The Ongoing Tales of World B. Flat

nighthob

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Jul 15, 2005
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All this stuff with the Nets the past two weeks has happened without Kyrie around. Sure he’s an asshole but I swear some will blame the Coronovirus spread on him too.
He's not in the lineup. He's still around. And has been all year. It's not a magical coincidence that all these problems began this year.
 

lovegtm

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Apr 30, 2013
11,996
It's a pity the trading deadline has passed, or Ainge could probably pick up Jarrett Allen for Milwaukee's #1 pick. Allen is already what Time Lord could become with good luck and good health.
Yeah, he would fit well in Boston's system. Might be interesting to make a run at him after the season.
 

lexrageorge

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Jul 31, 2007
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Kyrie's decline is going to happen quickly, and when it does, look out below. I'm still expecting the 2020-21 Nets to be by far the most overrated team in the preseason.
 

HomeRunBaker

bet squelcher
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Jan 15, 2004
30,096
Ha, even funnier. Do more PGs rise up the coaching ranks?
Without having any data whatsoever I'd imagine this answer to be an absolute yes. By definition, the PG is an extension of a coach on the floor so it is a natural transition. As a whole, PG's tend to be students of the game moreso than other positions.

Overall, I feel the less athletic and/or smaller a player is the more likely they are the more likely they are to rise up the ladder as coaches.......the reasoning is that as players they always had to "think the game" at a higher level since they couldn't get by based on their size/athleticism.
 

chilidawg

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Jan 22, 2015
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Without having any data whatsoever I'd imagine this answer to be an absolute yes. By definition, the PG is an extension of a coach on the floor so it is a natural transition. As a whole, PG's tend to be students of the game moreso than other positions.

Overall, I feel the less athletic and/or smaller a player is the more likely they are the more likely they are to rise up the ladder as coaches.......the reasoning is that as players they always had to "think the game" at a higher level since they couldn't get by based on their size/athleticism.
Are you saying Van Gundy isn't an elite athlete?
 

donnyback

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Apr 28, 2020
2
I think I get what HRB is saying. Kyrie's attitude and way of composing himself may not be all that different from KD, LeBron, RWB, and other stars in the league. Think about Wade and LeBron trying to oust Spoelstra 20 games into the first Heatles season.

The main problem is that he's not as good as those other players because he's always injured, not all that athletic, and is incredibly one-dimensional. He, on his own or as a leader, cannot lift a team up and give them a shot at a championship. He's probably not even at the level anymore where you can win a championship with him as the second best player.

It's semantics, but in a vacuum, his personality might not be abnormally bad. The problem is that he's not some supernova-level talent who makes those personality issues moot by winning games. We'll see if KD is. None of this will be a story if the Nets go 58-24 next year.
The Nets and Atkinson have “mutually agreed to part ways” and both “felt that they had run their course together”. Brooklyn has promoted Jacque Vaughn to Interim Head Coach, who was the Head Coach of the Orlando Magic from 2012 to 2015 before being fired 52 games into the season. Vaughn is 58-158 (.269) in 216 games as a head coach, Kenny Atkinson’s record as a head coach is 118-190 (.383) And was in his fourth season as Nets Head Coach.









192.168.100.1 192.168.1.1
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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Hard disagree.
Do you think this year's TOR team is a title contender? Because - assuming decent health - IMO next year's Nets will have a better shot at going to the Finals than this year's Raptors. Not that either team will have a great chance of winning it all but I guess I read "title contenders" to mean coming out of the EC.
 

