O'Neill into his final few days as Raptors coach <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Kevin O'Neill will be making his last appearance at the Air Canada Centre tonight as head coach of the Raptors. Sources close to the team and the coach say final arrangements are being made for the sides to negotiate a buyout of the final year of O'Neill's contract. The move is expected to be finalized Thursday, when interim general manager Jack McCloskey is due in town. O'Neill's departure after just one season as an NBA head coach will pave the way the way for a new general manager to have a clean slate to operate from whenever the team gets around to hiring someone to replace Glen Grunwald. It's expected O'Neill's assistant coaches ? Tony Brown, Jim Sann, Bob Beyer and Ron Oliver ? will be let go. Jay Triano will be retained at least until a new GM is put in place.</div> All I can say is that I'm not sad....... For all those wanting Doc even though I don't, he's said he wants to go to a playoff team b/c of his Orlando experiences. Atlanta contacted him because Stotts was being fired but he said he doesn't want to go there.
i dont think this is such a good idea. o'neill brough tough defense to our team. seems kind of pointless to give up on him after only one year. sure he didnt have a good season, but he's becomming a scapegoat with that said, if the rumours are true, and he's not getting along with the players, he should be let go
well I thought the Raptors should have given him a chance but with that said and done wo should our coach be?
i didnt like KO due to his lack of faith in his bench....even when there were stretches when he bench players were playing good, hed end up benching them the next game...his minutes distribution strategies also lacked... its a good thing they let him go...hopefully they get a more expeiernced NBA coach in return
personall,y i thought KO brought a lot of positive aspects to the raptors. even though the raps didnt win many games this season he still did a really good job considering the injuries, the crappy bench, and the lack of a big man. despite losing this season, KO created a winning attitude for the players. even though the raps lost several games, a lot of them were close games and the players gave it their best. the defense has been intense and KO certainly renewed the passion of the players. the bottom line is that in the nba u cant win without any big men and without a bench. if this rumor is true, i wish KO all the best as the raps head on their search for a new GM and a new coach. hopefully the new guys would be good.
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Several league sources say people that McCloskey has contacted about the general manager's job are nearly unanimous in their opinion that the job is much more attractive without a coach in place, regardless of the job O'Neill has done in Toronto.</div> It's always more attractive to a GM to come in with a clean slate rather than just come and have to fire someone.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting og15:</div><div class="quote_post">It's always more attractive to a GM to come in with a clean slate rather than just come and have to fire someone.</div> yeah i guess thats true. it was a lose lose situation. some1 had to deal with hard times. either KO or the new GM. it sjust unfortunate for both....
I think that its sad that KO won't be back next season. I believe he did a good job for us in terms of execution after timeouts and his passion towards the game. However, he did have problems with the players he played and I feel that he could've done a better job with that aspect. Nevertheless, I understand why the organization had to let him go, Basically, the new GM that is coming in will probably want to bring in his own coach that he is familiar with so that they are on the same page. Very important for any team. I wish KO the best, and see him returning as an assistant to Carlisle next season.
I don't think this was a bad move, but with injuries and having 23 different players in this year its hard to get a consistent lineup. I wish KO the best, I'm excited to see who the new coach will be, I'm hoping for Doc Rivers or Byron Scott.
ditto to dj premium plus and franchise. I also didn't like how he hardly played bench players. Thats the way the ball bounces, I guess. Good luck KO. Bring on the new coaches. I don;t think its realistic to any extent htat Peddie will be fired(isn't he president of all operations with MLSE?), so I hope to find a real new look raptors next season. Vince promised(sorta) that we would be in the playoffs next season(after 2nights home game), Lets see that happen.
Wait...hold up a second. This hasn't been set in stone guys. Sure, the Star offered a very convincing story...but you guys don't even know who our new GM is gonna be. You never know, he might like what O'Neill has done this season, much like what many of you think of him, and not fire him after all. Don't get your hopes too high guys...even though i can't speak much for myself, cause i AM EXCITED to see him leave.
The didn't say the GM would fire him, Peddie will, they want to have no coach when the new GM comes in. It also sounded like O'neil knew he was gone in the pre-game interviews, he said maybe I'll just take a year off next year and stay with my son.
i kinda feel sorry for oneil, he came in and it was his rookie year give him a break, i mean he had to dela withinjuries and 23 players and was hardly the fault of inconsistent play imo. H/O i did see things i didn't like. But i think he did what the raptors said at the beginnning of the season that was expected out of him. heh, gl to him and his coaching career.
wow, I'm surprised how sympathetic everyone is with KO. If you go on any other message board, everyone's just straight up hating on the guy. Even though I wanted him out, I still won't bash him as much as those people would. They would just blame KO on every single game we lost and every single thing that went wrong. It was just ridiculous. So it's actually a pleasant surprise to see everyone here showing sympathy for KO and giving him credit where credit is due. That first post I made was actually kind of mean spirited now that I looked over it. Oh well, it still doesn't change my opinion.
I dont like KO much, he always said, "Work on defense, the offense will come", he doesnt have any offensive sets, just, give the ball to Carter, and they will make their own. I remember the beginning of the season, everyone said "KO plays a team game, and Carter may not get as many touches or scoring b/c KO is for team ball".. where was that? If it really was team ball we'd win more, but instead, they give the ball to Carter, Carter waits, all the defense gathers up on him, he passes out then the rest of the teammates have a hard time responding. I'd rather a coach good on offence than a good one on defense. B/c defense is easier to play than offence. And the fact that KO doesnt play zone, makes it harder for your team to defend man on man. I also hated the fact that KO doesnt play Moiso. Even when Moiso doesnt play for a long time, he still plays with confidence whenever he gets inserted, Moiso has alot of potential, him and Bosh together is a really good team-up, but no, KO prefers crappy Blount and never gets Moiso to play. So if we had KO again, Moiso would be stuck in street clothes, therefore, i'd rather have KO go, and have the possibility of another coach giving Moiso more playing time.
Our main offensive sets were Isolation Carter and create, or Isolation Rose and create with no movement from the rest of the team just spotting up in the corners for three's.
Although I agree that he lacks creativity, I still wouldn't criticize his offensive sets too much. I feel that our offense sucks mainly because of the holes in our line-up more than anything else. I also feel that where ever he lacks in offense he makes up for it on defense (lets not forget that he did turn us into great defensive team). But the main reason why I don't like KO is because of the way he held grudges toward players. IMO if a coach doesn't get along with one of his players, the answer isn't to bench the guy for the rest of the season. The answer is to try to work out your differences out off court so that the team doesn't have to suffer on the court. Although Moiso wasn't all that great when he did play, he still didn't deserve to be benched for a whole season. Seeing how we were in desperate need of size, I believe that Moiso could've really helped our situation and eliminated a lot of the stress that Bosh and Marshall were going through. In a way, our success depended on whether Moiso could've came through or not, but how will we ever know if he could when he doesn't even get to play at all? Oh yah and as much as I don't like Lamond Murray, he too didn't deserve to be benched for an entire season.
Well our defense was better but it was also due to the fact that we slowed the game down so much that our opponents got so bored they started missing shots. Its true that we've kept opponnents FG% down, but the main reason their PPG against us is down is mainly because of how slow the pace of Raptor games are.
Considering how physically weak our front court is and how slow our back court is, yet still keeping teams to a low FG% says a lot about KO's defense. And he's somehow doing this without taking advantage of the zone.
