Montgomery Feels Like "Bambi" in Deer Season <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">OAKLAND ? "Open season," Mike Montgomery called it. On Montgomery. On the job he's done as Warriors coach. On the job he hasn't done. As if anybody could do the job, because the last dozen seasons nobody has been able to do it. Nobody has been able to make the Warriors a playoff team. The coaches ? whether Don Nelson, Bob Lanier, Rick Adelman, P.J. Carlesimo, Garry St. Jean, Dave Cowens, Brian Winters, Eric Musselman or, now, Mike Montgomery ? get blamed. When maybe it's the general manager who's at fault. When maybe it's the players who are at fault. Open season. The target is Montgomery. The bull's-eye is on his chest. For the first time in his career, and he doesn't like it. Not that we should expect he would. Nobody likes criticism, especially if you've never been criticized. Which, for the most part, until he stepped away from Stanford and stepped into the cauldron of the NBA, the now 59-year-old Mike Montgomery never was. So many years in the wilderness for the Warriors. So many years without making the playoffs. So many years seeking a savior. It was going to change, with Mike Montgomery and Baron Davis. And when the Warriors were 14-9 on Dec.16, indeed it seemed to be changing. But now it is mid-March, and they are out of the playoffs a 12th straight season. Davis is injured, and maybe he always will be, and that's why despite his skills, the New Orleans Hornets traded him. And Montgomery's pride is hurting. And the questioning of his ability, Mike is taking it personally, which is understandable, even though he shouldn't. The doubts come with the territory, with the expectations, expectations that until Montgomery joined the pros never were a burden for him. Mike was in that cocoon at Stanford, where he built a winner, but in this region, which isn't Durham or Austin or Chapel Hill, went mostly unnoticed and unappreciated. Montgomery used to confront a certain sports columnist who would not show up in Palo Alto until January and needle, "What happened, 49er season over?" At the moment, the Warriors' season figuratively is over. The pain for Montgomery is not. "You work a long time to build up credibility," Montgomery said, "and all of sudden you find yourself torn apart in pretty quick fashion. That's hard to deal with. That shakes your confidence a little bit." The Warriors are basketball's riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an Ace bandage. </div> Source I'm sure Warrior fans in here can come up with a lot of creative metaphors revolving around Monty and deers. Monty looks like a deer in headlights as the coach. Next....
Monty is a rookie coach. He's been in the league almost two years and he's even had a coaching staff to help him in the NBA. He's done this with pretty much the same team with Baron playing less than half the season and 3-point shooters getting even worse since last year. I'd like to see what he could do with a good team and some player depth before I call this guy out. I totally blame some of the players and of course the GM, bad hand or not. I don't think the GM should be fired, nor the coach... not yet at least. But something about the players needs to be done. I don't know what other teams would use our starters in their lineups. Certainly not Foyle and I doubt Dunleavy would ever do anything consistent unless his job is to play behind the scenes and score within the flow. Plus, Murphy, c'mon fans, he's not really a second option offensive guy and he's not the answer for a team that has to rely on a lot of help defense to keep offensive players out. Then Fisher... we're talking a guy who's never had much upside or has ever handled a team at playmaker without guys who can create for him. I like his sixth man role, but damn unless we got Shaq or Kobe, it ain't working for Fish to be a starter at point or shooting guard (not without inside presence and dribble penetration). Not settled on Jrich as a franchise shooting guard, but damn I pretty much crap on the whole team then. Gotta start somewhere rather than dump everyone. I say for now Jrich/Baron + the rookies and maybe Murphy because a big dude that can launch threes and rebound is an asset. Biedrins/Taft Ike/Murphy SF Jrich, Pietrus Baron, Ellis The free throw shooting looks like it would suck, so damn I hope we can find ways to improve our defense in the backcourt, and maybe also improve our free throw shooting and ball handling. I don't know if we can get that at the small forward position. It would be nice though if T-mac wound up in our laps. Mainly we need a guy who was supposed to do what Dunleavy did on paper, play Pietrus style defense, and also be a Jrich-like scorer and Fisher like catch and shoot outside shooter and free throw shooter. If Ray Allen + Rashard Lewis + pure point guard + offensive rebounders can make the playoffs, certainly we can.
All I gotta say is our team should make free throws and conditioning a priority. That is also to blame for our 4th quarter meltdown. Adonal and Fisher came in to the season in great shape, but for the most part, I was disappointed with the rest of the team. Especially after the talk from Baron and Jrich about everybody coming to town to work out and practice together. I understand you need to heal up but you should be working on something after a short break...
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Warriorfansnc93:</div><div class="quote_post">All I gotta say is our team should make free throws and conditioning a priority. That is also to blame for our 4th quarter meltdown. Adonal and Fisher came in to the season in great shape, but for the most part, I was disappointed with the rest of the team. Especially after the talk from Baron and Jrich about everybody coming to town to work out and practice together. I understand you need to heal up but you should be working on something after a short break...</div> That is so important to make free throws. We've lost games because we shot below the average % as a team. It's a %'s game (and of course this makes obvious sense because there's limited number of shot attempts in a game if you discount offensive rebounds). We just make really bad use of posessions because we fail to run plays, we fail to execute in plays, or we just lack the ability to make any plays effective. If a team can't run basic plays, then they're not a real team. If any warrior fan has the time to watch a good team play basketball, it's everything from who they have on the team, what they do as a team, and how they're coached to win as a team. Obviously there's some controversy about Montgomery not getting the most out of this basketball club with "talent". But heck, which of our guys would start for any other nba team in the Western conference? What about Eastern Conference? Not many. Plus our team design has no low post inside presence or additional dribble-drive ballhandlers that can pass. How sad is that when the team is relegated to launching threes or deep twos. There's no honesty in our points in the paint type game because guys can score at point blank or they drop the ball. The day we get a solid starting five that can play d and score or we have a team that has two superstars, one inside and one on the outside, I think we can finally rest... If not, every season will be a questionable one as long as we got guys mispending money on the wrong people for the job.
