the last 5 years that I think have a true grasp of it and that's Kobe and Gasol. And of the two, Gasol is the only one who ran it the right way

The Triangle is the most complicated offense in the league and most guys have a really hard time picking it up. Well the most complicated after that crazy hybrid offense that Brown and Jordan made up. I actually think that offense would have worked eventually, but it would have taken probably 2-3 years to figure out.

lakerswiz wrote:You keep putting words into my mouth. You keep dodging anything you originally posted about. You have really no idea about anything you've ever talked about on this site. And again, I never even said the offense looked good.

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so let get this clear, you didn't say the D was good, the O wasn't good either under Brown but yet still claim we would've been better off with Brown? make sense

Before Phil came, LO was primarily an on-ball player. If he didn't have the ball in his hands, he was basically clueless. It took him forever to figure out how to play off the ball. It wasn't until his 3rd season under Phil that he started making meaningful cuts to the basket. It also took him sometime to become comfortable doing catch-and-shoot.

The triangle is a PITA for players to pick up, especially those who play with the ball in their hands.

lakerswiz wrote:I don't think it was understanding the triangle though. It was Lamar Odom not understanding his role. He never knew when to be passive with the ball and he never knew when to take it himself. Once he realized his role, his play was consistent and we were playing very well. But him not understanding how to play in the offense itself? Eh, I'm not sure about that.

Well the difference is really very subtle and the point is the same: the guys now would all have to go through the same thing. Nash, Gasol, Dwight, and Kobe are all used to playing with the ball right? Playing off the ball would be hard for them to pick up with the Triangle just like it's hard for them to pick it up now.

With Phil they might be a little better, but certainly we'd be in a similar situation to what we're in now. Would we be in the playoff seeding? Possibly. But at the same time Phil couldn't have stopped Dwight's labrum from tearing, or that concussion to Pau's face, or Nash's freak injury. We'd still be struggling.

I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised by the lack of defense of a D' Antoni team. He's unconcerned with it. Always has been.

This is part of why the majority of Laker fans let out a collective groan when we hired D' Antoni. We let out the same collective groan when Mike Brown was hired for the opposite reason - we knew the offense would be heavy Kobe ISO.

We substituted a guy with one weakness for a guy with the opposite weakness. Brown was so controlling, so slow down that it was a crawl and boring on the offense. D' Antoni's idea of defense is making more shots than the other team.

To me and to most Laker fans it was clear in both cases that we weren't getting the best possible coach each time. We could have had Adelman last time; we could have had Phil, or Sloan or McMillan this time around.

But honestly, of the two coaching hires, I'd say this D' Antoni is much worse in most respects. First, his system is such a poor fit for the personnel. At least with Brown the focus was on the D, which is where they needed the most coaching and help. Secondly, they had a chance with this hire to correct their last mistakes and to get an excellent coach. Instead they rushed their hire once again, this time without any due diligence at all - no call to Sloan, no call to McMillan, and a total diss to Phil. And what was that crap with Dunleavy? Are you kidding me? Considering Dunleavy over Sloan and McMillan? Was that for real or just another ruse to scare Laker fans into accepting D' Antoni because look what we could end up with? Horrifying.

The jury isn't completely out on D' Antoni, but those opponent scores: 125, 126, 112, etc. shouldn't be a giant surprise. Nor should the losses in those cases. The problem I see is what Lakerswiz is talking about, how is this going to change? This coach isn't going to focus on defense. And if they aren't, then I agree with Revgen, kiss the playoffs goodbye.

Something has to give at some point, either the Lakers hope for the playoffs, the players changing, or the coach's philosophy and approach changing.

Yeah I mean there's some issues here. I think if Nash had more control we'd be more successful. He's got a little bit of a Sessions syndrome happening right now where he's deferring too much. Not just to Kobe, but to D'Antoni and to Gasol and to Howard too.

We need him to be really just the master of the offense. He can control the pace any way he feels. He knows better than anyone how to run an offense to suit his team. I'm hopeful that he'll figure it out. I think we're all just so f***ing fed up with losing that we're pushing ourselves to climb out of the hole. This feels like watching the Dodgers swing for the fences every f***ing at bat after the big Red Sox trade.

We're trying so hard, but we're trying at the wrong things (offense) and we're not even doing it the right way. It's hard to watch. Dying hard sucks.

Realdeal - I absolutely agree that the injury bug has been devastating to this team. But two things - first, losing Nash would not have been AS devastating to Phil as it was to D' Antoni. You yourself said he wasn't even trying as a coach because he didn't have Nash. That's throwing away a good, what, 15 games or so under his watch?

Second, we've now seen the Lakers semi-healthy under D' Antoni, and there aren't many excuses for losing those games at home to Philly and Denver. When we were basically healthy this team played classic D' Antoni ball: when they were making threes as a team they were winning, when they weren't they were dying. In both cases there was very little defense with the exception of the X-Mas game against NY.

By the way, again for the record, as much as I thought it would make for a fairy tale type ending with Phil, my choice for coach was Sloan. I thought his system was the best for the personnel.

Lakerjones wrote:Realdeal - I absolutely agree that the injury bug has been devastating to this team. But two things - first, losing Nash would not have been AS devastating to Phil as it was to D' Antoni. You yourself said he wasn't even trying as a coach because he didn't have Nash. That's throwing away a good, what, 15 games or so under his watch?

Second, we've now seen the Lakers semi-healthy under D' Antoni, and there aren't many excuses for losing those games at home to Philly and Denver. When we were basically healthy this team played classic D' Antoni ball: when they were making threes as a team they were winning, when they weren't they were dying. In both cases there was very little defense with the exception of the X-Mas game against NY.