DJnVa

Dorito Dawg
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Dec 16, 2010
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Do you think this year's TOR team is a title contender? Because - assuming decent health - IMO next year's Nets will have a better shot at going to the Finals than this year's Raptors. Not that either team will have a great chance of winning it all but I guess I read "title contenders" to mean coming out of the EC.
I would not say anything is "solidified" until we see KD on the floor and Kyrie's "attitude" with Levert...
 

nighthob

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Jul 15, 2005
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I would not say anything is "solidified" until we see KD on the floor and Kyrie's "attitude" with Levert...
Yeah, as far I know recovering from torn achilles takes up to 18 months. And even then there's always a loss of quickness/explosiveness. So the KD of yore is likely gone.
 

chilidawg

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Jan 22, 2015
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Do you think this year's TOR team is a title contender? Because - assuming decent health - IMO next year's Nets will have a better shot at going to the Finals than this year's Raptors. Not that either team will have a great chance of winning it all but I guess I read "title contenders" to mean coming out of the EC.
Toronto? Absolutely, they're playing as well as anyone. Nets next year, who the fuck knows, but I'm highly skeptical. And the notion that coming out of the EC is some kind of consolation prize is ridiculous. Any of the EC teams coming out will have a good shot at beating whoever comes out of the West. There's not much difference at the top of the two conferences.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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I would not say anything is "solidified" until we see KD on the floor and Kyrie's "attitude" with Levert...
Fair enough but KD and KI will take the Nets a long way with or without Levert, assuming that KD is close to where he was. Given his game, and as we've discussed a few times previously, I think most people expect him to be pretty close (note that KD is playing a lot of 1 v 1 or 3 v 3 already so I'm sure he'll be well prepared to enter the new season).
Toronto? Absolutely, they're playing as well as anyone. Nets next year, who the fuck knows, but I'm highly skeptical. And the notion that coming out of the EC is some kind of consolation prize is ridiculous. Any of the EC teams coming out will have a good shot at beating whoever comes out of the West. There's not much difference at the top of the two conferences.
I guess people are a lot more bullish on TOR than I am. TOR has some talent, is well-coached, and plays hard but to me they lack the upper end talent to compete against BOS or MIL. We'll see I guess.

But BTW, I wasn't suggesting that the EC winner is a "consolation prize." Was just trying to establish a baseline definition of "title contender" and to me, that means that any team that has a good shot of getting into the Finals is a "title contender."
 

ElUno20

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Jul 19, 2005
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I was so caught off guard by this. Literally, stunned. Last saw nash doing champions league analysis on tnt
 

Buster Olney the Lonely

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Jul 16, 2006
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A guy who has never coached anywhere at any level on a team with Kyrie. This should work out great.

Other than Kerr what are some other success stories for coaches with zero coaching experience?
 

koufax32

He'll cry if he wants to...
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Dec 8, 2006
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I thought Vaughn was as doing a fantastic job with that team. They must not think he’s able to negotiate the egos of KD and Kyrie.

It’s already fun that the Knicks have turned into the Jets. How great would it be if this blew up in Brooklyn’s faces and they became another Jets to go with MetsJets, KnickJets, and the JetsJets. It would be like a Hydra if Jets.
 

ehaz

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Sep 30, 2007
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Well, Nash surely has the respect of guys like Kyrie and KD. There's no way he was hired without their input... right?
 

RedOctober3829

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Jul 19, 2005
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deep inside Guido territory
I thought Vaughn was as doing a fantastic job with that team. They must not think he’s able to negotiate the egos of KD and Kyrie.

It’s already fun that the Knicks have turned into the Jets. How great would it be if this blew up in Brooklyn’s faces and they became another Jets to go with MetsJets, KnickJets, and the JetsJets. It would be like a Hydra if Jets.
Vaughn was retained as the top assistant to Nash. He's probably getting head coach money to stay on.
 

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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Nash has always been well-regarded as a great basketball mind so it isn't that surprising that he could plunge into coaching at some point. I do worry that Brooklyn seems to be a team entirely controlled by whatever Kyrie/Durant want, and that seems like trouble as both of those guys are pretty weird and have had some curious exits in their careers.
 

Reggie Hammond

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Feb 10, 2017
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But if Kyrie and KD approved of the hiring of Nash, aren't they the ones making the hiring decision? And doesn't that make Kyrie and KD the ultimate arbiters for all the hiring decisions within the organization?
 

