Del Negro the Coach next season

I just wanted to know what you guys thoughts were on whether Vinnie is out this offseason as the coach. Who are candidates if so? My room mate brought up the fact that no FA are going to want to play for Vinnie. I kinda agree but then Idk wat the bulls are going to do cuz idk how long vinnies contract is.

Personally, Id be happy with a coach that is going to get on the team about defense but knows how to coach on offense as well.

 

this.

and besides, do you think someone like Avery Johnson would want to come here? actually , maybe

 

I think Vinnie doesnt get his proper credit either, but somethin tells me that unless Vinnie does somethin to show that hes absolutely serious about his coaching style (and doesnt seem like a pushover) then I think he might get canned. And I do believe he is a players coach, btw. He seems very understanding, but I think he might be a lil too nice.

 

He is definetely gone if Bulls don't make the playoffs.

Any chance they would hire Wade's HS coach?

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's better than most any alternative we could get. And if we conclude the season relatively well, would upsetting the stability and bringing in someone new be that conducive to getting a guy like Lebron, Wade or Bosh?

I guess I don't see any coach out there, short of Wade's HS coach, lol, that'll be obviously better.

I can imagine a lot that would be obviously worse.

 

I really don't understand why people want to give Vinny so much credit. Dubious talent? That's ridiculous. The bulls have as much talent 75% of the league. The difference between good and bad has always been getting the most out of that talent. The reason the bulls were so bad at the beginning of this year and last year is partly injuries, but just as much a failure by Vinny, especially this year. His shitty rotations were the main reason the bulls were getting blown out regularly. As soon as he went to a normal rotation, the bulls started winning. You don't get credit for not being a moron and Vinny's early season obsession with overplaying guys like Deng was moronic. And it's not like the bulls are winning because of their great execution in late game situations or astute timeout management.

And the no talent argument is completely bullshit. If you want to say that then how can the team be that much better this year given the loss of BG, their most prolific offensive player from last year, the decline of Salmons, and the no show from Miller for the first two months. Rose hasn't gotten that much better.

Vinny's future is entirely dependent on whether or not the bulls sign a big FA and that FA expects a big name coach. If the bulls get Bosh or Wade, Vinny is probably gone. If they end up with Lee and Ray Allen, he might stay.

 

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. If you acknowledge that the Bulls had injury issues and lack of talent, especially at the start of both seasons, then it's hard to criticize Vinny for not getting much out of it.

Last year, when he had the talent actually available (as in, on the court, healthy and playing), he won.

This year, the same.

On a final note, how can the team be that much better? Better than what? Last year at the same time?
1. Rose is much better.
2. Noah is much better.
3. The injury issues were less severe this year. This especially made Deng much better.

At the beginning of the year, Kurt, Salmons and Miller were all terrible and Rose was obviously playing injured. So yeah, the Bulls struggled, but I don't see that they were playing much under their talent level.

The reality of things in the NBA is that all but the very best teams frequently are streaky and prone to getting blown out when things are less than optimal.

On top of that, I think it's worth noting he had significant different talent last year (in which they ran more and played a more offensive game) compared to this year, where he's had them slow down and played a lot more of a defensive game.

Who's a bigger name at this point? Do you think Wade is going to sit there and go "Hey, I really can't wait to play for Doug Collins!"

 

Actually, their pace is faster (93.3 to 93.1) this year than last. So no, they haven't slowed anything down or really done anything differently. My problem is that Vinny lost the team games. The Sacramento game is the obvious example, but his bad rotations also cost them some close games against Milwaukee and Charlotte, to name two.

And on top of that, he hasn't developed anybody. Sefolosha, James Johnson, and even Tyrus demonstrate that. Instead of playing a guy coming off of a stress fracture in his leg the entire first 3 quarters, he should have been getting Johnson some minutes. We all know they were going to lose, but why not get some quality minutes out of it. He gave Sefo about two weeks before benching a guy who is now a starter on a possible 50 win team in the west. And while Tyrus is perhaps a lost cause in general, everybody has acknowledged he should have started him after he came back from injury. If the bulls were absolutely planning on dumping him, they could have at least gotten a better deal if they had played him more. And they might have won so more games.

