Wow! Derrick Rose has axed two coaches this year! Sad to see him go. One of the good guys. I hope his health is ok.
Hey! That's my guy! Oh, the humanity! If I'd've known that my Bulls beating his Jazz would cause him to call it quits...I still woulda wanted the Bulls to win. Actually, sounds like the ol' NBA power struggle between head coach and star player...head coaches have traditionally faired poorly in these. Great player, great coach and absolutely class act. Via con Dios, number 4.
I think this is pretty interesting. One of the things I've heard from both Rondo and Rose this year in interviews that I've never really heard before is that both players have mentioned that they are in lock stop with their coaches on where to attack on offense. This mirrors what I've seen on the court. It's not that the Bulls or the Celtics run plays as much as it's they target situations: mismatches in the post or on the wing, quick hits, etc. I wonder if offensive schemes are changing more to like what you see in football where offenses are flexible and seek to target weaknesses of highly structured defenses. I remember thinking Skiles, and to a lesser extent VDN, were both too structured in the sets they ran when it came to a longer playoff series.
He's 68. If he's not coaching the Jazz, he really should retire. How did he not coach the Bulls these past 23 seasons?
I also want to mention though this is slightly off topic that I was thoroughly pleased with the way Thibodeau didn't use a timout at the 33 second mark yesterday. The Bulls only had one time out left and were up by 1 point. Rose eventually created contact and went to the line.
Wow. That's all around crazy. I know the player usually wins in this scenario, but this isn't any coach we're talking about. Sloan has made a very long career out of telling guys it's my way or the highway.
To add a bit... it seems like a very impulsive move by a guy who agreed to a contract extension last week. I hope he doesn't look back and have some regets about this in a few weeks. Or a few minutes.
Just wrote an article on the Sloan resignation. At this moment, it's on Sportstwo's home page. You can also find it on my blog page.
Good article on Sloan/Williams. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=Av8wbLLdfCOR_JpCGMpmolm8vLYF?slug=aw-sloanwilliams021111
It's hard not to like Kobe sometimes, isn't it? I mean, that's the type of support, without being remotely disrespectful to Sloan, that someone remembers forever.
Don't mean to be argumentative Jay, but that ain't a good article...it's freakin' outstanding. I love Woj.
Eh, it sounds like Sloan just got fed up. He's a great coach, but I've also heard he's a temperamental, overbearing SOB too. John Ameachi's book has some good excerpts on what it was like to play for him. With the new team not responding to him, new management that didn't have his back like Larry Miller did, and the dispute with Deron Williams, I'd guess all three converged on him at once and he got up and quit in a puff of smoke. This day was going to come sooner or later, and I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the organization had wanted Sloan gone for a while now. It's a shock, but the NBA will go on as usual.
Another great article. I'm not sure I agree with the following: It looks to me like basketball has become more like football. In football there are flexible offenses and very regimented defenses. You rely on your quarterback to evaluate what the defense is giving you and target its weaknesses. You don't try to out execute an opposing defense. Point guards are kings in the NBA with the influx of talent and enforcement changes. It seems to me that teams with great point guards, like the Hornets, Celtics and Bulls, run flexible offensive sets where they are more concerned with picking about matchups than they are about out executing opponents. I think there may be some truth to the fact that the Sloan's genius -- creating brilliant offensive schemes and above average defensive schemes -- has gone the way of the dinosaur. It looks to me like in the new NBA players both play and coach on offense.
I don't know that it's gone the way of the dinosaur, but I think you're onto something when you say it wasn't the right fit for this particular guy and team. If you've got one of the three or four best PGs in the world, and one of his strengths is his feel for a game and a willingness to put in endless hours studying it, then you don't treat him like a robot. It reminds me back when Marty Shottenheimer was the Redskins coach. He had an audible they allowed Jeff George or Tony Banks to call. "The" audible, not a choice. With Tony Banks and Jeff George, that probably made a lot of sense. With Peyton Manning, it'd be counter productive. But I don't think it's at all reasonable to say that, say, Tony Dungy (who similarly didn't let Trent Dilfer do much in Tampa) was "not really" the coach anymore when he got Manning, but Shottenheimer is all that.
No offense, but bad analogy and it obscures the main point. You can say that Williams "audibled," but as far as his head coach (Sloan) was concerned, it wasn't a situation where Williams had the authority to audible. I'm sure that Williams did what he thought was best, but he's smart enough to know that he was openly defying his HC, something that Sloan wouldn't take lying down. It's a little like when Ben Wallace kept putting on his headband and Skiles kept taking him out...it was a test of authority (though you could easily argue that Wallace's behavior was purely childish while Williams' action was, in his own mind, a basketball-related decision). The key point is that Sloan was, for all but the most recent period of his tenure with the Jazz, allowed to be an absolute dictator...pretty much like college coaches. Recently, he saw that this unquestioning organizational support was slowly eroding. Though I've followed Sloan closely, I've never met him and can't say I know him. My guess is that he saw the Jazz FO moving more towards the NBA norm in terms of how they view their head coach. He knew himself well enough to realize that he couldn't succeed without the near-absolute authority he had previously been given...so he got out before it got ugly.
