I see no evidence at all that Billups wants out. He has said several times that he is enjoying coaching these guys. More than any other time in his coaching career. Also agree with others that lack of effort is not the problem; so far they all play very hard despite the slim chance of winning on any given night.
I'm sure there are insiders that know a lot more guys, but this would be a start... Zelimir 'Zeljko' Obradovic Kenny Atkinson Jordi Fernandez, Darius Songaila, Igor Kokoskov, Dejan Milojevic, Darko Rajakovic, Ognjen Stojakovic, Vitaly Potapenko. I would also consider Becky Hammon. I'm not sure how that would work. A woman coaching men. NBA coaches do not have much leverage, and many guys don't have much respect for women. I'd talk to all of them. The person with the best plan to develop a young team and build basketball culture and the ability to communicate it (including the best list of developmental and basketball minded assistants) would replace Billups.
They just look disorganized and defeated. That has been a trend since Billups has been the coach, IMO. I've just lost confidence. I'd love to see it change, and if that's with Billups, fine. But I've seen enough.
Dude... Get on with the times... Hyundai, Kia et al build better cars than BMW and Audi these days. Given how far ahead they are in EVs - they also build more sophisticated ones (unless your definition of sophisticated is antiquated...)
we've largely been "in" most of the games this season. I think scouting caught up with us the last week or so. Only so much you can do when the majority of our backups played in GLeague games the night before the NBA game.
I drive a Hyundai (aka Kia Forte) Elantra. I'm scared to floor it because I have 2 friends that blew up their Hyundai engines under low speed max throttle. I have zero confidence in the all-aluminum engines from Korea.
But why would we compare where OKC is NOW, (potentially 3 years ahead of where we are), and not compare OKC from 3 years ago? Seems like an odd comparison when thy acquired a lot of that young talent the last 3 years. Their exciting young core consisted of SGA, and then the potential and excitement of Darius Bazley(not currently on a roster), Theo Maledon, Lu Dort, and Poku. They went 22-50. They had the worst offense, and 24th ranked defense. Shai was talented but injury prone. Nobody was calling Shai a top 10 player then.
The post you quoted said nothing about Stotts, but I'm not surprised you would bring him up, again. It has been my consistent stance that the easy, lazy narrative is to blame the coach for the short-comings of the franchise when the root problem has nothing to do with it. I don't think firing Billups is the answer. Billups will get fired in 1-2 years, there will be a honeymoon that this new coach has drastically changed things, and then the lazy folks will start blaming the less newish coach when unrealistic expecatations aren't met. I don't expect you to admit you were wrong though.
Solid points. I just haven't been very impressed with the way the team has played under Billups. His defense isn't any better than Stotts and his offense is worlds worse. I think we can find somebody far more experienced and talented at coaching. But I'm by no means a Billups hater. I hope he proves me wrong, he seems like a very nice guy and I love to see former players succeed.
The team started the season projected to be in the bottom 3. Then they lost 4 important rotation players. Which means they suck even more than we anticipated. I guess I find this thread ridiculous. What did you all expect? There will be games where we play hard and lose and games where we just get blown out. The depth at the moment is horrible. I mean like really bad. No coaching is going to help until we get some players back. This is exactly why you don't dump all your vets to free up playing time for younger players. They will get discouraged at some point and it will hurt their development instead of helping. They got this one season to be really bad then the players will start looking to leave. Losing every game takes a toll.
technically it's been ~ 2.3 years since Olshey fired Stotts and hired Billups. I think we're closing in on exactly 2 years since the Olshey insurrection. (rumors swirled of angry Neil rants, and a mean outburst towards Blazer Legend Dan Dickau. Then Olshey FIRED... woah..)
That a team with our two most expensive players and starters, and the player we see as a franchise cornerstone (i.e., 3/5 of the lineup) wouldn't be SO dismal and uncompetitive.