By the way, again for the record, as much as I thought it would make for a fairy tale type ending with Phil, my choice for coach was Sloan. I thought his system was the best for the personnel.

I'm with you LJ. Although I think Nash would have been utilized less with Phil than he was with Brown just because Phil doesn't really have any need for PGs. I think we would have seen more effort which would have maybe added a couple extra wins, but in the end we'd still be floating around .500 is my point.

You're right. At this point I feel like the Lakers really don't know how to win. They don't know how to strap their boots up and go to work like a Championship team. I don't know that I'd blame D'Antoni for ALL of it, certainly some. I think you're right about the offense being too focused on outside shots, but at the same time we can't even DO anything inside. Dwight isn't 100% and he's turnover prone in traffic right now. Pau is a nancy on the block these days and can't score. We don't necessarily have a ton of options...

And I'm with you on Sloan. I was saying the same things.

^^

Yeah, I don't think we'd be much higher than .500 with anyone as coach thus far given the injuries and the lack of time for the team to gel.

The thing though is the rest of the season, and it just looks to me like D' Antoni is in over his head, whereas a coach like Phil or Sloan I would have a lot more faith in to get back on track. I've now seen D' Antoni have the full team, even though it was a short time, and nothing in that time is leading me to believe that he knows how to utilize these guys in a way to get to the promised land. My faith is more in the players than the system. I keep thinking that they may rise above all of that - including what seems to me an errant philosophy in coaching style, and dig down deep enough to pull out a miracle. That could still happen.

But again, I saw the players do that naturally when Bernie just let them play. That was not sheer coincidence. And you and I talked about Bernie being there as a possible backup to Brown this summer. That to me was the only saving grace about Brown still here was that Bernie was also here. If the team continues to lose at this rate when we get D12, Pau and Hill back, I would cut my losses as the Lakers and let D' Antoni go. Sometimes you just have to admit a mistake and try to correct it. If they did that, they wouldn't need to hire anyone else, just re-instate Bernie as interim coach and play out the year with him. This is all hypothetical at this point. But if we continue to lose, I think it may be the only way to try and salvage the season.

I disagree, we know how to win, the focus simply isn't there. Christmas, the recent clips game and @ golden state are a couple of games that come to mind when we really collectively played better at the end of the game, and it was because of our defense. Especially that clips game we lost, we absolutely locked them down for the majority of the 4th. It was just too little too late.

We lack focus, we lack killer instinct, and we lack the drive to play a FULL game well (besides kobe & nash). Im giving d12 the benefit of the doubt because of injuries, he has had some beastly games this year. Same with metta, but the rest of our roster has been trash. We clearly have the ability to be a top team in this league, and we have played like it for small stretches, we simply seem brain dead out there most of the time. And it all starts on defense. Were talented enough to score without a structured disciplined offense, but our defense has been shameful, and it all stems from our brain dead players.

We looked great in the 1st Q, we were smothering their shooters but we just ran out of gas, we need more speed and athleticism. I thought we could get away with not having any but we cant. We need guys out there who can do more than 1 thing, one dimensional players are hurting us like crazy (Morris, Ebanks, Duhon, Meeks). Ron cant defend anymore. Guys are just blowing by him with ease and hes too inconsistent on offense so many freakin times last night he had Lin on him on offense and couldn't convert.

you know what really makes me crazy. Check the link at the bottom and look at the wins and lose in the month of November, we didn't have a head coach, played street ball and was able to get a pretty good win/loss ratio Nash was injured that time too. D'Antoni suddenly comes in and we lose like no tomorrow...

http://www.nba.com/lakers/schedule

Maybe it's the assistant coaches that are problems. No chemistry with D'Antoni. Just maybe.....

He's open to adjustments... that's maybe the only positive from him over Brown so far...

Time to fire this man or make some trades......they need to do something, its now or never if Lakers want to do this season bc our record is bad thats for sure but record is not major problem in this moment its our game and they need to do something to wake them up....maybe its the new coach, new players but something need to be done

themasterphil wrote:Time to fire this man

No it's not.

therealdeal wrote:

themasterphil wrote:Time to fire this man

No it's not.

maybe but then make the trade.....thats my point....just do something

themasterphil wrote:

therealdeal wrote:

themasterphil wrote:Time to fire this man

No it's not.

maybe but then make the trade.....thats my point....just do something

Not maybe. Brown was given a full season (technically), D'Atoni will be too.

Make a trade, sure, but there'll be a different trade arena closer to the deadline. If I were Mitch I'd seriously do what I could to get Gay out of Memphis and in a Laker uniform.

therealdeal wrote:

themasterphil wrote:

therealdeal wrote:

themasterphil wrote:Time to fire this man

No it's not.

maybe but then make the trade.....thats my point....just do something

Not maybe. Brown was given a full season (technically), D'Atoni will be too.

Make a trade, sure, but there'll be a different trade arena closer to the deadline. If I were Mitch I'd seriously do what I could to get Gay out of Memphis and in a Laker uniform.

Even after a full season I'm not sure it will happen.

Let say hypothetically (fingers crossed it doesnt happen) we miss playoffs this year after all of management/ownership's chest thumping in the offseason about wanting to win right now...

After the way we let Brown go, I just dont see Jimmy/Jerry admitting that the decision was wrong and flipping that quick. It the same as any other business. If people are constantly getting fired, the real problem is usually higher up. Either in terms of managing your employees, or poor hiring decisions to begin with.

My prediction is we get d'Antoni back next year as well.