I think this guy would agree with you: The biggest issue with Clifford’s defense is simple: it’s outdated. The primary goal of defense should be making life as difficult as possible for offenses. As the NBA has changed, Clifford’s defense no longer accomplishes that. Today, teams are taking and making three-pointers more frequently than ever. And the Hornets let them. The team does a pretty good job preventing opponents from taking high-percentage corner threes, but they allow way too many from everywhere else. And though opponents might not take a lot of shots, from the corner, they hit them at an absurd rate. The major takeaway here is that Charlotte allows its opponents to take too many three-pointers. And opponents are making them pay for it. This is a function of the Hornets’ defensive scheme. That scheme involves big defenders hanging way back against the pick-and-roll, clogging passing lanes and blocking off the paint. The consequence? Plays like this one from Monday night’s game, where the Nuggets’ Darrell Arthur gets a wide-open look from three.
I like Darvin Ham a lot. If Bud gets fired I’d like him here. I’m probably way off base here, like usual, but I think some young black assistant coaches might garner more respect from the team
I don't know anything about him but I did find this: “Defense is something you can get right most nights. Nothing is 100 percent perfect, but there’s a lot of excellence involved in defense and you really give yourself a chance to win if you’re focused on that end of the court. What you can take away from teams, the opportunities you can create for yourself offensively mostly comes from the defensive end. Whether you’re causing a team to turn the ball over, cause them to take a shot they’re not looking for, cause a team to throw a bad pass…It’s one of those things where you can really get it right if you work at it. We work our defense through film studies, individual workouts, team workouts. We spend a lot of time focusing on how we want to approach the game. People get caught in changing things from game to game, but I think one of the biggest reasons why we’ve been so successful is the fact that we plan on how we’re going to use our strengths and what’s the best suitable coverage to defend someone from our point of view. From our skill set, from our personnel. It’s fun. I love it. I love seeing that look in people’s faces when they can’t score or get into the paint, their action or get to their source of offense.” and this: “You got to be a bottom line guy,” Ham said. “There’s a lot of gray areas in basketball, but as a coach sometimes you got to speak in terms of black and white. I don’t mean race, just being matter of fact about what you’re explaining to these guys. And if you’re wrong you have to be able to listen too. I feel like you don’t serve your coach in a proper way if you’re not honest with him. You just can’t disagree just for the sake of disagreeing. It has to make sense. But when you’re able to have that honesty with the guy you’re working for, it not only makes you more valuable, it makes the staff more valuable because we’re speaking in honest terms.” And he has worked with D'antoni before.
And there is this: Milwaukee ranked first in defensive rating during both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.
I'm starting to come around to your way of thinking. Having two older white guys (D'Antoni and Clifford), might not be a good idea. And I see Cedric Maxwell is also advocating hiring a person of color: “I think it’s important because if you look at the Celtics front office, if you look at most of those people who are there, who have been in the front office, ownership, everything else, those people aren’t of color,” said Maxwell, now a Celtics radio analyst. “So I think it would help the players if they found somebody who they could relate to maybe a little bit more. So that’s why I think it’s very important.”
White includes all the colors of the rainbow. So hire a white person, because skin color is very important.
