Hollinger on Vinny

[Ralphb07]

It's a fitting irony: On the day when Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro ran out of timeouts for the second straight game, Cavs coach Mike Brown was named the league's coach of the year.

You see, in a lot of ways, Brown used to be Del Negro, and I think we can learn something about coaches from these two examples.

Three years ago, it was Brown who was running out of timeouts at the end of virtually every playoff game. And he was in a situation similar to the one the Bulls are in now -- his underdog Cavaliers were unexpectedly pushing Detroit to seven games in a second-round playoff series, and it was his first year on the job.

While he was doing that, of course, he also was being raked over the coals for several other dubious moves, and the second-guessing extended into questioning his moves even when they made sense.

Now in his fourth season, Brown doesn't make those kinds of blunders. Del Negro, as a rookie coach who has had no prior experience, does. Burning through timeouts has been a problem for him all season, as were his lineup choices until injuries and trades whittled his team down to a seven-man rotation that was virtually impossible to screw up.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playo...?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PERDiem-090421

 

[Wade Wilson]

Looks like Hollinger has been reading this board and/or RealGm

 

[Ralphb07]

It's true and I feel exactly the same way and he's said everything I've been saying just worded a lot better.

That's why I use the word patience with Vinny. As hard as it is for us fans we gotta give him time

 

[charity stripe]

He makes a good point, but I will still be upset if his mistakes end up costing the Bulls a series victory.

 

[Ralphb07]

And of course, there are a great many elements of coaching besides timeout management. The teaching that happens at practice leads to day-to-day improvement, and demanding accountability produces maximum effort. These things are completely out of view to most of us, yet are probably the most important pieces of a coach's job.

I think Vinny does a great job at this and you can tell from watching the games. The players have gotten better as the season went on and they also give us maximum effort which we're seeing in this series.

Coaches need repetition as much as players, especially when it comes to game strategy, and Del Negro didn't have any coaching reps at any level entering his maiden season as Bulls coach. Clearly, there were going to be some bumps along the way, and most likely more will come.

But if there's one thing Bulls fans can take solace in, it's that one of the league's premier coaches was making a lot of the same mistakes just three years ago. With any luck, Del Negro will show similar progress.

I really like this article by John and he didn't use any of his PER to do it which is probably why I like it

 

[Manic Devourer]

The only aspect that you can credit Vinny is that he has stuck with the starting line up of Noah and Tyrus, though I bet he has been tempted to start Miller at one point or another.

And also the offense has improved drastically over the last few months, and for the first time in almost 3 years, we actually a capable team of scoring on the fast break.

But our defense is still atrocious and possibly getting even worse as the season goes along. Don't get me wrong, at this stage our only chance of winning is by running and trying to out-score opponent as opposed to shutting them down, but if history has shown run and gun teams just aren't going to get too far in the playoffs.

Either we need to really work on our defense in the summer, or we need to bring in more players that are defensive stoppers, or at least willing to play defense as their primary role.

 

[Ralphb07]

Manic Devourer wrote:

The only aspect that you can credit Vinny is that he has stuck with the starting line up of Noah and Tyrus, though I bet he has been tempted to start Miller at one point or another.

And also the offense has improved drastically over the last few months, and for the first time in almost 3 years, we actually a capable team of scoring on the fast break.

But our defense is still atrocious and possibly getting even worse as the season goes along. Don't get me wrong, at this stage our only chance of winning is by running and trying to out-score opponent as opposed to shutting them down, but if history has shown run and gun teams just aren't going to get too far in the playoffs.

Either we need to really work on our defense in the summer, or we need to bring in more players that are defensive stoppers, or at least willing to play defense as their primary role.

Cleveland defense rating was 12th the year before Brown and actually went down to 14th in Mike Brown's 1st year

Our defense was 14th last year and is 18th now so it went down but still isn't near the bottom and can be fixed. I believe we ranked 13 in opponents FG% which is better than the middle of the pack. What hurts our defense IMO in the rebounding side of it. We give teams too many 2nd chance points.

Our offense took a big jump this year. It was 27th last year and 14th this year. Some people might say we play at a faster pace so it's misleading but we were 9th in pace this year and 11th in pace last year so that's clearly not the case.

Here's Scott Skiles Offense/Defense Rating and Pace

Year 1: 29th(O) 16th(D) 7th(P)
Year 2: 26th(O) 2nd (D) 11th(P)
Year 3: 23rd(O) 7th (D) 5th (P)
Year 4: 21st(O) 1st (D) 6th (P)
Year 5: 26th(O) 14th(D) 11th(P)

So looking @ Vinny he's at 14th in Offense and 18th in Defense and 9th in Pace.

Skiles took us from 16th in defense to 2nd from year 1 to 2 but we really slacked on offense every year. So why can't Vinny improve our defense next year. I don't think he can get it the top 5 or 10 but if we can be 11-14 next year will be a major improvement based on IMO our offense being top 8-10

 

[Shakes]

I'm not sure the defense is all on Vinny anyway. At lot of it comes down to Rose being a really bad defender at this point in his career. Now whether Vinny is letting Rose play through it as a learning experience, or he's just not an experienced enough coach to put in a scheme that hides Rose more we can't really say.

Either way, if Rose could magically improve on defense to Kirk's level we'd be a top 10 defensive team this year, judging by the numbers when Rose is off the court.

You'd expect Rose to get better with time. So we should improve next year, but how much credit do you give to the coach for the natural improvement of the players? (then again the COTY award voting seems to say "all of it")