<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> RAPTORS GENERAL manager Rob Babcock has no plans to fire head coach Sam Mitchell, not in the immediate days ahead nor at the end of the season. As the Raptors fall deeper out of playoff contention, there have been increased reports along the NBA grapevine that Mitchell could be on the verge of being fired -- joining the ranks of other dismissed head coaches this season, including Maurice Cheeks, Flip Saunders and Jeff Bzdelik. But Babcock told the Toronto Sun yesterday that he is satisfied with the job the personable and sometimes emotional Mitchell has done in his first year as a head coach -- stressing that his vote of confidence is the real thing and not a "kiss of death" vote of confidence. "He's a work-in-progress rookie coach, which we understood when we hired," said Babcock, who also is in his first year as an NBA general manager. "We elected to go with someone who has talent and the potential to be an excellent head coach in this league. But we understand there's a learning curve. </div>Source
I don't think Sam is a bad coach, but I think he will need some time to get used to Raptors; while growing lots of white hair in the process.
He's not a bad coach, not anything special, but good for a rookie coach, he needs to work on his out of bound plays though, and also on his defensive stuff. One thing about Kevin O'neil is that he always got us open shots on game winning plays, and also had nice out of timeout plays, Sam Mitchell doesn't have that.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting og15:</div><div class="quote_post"> and also on his defensive stuff.</div> Well...I dunno about that Mitchell is one of those hussle (sp) guys, go for the loose ball, run the floor, etc, I think he promotes defense within the team fairly well. I would rather think that our players seem to be a bit lazy on defense, we don't even have any good defensive players...I mean EDubb? MoPete can get streaky on D, and Hoffa is still a rook, who every game gets into foul trouble. like even we have our defensive games where we can actually play D. But yah in general he has alot to improve, but I don't really know whether or not the defense is his fault.
