Does coaching even matter in the NBA?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703506904575592363492225220
In a league where coaching turnover is rampant—almost eight changes per season over the past two decades—a study co-written by Southern Utah University economics professor Dave Berri suggests that fewer than a quarter of NBA coaches between 1977 and 2008 had any significant effect on their players' performance.
Is Blatt a coach that has improved his players compared to their career averages? I gotta give that a big "no" so far. I probably don't have to say anything other than "Kevin Love" on that subject and leave it at that, but Kyrie and Lebron are also having down years too in a lot of statistical categories. Maybe it's because they need more team chemistry. Maybe it's not enough touches to go around. Maybe it's because they are working hard on defense instead of focusing on scoring. But is any player (other than the guys that came in with the January trades) really having a great season compared to past years?
How about getting role players to step up? I think we can look at the Lebron vacation and give that a "no" as well. Shane Battier is fond on this quote from Hubie Brown: "If you do not have good players, you will not win". But even by that lower standard, the Cavs under performed when Lebron was away. Maybe it wasn't coach's fault, but when I'm looking for things that Blatt did well during that time, I don't got a lot.
Another way to judge the coach is by wins and losses. Is the team over or under achieving? I don't have any formal stats on Blatt, but my impression is that he's the cause of about 2 more losses than wins after 65 games, even if we ignore Lebron's holiday. Most of the cases where I'd say he's hurt the team are sticking with a lineup too long until the players burn out, or deploying a wacky ineffective lineup for 2-3 minutes that costs the team a net -10 in a close game. These look like rookie coach mistakes to me.
The offense is tough to judge because you can put me in the camp of people that think Blatt lost control of the Cavs offense back around game 5 and won't get a chance to regain control until the next training camp. It would probably be better if he hadn't lost control of that. If he had control, the team might have been able to recover faster when the Hawks started trapping the ball handlers last week.
The defense is tough to judge because it isn't clear how much is Lue, how much is Blatt, and how much is the result of the January trades. But stuff is going well there these days and Blatt probably deserves a good portion of that credit. There are cases where it looks like he's deployed defensive schemes that throw the other team off balance. They players are buying it. Looks to me like there's some promising stuff there.
Has he done a good job drawing the team together and getting them into an "Us vs. Them" mentality? Has he helped them to focus on the game and ignore the media? Maybe. No locker room problems this season since the Dion trade is good. I'll give Blatt decent marks as long as I pretend he didn't start talking about K-Love's salary that one time. Rookie mistake.
Do I think that Blatt has been better that the rest of the NBA coaches so far this year? He's looked better than Derek Fisher, yes? Who else?
Randy Wittman? Sure. But when I look at Blatt's legacy so far, he's taken a team with a lot of talent and under perform expectations. He's still making decisions from time to time that don't look like winning moves.
Do I hate Blatt? No. I think he's settling in and will do a good job. But he's still settling in and still making rookie mistakes. Or maybe the are vet mistakes because those things worked well for him in Europe. I don't know other than that there has been a lot more "settling in" than Blatt's fans want to admit and I have not seen anything from Blatt so far that makes me think he's on a fast path to being an NBA all time great. The playoffs will be very telling. I think there's a pretty good chance that by May, Blatt might have things in order to start looking like at least an above average coach.