Marc Stein: Terry most likely out.

Favors? No. Rubio? Not really. He's been losing in Minnesota since back in the days. Ingles today? Maybe. But the guy wasn't even drafted. Give credit to their coach for making a legit player out of him.

O'neal? Burks? These guys are cast-offs. The Blazers have much more raw talent but Snyder gets his players to play as a whole unit instead of individuals. Snyder > Stotts to the 10th degree.

 

Doesn't matter what they did before. The league is very situational. Rubio, Favors, and Ingles would start for many teams today.

I said starters.

 

Let's see how they do against Houston.

 

Of course you can be brave and say that today, but 6 months ago nobody would have thought twice about those guys or this team. We say it differently now because of their success as a team. This is obvious. We'd be talking about the Blazers starting 5 right now if they would have advanced as well. Doesn't take much courage to say this now.

You did. I said team as a whole. My points still stand. They are a far less talented team than the Blazers and most would even agree now. They are just better coached and it shows.

 

Stotts beat Snyder twice this year. The first time snapped Utah's longest win streak of the season. The second cost Utah home court advantage.

 

But who's in the 2nd round?

 

Oh, the games meant something but the sample didn't. There's a time for stats and a time for other metrics. It all depends on the situation.

If you get hung up looking for stats to prove you right then you're probably going to miss the mark. Stats are for guiding you to the most likely outcome of a future event, providing they are of sufficient size.

Also, the more you know about the context of a stat the better.

 

I don’t see how it’s even an argument that Snyder has done better this season than Stotts. His two best offensive players left them in the offseason and were replaced by a player who has been a major disappointment for Minnesota for the past few years and couldn’t shoot and a 13th overall pick rookie. They were 19-28 at one point and nobody expected them to even get close to playoffs let alone finish 48-34 and go to the second round at the expense of OKC.

He has basically made them all much better than they were ever perceived. Players like O’Neale and Ingles weren’t even considered good enough for this league at an advanced age and Ingles has probably been a top 10 small forward this season if not better than that. Rubio has been one of the best playmakers around for the last 2-3 months and Mitchell has probably been a top 20 player this season which is huge. This is like what Stotts did in 2015-16, have them compete against all odds. He should comfortably win the coach of the year now.

 

Can he please be fired already? Either he gets fired this off season and we start looking for replacement coaches as soon as possible or he will get fired early next season and we have an interim all year. He does not coach well in the playoffs. Getting swept in the first round is unacceptable we would be better off missing the playoffs.

 

I'm one of the few on this board who said Utah would be good last year and wouldn't drop off much without Hayward this year, so save that line for someone else.

Favors was mostly out of favor until recently, but Ingles has been getting the attention of many for awhile now. Both were already under the current coaching staff, so make of it what you will. Rubio was the wild card. He would have gotten a serious look from any team lacking a top-10 PG, despite how much some members of this forum (largely the same ones that hated on Utah the past two years) railed against him in Minny.

The starters effectively are the team in the playoffs, where bench guys generally don't, and shouldn't, get more than spot minutes. So no, that part of your point doesn't stand. I'd call the talent levels pretty similar. The big difference is style of play. They've got a stout defense, while ours is mostly smoke and mirrors, having too many regulars that need covering for. Guess which one fails in the playoffs?

 

We swept the Thunder.....Jazz didn't sweep them...don't think the Jazz would beat the Pels right now either.

 

Thanks for this link - pretty interesting stuff that confirms the eye test. Something I just confirmed was we were #1 in pull-up attempts and 27th in catch/shoot attempts. We are rank 27th is passes per game. We score off the dribble rather than off the pass. No surprise at all, but nice to see stats that prove the eye test.

 

I mean, we won 2 against New Orleans so it's not like the playoffs extrapolate.
You can't adjust and excel offensively against Utah. Against New Orleans, I feel like we could've, it would've just been a completely new style of play that (for whatever reason) we weren't ready to play.

 

People over on O-Live have been saying Utah was gonna be good since before the season started. They correctly said they'd be battling it out right down to the end with Portland for position in the playoffs.

 

Just fire him and grab an assistant coach from the Warriors. We need new schemes, but as importantly, we need higher expectations and to start a championship culture from the top down.

 

Having second thoughts about following the Raptors...

 

After we got swept, all the articles were about how Toronto was in a similar predicament and got out of it by changing their style of play. (The obvious response was: Did they improve or did the top teams in the East evaporate?) Their predictable second round implosion begs the question, can you change your style of play without changing your personnel, or do you always revert to old habits under pressure?

 

DeRozen might be available for CJ soon

 

It's because LeBron is having one of, if not the best playoff stretch of all time. Not because of anything Toronto is doing.