Another great post Cutodian, however, I still think Monty has to take some blame despite inheriting a relatively bad overall team. I think we've got the talent to make the playoffs but the difference between playoff teams and our team is that other coaches know how to accentuate their players' strengths and downplay their weaknesses. When the Warriors play it looks like they just pass the ball until they can get a decent shot and if that doesnt happen then they chuck a 3. Look at a team like Phoenix, Nash is important in running the team but the rest of the players don't try to do something they aren't capable of. The players on the Warriors don't seem to have roles or don't have roles that fit their game; Fisher chucks up horrific shots on the run, Diogu is used as a defender/rebounder, Mikael Pietrus is a spot up shooter, Dunleavy had no part in the offense for almost the entire season. I don't think its as easy as the players just realizing that they need to change their game, opposing teams can just clog the lane, the coaches actually have to draw something up that can allow the players to penetrate or cut o the hoop. Not to mention that we've become a half court team. This could be Montgomery trying to instill his offense (which doesn't fit our roster at all) or that we just have no control over the tempo of the game. Granted Monty doesn't have a great roster but a first year coach isn't going to be given a playoff team, hes got to improve his team and if he can't hes obviously not going to get hired to coach a playoff team or a contender. This team just isn't going to succeed in a half court system, we just don't have the inside game required to be successful in a system like that. Montgomery tends to try to beat opposing teams at their own game, he'll go small against Phoenix and complain that we can't get rebounds or play defense, we'll play half court with our "veterans" (Fish and Foyle) when we play against Detroit and he'll wonder how we can't score or get momentum. Even though he's a "rookie" head coach (which he really isn't) hes allegedly got plenty of basketball knowledge and shouldn't be terribly outcoached by average NBA coaches.
Montgomery's not really off the hook, either. But to reiterate, I think he's been dealt a bad hand in terms of the design scheme of this team and how he operates. (i.e. man to man defense, good rebounding, free throw shooters, good shooting inside and out, good ball movement, unselfishness, under control, controlled tempo). When the players don't play like that you question whether guys are tuning the coach out or they don't play that way to begin with. We don't know. Probably 99% of the media talks out of their ass or jumps to conclusions like we all tend to do when there's doubt. There's doubt on a lot of things. And I guess the only way we can find things out for ourselves is to collaborate and also learn about the game first hand rather than through the fan's/ignorant writer's point of view. I too (like the guys i'm criticizing) was so impatient at one time because I wanted to see the Warriors win so badly. But a lot can happen if you give some things some time and the right conditions to allow success. I would say give Montgomery more time (one or two more years) and get rid of those undesirable players that can't get it done (guys like Dunleavy who've had enough time and just can't do much outside of a role player's type of game, guys like Foyle, and other guys who just don't play their positions the way they should). Also, it's not like Montgomery's the only one out there, he's got his veteran coaching staff to help him out and collaborate. He's got the backing of the GM and both of those two listen to each other. Monty could become a good coach someday for some team, but he needs talent and something that fits so he can have options to choose from. Since this team isn't a winning team to begin or has a solid foundation to begin with and has rookies for roster depth, I'm up for whatever moves necessary to fix this mess of poor free throw shooting, poor inside game, poor ballhandling, poor defense, poor lots of things, type of club it is. And you know it may seem like I favor Monty, but I feel sorry for Monty having read up on the guy. IMO he was being put in a worse position when Mullin stood pat and didn't do anything thinking everything was fine and dandy with that one good Baron Davis trade he made. That should be Mullin's fault not his (and Mullin knows this, which is why he should stay around and fix it and just so long as he doesn't repeat bad judgement type moves). Remember, Monty didn't make the Montana program good until all the upper classmen had left and he installed his guys, so I say let him become more comfortable with the NBA game and then let him tell Mullin the kind of players he needs. I don't think Mullin knows. He's never really had to coach to know what the other four guys need to do. In fact, if it weren't for his love of Dun, I'm sure he probably would've found better ways to spend Cohan's money and got us some honest inside presence and chemistry guys that show results. Then owner Cohan... damn that guy doesn't know jack about basketball, except how to capitalize on basketball fans's money and hire bad management. Who knows...we can just hope... maybe Monty and Mullin will collaborate on something good soon because plan B often means we rebuild from scratch yet again... I'm also very sure Fisher wouldn't be one of those Montgomery type of guys if Montgomery was to recommend the right point guard player to run his team. I think the only reason he plays him because what other veteran point guard does he have in the roster? None. What is there to gain by playing Fisher 40 minutes a game where he averages 7 assists a night with three pointers and good free throw shooting? A ha, that might be something both Mullin and Montgomery are collaborating on. Let's start making some moves this offseason and get guys who play the perimeter positions well and add things to the team inside and out. It's our only hope because we've got bad investments, possibly Monty included, although I think he's less of a problem compared to what our roster is. All the value is in the upside of rookie players because they don't deliver consistent results.
