I will wholeheartedly agree that he hired the wrong type of coach for what he has. And for that, I think he made a mistake. I do not think, however, that he realized how stubborn Jim O'brien is. But I will not admit that he made a bad decision in trading for Webber.
Alright, let me vent. About Jim O'brien's "system". A system that defies basketball fundamentals and, even worse, compounds this teams problems.
The basis of Jim O'brien's offense is to put 3 three point shooters and a shotblocker around a penetrating star (allen iverson in philly, pierce in boston), then base everything off of penetration from allen.
this was fine in the beginning of the year. Sure, it moved Kenny away fro the basket and made him more inconsistent, but it was a small price to pay for a more effective allen iverson. Allen was having one of his best years of his career. However, since the acquisition of Webber, O'brien has gone on record that his offense will not change. He's not going to modify what the team does on offense to fit Chris Webber. He's used Chris in the exact same manner that he used Kenny Thomas.
What? Are you kidding me? A guy who's biggest strength is that he's a pf you can run the offense through, a great passer, and you're going to use him in the same manner that you used 13 ppg Kenny Thomas? A guy most comfortable having the offene running through him in the high post/elbow, and you're not going to utilize his effectiveness?
Then, his defense is based on two concepts. First, fronting the post. This defies conventional basketball logic. Defensive rebounding is one of the keys to good defensive basketball. Preventing offensive rebounds is tantamount. By fronting the post you're willfully pulling your best rebounders out of rebounding position. Now, you can limit the harm this does by running Kenny Thomas and Samuel Dalembert out there, guys who are quicker than their opponent on most nights and can hope to get back into position. We were still a bad defensive rebounding team, but it wasn't a fatal flaw. But Chris Webber, with his knees, has no hope of regaining rebounding position. We've been getting killed on the defensive glass. The other day I saw Kyle Korver attempt to front desmond mason. Literally, all it took was a simple lob to the rim for one of the best jumpers in the game.
The second foundation of O'brien's defense is blitzing, or hard trapping, the pick and roll. One of the first things you learn in basketball is to try to put pressure on one part of a defense, usually be forcing a double team and moving defensive players around by penetration or from a strong post player. You can then move the ball around, and with being in the right position and moving the ball quickly, the ball always moves faster than even the most athletic players.
By hard trapping the pick and roll, any even mediocre passing team can beat this. And we do it ALL-THE-TIME. Weakside wide open three's have become commonplace. It, once again, voluntarily creates a weakness in our defense that can be exploited. And it's something you absolutely can't ask chris webber, marc jackson, or rodney rogers (3/4th of our pf/c rotation) to do. You ask Chris Webber to hard trap the ballhandler on a pick and roll, you might as well tell him just to continue walking up to the offensive end. Affter blitzing the pick and roll, it requires continual rotations to try to cover up the hole it creates. Chris Webber will never get back into the play defensively because his knees won't allow him to rotate fast enough. He doesn't have the first step.
Then, Jim O'brien complains about not having the lateral footspeed to play good defense. But it's his decisions on the rotations. He runs out a lineup of iverson, mckie, korver, rogers and marc jackson out there for 13 minutes consecutively in the third and 4th quarters of a couple of games this week. Seriously, 4 of those 5 should be in geriatric homes. they're all slow of foot, to be nice. Yet we have incredibly long and athletic players Andre Iguodala, John Salmons, Willie Green and Samuel Dalembert on the bench. Arguably, our top 4 defenders.
To make matters worse, his defensive "schemes" don't differentiate among players. Hard trapping a small guard, like Allen Iverson, can cause him problems. Hard trapping Jason Kidd, however, gets you killed. When playing the Nets the other week, we literally hard trapped a Jacque Vaugh/Jason Collins pick and roll, which then left Vince Carter open on the wing for three's because we couldn't rotate fast enough. And they did this over, and over, and over. and we fell for it every time.
We front Dan Gadzuric the same way we front Shaquille O'neal. Fronting shaq makes sense, keep the ball out of his hands. Fronting Gadzuric makes no sense. The only way he scores is off of offensive rebounds, and he can't create for others either.
JoMal, it's the most frustrating thing I've ever seen. Combine that with trying to teach 4 new players the "system", when the rest of the team has yet to figure it out, isn't helping matters.
This team has weaknesses that stem from its collection of players, no doubt. But outside of maybe the spurs and the heat, there isn't a team in the league that can filled a starting lineup with entirely good 2-way players. Yet they win. We have enough talent, both offensively and defensively, to play with any team in the east outside of detroit and miami. Yet, we do play with every team in the east, as evident by the atlanta game. And the physical deficiencies of the players are made worse by the system o'brien's trying to force feed down our team.
Sure, Billy should have gotten a better coach. But I don't think anyone had any idea that Jim was this inflexible. I wouldn't expect O'brien to last into next year, barring a departure in his "system".