Double Down Trent

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Jun 5, 2008
42
Is this really that unprecedented? Didn't Jason Kidd get hired by the Nets with no coaching experience? Or am I forgetting something?
 

themuddychicken

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Mar 26, 2014
80
On the Stephen A. thing, in 2019 I wouldn't have even thought twice about this. But this is 2020 and our country's racial problems are front and center right now, and I admit that upon hearing about this I quickly thought of the fact that Nash is white.

Because this is 2020, earlier this year 538's sports podcast discussed race and coach hirings in professional sports. And they mentioned something that really stuck with me - of the classic four major American sports, two have a majority of white players (MLB and NHL) and two have a majority of black players (NFL and NBA). And when it comes to head coaches, two value former players over non-players and two value non-players over former players. And wouldn't you know, the sports dominated by black players prefer outsiders while the sports dominated by white players prefer former players.

Now in this instance Nash is a former player, he just happens to be a white former player. And as people have pointed out, his connection to KD and to a hugely successful franchise make the hiring sensible and completely reasonable. And from all accounts Nash is a great basketball mind.

But I'm still left wondering if Nash would have been hired if he was a black former player. If he was black, would his lack of coaching experience have been a bigger problem? If he was black, would being a former player have worked against him?

I don't claim to have answers but I think it is worth discussing, and the bias against black former players in sports is definitely worth shining a light on.
 

OurF'ingCity

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Apr 22, 2016
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But I'm still left wondering if Nash would have been hired if he was a black former player. If he was black, would his lack of coaching experience have been a bigger problem? If he was black, would being a former player have worked against him?
I'm not saying your point is completely without merit, but it's worth noting that a number of black former players have been hired as head coaches in past years with no previous coaching experience - Derek Fisher, Doc Rivers, and Mark Jackson come to mind.
 

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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There is a place for a conversation about the disproportionate amount of white coaches there are relative to players, but Nash being hired because he clearly was buddies with Durant and Durant/Kyrie are clearly calling the shots in the organization, is not the best example to use if you want to talk about white coaches getting better opportunities.

On social media, I see a lot of talk about why Mark Jackson wasn't hired (this happens every time someone not named Mark Jackson gets a job) but I'm not sure how many of those people actually understand how bad of a coach Mark Jackson was in Golden State (take it away Sam Ray Not!)
 

wonderland

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Jul 20, 2005
525
Mark Jackson never coached before getting his first job. Isiah Thomas the same. Nate McMillan was an assistant for just a year. As pointed out, Doc Rivers and Jason Kidd jumped straight into coaching.

I think point guards have the ability to jump right into coaching as they see the game differently than others on the court.
 

themuddychicken

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Mar 26, 2014
80
I'm not saying your point is completely without merit, but it's worth noting that a number of black former players have been hired as head coaches in past years with no previous coaching experience - Derek Fisher, Doc Rivers, and Mark Jackson come to mind.
That is a great point. The answer likely lies in there being a bias against black coaches in sports but the Nash hiring not being an example of it. And I'm not saying that it is, just that in 2020 we should probably be discussing it and doing so in a more nuanced way than Stephen A. sports talking heads typically offer.
 

kelpapa

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Feb 15, 2010
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Because this is 2020, earlier this year 538's sports podcast discussed race and coach hirings in professional sports. And they mentioned something that really stuck with me - of the classic four major American sports, two have a majority of white players (MLB and NHL) and two have a majority of black players (NFL and NBA). And when it comes to head coaches, two value former players over non-players and two value non-players over former players. And wouldn't you know, the sports dominated by black players prefer outsiders while the sports dominated by white players prefer former players.
That's a really interesting point, and I'm glad you brought it up. I had not thought of this like that before.

One other coach that isn't mentioned is Magic. He coached for 16 games, and I don't think he had any previous experience. Stephen Smith saying that Mark Jackson built the foundation for the Warriors is why nobody takes him serious.