lipoli390 wrote:khans2k5 wrote:If the players want the sideline yelling to stop then they need to play the way Thibs wants. Shouting from the sidelines all game long was not nearly as focused on during his tenure with the Bulls. Play the way he wants and it will get better. As far as free agency goes, Thibs will not be the reason guys don't come here. The fact that we lose so much and we appear to be far away from contending is why guys won't come here. Money and/or winning. That's what drives off-season signings and we only have 1 of those two things going for us right now. The top players can typically get both so we are naturally at a disadvantage to sign them. This team doesn't need a players coach. They haven't earned that guy. They need to play good, fundamental basketball with consistent effort before I'm comfortable giving them a coach who's going to go easier on them. I wasn't a fan of the Thibs signing, but I'm not gonna dump on him either for inheriting such a young team that clearly lacks basketball IQ on both sides of the ball and has some effort issues. Thibs knows what he has now and he has the money and assets to shape the team how he wants.
Kahns -- When I think of a players coach, I don't mean a coach to "takes it easy" on his players. I mean a coach who relates and gets through to his players. A coach who motivates and inspires his players. A coach who adapts to the styles and personalities of his players. Yes, we're a young team, but that doesn't excuse only 31 wins. Consistent effort shouldn't have been a problem. Other than Wiggins, none of the Wolves players had any motor issues in their past, certainly not Towns, Rubio, Gorgui, Belly, or Dunn. As for IQ, Towns, Ricky and Gorgui have long been viewed as highly intelligent players. So yes, the players are ultimately accountable for poor play. But the consensus among basketball people is that the Wolves are far more talented than their record and last season's lack of improvement points right back to the head coach who also happens to have complete control over the front office.
Well Towns drank the Kool-Aid and stopped trying defensively for most of the season. He was a matador most of the year and considering the month we played good defense he showed a lot more it's hard for me to say that's on Thibs that he didn't do it the rest of the year. Towns clearly had it in him and just wasn't doing it. He was getting his offensively and stuffing the stat sheet, but he wasn't playing hard on the end we need him to be our anchor. He's a great talent that everyone drools over, but he didn't apply it to both sides of the floor.
Rubio and Dieng simply didn't have enough games where we would look at one or both after the game and say they were a top 2 player on the team that night. They played like supporting cast members when our top 3 are too inconsistent to carry us to wins right now. We needed them to be vets who stepped up when the young guys had off nights and they didn't do it for most of the year. If they makeup two of the 3 high IQ guys on the team they need to be better leaders and make sure the other guys are doing their jobs on both ends of the court.
Dunn plays hard, but he's a rookie and wasn't ready for the NBA yet offensively. Zach showed significant improvement under Thibs until he went down. Zach has the best attitude of our young big 3 in terms of motor and work ethic so I think there's a reason he was the one showing the improvement under Thibs. Belly again took a while to adapt to a new coach, but he was probably the second most improved player by the time he went down with his injury.
Towns, Wiggins and Dieng were the three guys that didn't show improvement under Thibs for the main 7 guys who played. Towns still put up crazy offensive numbers while leaving much to be desired defensively from an effort standpoint. Dieng fell off a cliff when Zach went down. Wiggins was Wiggins again with a little improvement everywhere, but not as much as you would hope. When you play those guys 107 minutes a night it's hard to improve significantly as a team in the W-L column. Then you factor in the improvement everyone else showed outside of Zach took until after the all-star break to show up and it makes it even harder to do better.
At the end of the day teams take on the identities of their best players more than their coach and Towns and Wiggins did not bring their lunch pails last year. They have to get their teammates more involved on both ends of the court and they have to be leaders on defense. Our vets and coach didn't keep them in check, but it's still on KAT and Wiggins to be those guys. Once KAT and Wiggins buy into Thibs culture the rest will fall into place.