There are plenty of bigger names out there than Vinny, although not necessarily that much better (Avery Johnson). There are even assistants like Thibadeau who have more appeal than Vinny.

Again, I don't think Vinny is a particularly bad coach, but he's not a good one either. This team has or at least had more talent than the team that won 49 games a few years back, but they aren't going to get close to that unless they go on a run. So why is Vinny doing such a good job?

 

That's interesting. I knew they'd sped up recently, but I haven't really had the chance to look at the numbers in a while, and they've really picked it up from early in the season. Earlier, they were playing really slow.

If you go around every forum, and go back in time and look at past coaches, pretty much everyone says their coach has "bad rotations".

Noah and Rose are clearly a lot better than they were at the start of Vinny's tenure. I think if we're going to be objective, we can't say that every success is the player's success and every failure is the coach's failure.

I tend to think Thabo and James Johnson suck, and that Tyrus actually did improve as a player, but his failure here seems due both to himself and the organization. I'd agree that Vinny clearly lost patience with him, but that makes the third coach in a row to do so.

Which gets to the underlying point. If that's the sort of criticism of Vinny, how many coaches are clear upgrades? I can't think of any obvious improvements. A guy like Collins or Van Gundy likely would have strangled him.

I guess we'll see if Larry Brown ends up souring on Tyrus' knuckleheadedness or he develops the inexplicable hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold love affair he seemed to have with AI.

Avery is about the only guy I can think of who might be a good sell, because he's an outsized, personality and has a strong record. Players tend to like that.

But I think in general players are more skeptical than we think about things. When players say they want to "go to a winner", they want to join up with a winning situation. A guy like Bosh or Wade is going to be leary, I think, of coming in to a situation where the expectation is that the coach is going to need a year of on the job training. Even the best assistants tend to need that. Especially coming into a new situation, as a guy like Thibadeau would be (as opposed to, I guess, maybe a Phil Jackson or Lawrence Frank sort of situation).

Let's say Vinny is a precisely average coach. Once you factor in the advantages of continuity, experience and uncertainty (do we hire another guy with no experience?), he has an obvious leg up over almost every alternative.

 

Continuity is shot if the bulls bring in a new starting SG and PF. What will matter is how prepared the players are and how well they are utilized, two things where a good coach will demonstrate Vinny's mediocrity. Especially given how little difference there is between most offensive and defensive systems. Unless they bring in somebody to run the triangle or the princeton offence, something out of the ordinary, the scheme's are very similar. 90% of the difference is execution and effort and that's where Vinny has come up short.

 

Well, they only have the money to bring in one.

But again, the point is the Bulls do tend to play hard and seem to be utilized about as far as their talent indicates. A "good coach" would be great, but there are really only about 5-10% of coaches out there that might be good. And most of them are coaching for other teams and unobtainable. There are a whole lot that would be epic disasters.

So where's the logic in firing an average young coach who, god forbid, might actually get better, and replacing him with an unknown. The probabilities are we'd get something worse.

 

Doug Thonus:

 

That's really what it comes down to for me too. Except for a very chosen few, I don't think there's that much difference in coaches. With a star driven league a coach that the players want to follow into battle (and yes, I can't believe I said that about Vinny) is a big deal. Sometimes getting out of the way and letting them play is a good thing. Maybe he sounds like a meathead but is really a freaking psychologist.

 

I think you're confusing Rose's naivete with following Vinny into battle. The rest of the guys are by design professional veterans who don't bitch or complain much. Pax has made it a point to get rid of guys who rock the ship for better or worse. I think that highlights Vinny's deficiencies more than anything because you know your going to get a consistent effort out of Deng and Hinrich. That has rubbed off on guys like Noah and Rose and Gibson. So that makes Vinny's job a lot easier and when he screws it up, it's that much more glaring. Vinny didn't do anything to change Tyrus's outlook or approach to the game, and that would have been one spot where he could have demonstrated his abilities as a "good" coach.

As far as the talent goes, he's had plenty to work with and the bulls should have made the playoffs and this year as well, especially in the east. Missing the playoffs would be a real mark against him.