Michael Brown (pours him a drink) sit down and rap with me for a minute man.
The NBA is a open floor, dynamic EUROPEAN style of game now. They didnt fire you in LA just because they didnt like you, they fired you because it was obvious you were stubbornly holding onto a coaching philosophy despite having a roster that needed you to adapt your style to fit those hall of famers skillsets, offense and defense.
Teams who have embraced the new open European style of game have the capability of exposing our starters for their lack of floor spacing, and those nights where that the rotation is thrown in flux (foul trouble, injury) along with the style of play favoring teams who can space the floor better than our starters, we lose.
Nights where teams are not constructed to expose our spacing issues as much, usually relying on bigs who cant space the floor, we can hang and beat most teams at the 2005 Spurs style of basketball.
Three things need to happen...
1. We need to commit to a floor spacer with our starters at the 4 spot. Clark or Bennett. Preferably Bennett. Leaving Clark to be paired with either Andy OR Tristan in spacing the floor when Brown plays reserves for stretches.
2. We need to upgrade SF. Badly. Watching Tony Snell play and continue developing under Thibs makes my stomach double over with your reluctance to play rookies like Karasev and Bennett. SMH... Larry Brown is out of the pros for his reluctance to play kids. Popovich has relied on kids heavily in the last 3 years to reduce veterans minutes and bring the kids along. Wake up Mike. This isnt 2005 anymore man.
3. The hard hedge needs to be used more "sparingly" or once you see a offense adjust to it, you need to pull it off and put it back on when they are not ready for it again. Let's call this "hard hedge shock treatment". In small doses, it can be effective. 4-5 possesions in a row, or just depending on the oppositions lineup. But you cant do this all game and expect these offenses not to adjust and attack it. European teams eat that up, and since the league is trending towards that European model for the appeal and high scoring it provides, your defense is something of a relic that needs to be modernized for the current game. One of your guys will always be out of position and it calls for length and agility from 4 positions in order to not compromise the defense and give up open jump shots from good passing teams. Atlanta, San Antonio, Boston, Portland, Chicago tonight... they all exposed this defense following the same model that Stan Van Gundy showed the league would take the fangs out of it.
Your move. Time to adjust your defensive scheme. You cant go out each night and hope that the opposition would be undisciplined and impatient/selfish with the ball. Good coaches are now coaching their teams to pass to beat this defense. This is not on our players not executing. It is a result of your system not fitting the players. Until you get your hands on the length and agility you are used to having to run this defense and not compromise it, you have to bring it out in doses if you want to show the players it can be effective and aggressive (in spurts).
