NBA Coach Rankings: Larry Drew Checks In At No. 23 In SB Nation Rankings

with Toronto??? The caption should be “PLEEEEEEASEE!! PLEEEASE! don’t shoot another 20 footer!”

I can’t stand Larry Drew as our coach (good guy I hear) and I wish he was 30. I’m normally not that rigid, but dammit – we will never win a title with the 23rd best coach in the league. Just not happening. My Cuban BFF will rectify this – I’m sure of it.

Jason Collins + Zaza Pachulia outcoached Van Gundy.

Dwight + 1-dimensional shooters = champs???

thanks Otis Smith!

But seriously here’s what Stan Van Gundy said at the “Coaching University Live Event”:

"We think it helps our center and we think it helps our point guard in penetrating if we can spread the floor out,"Van Gundy said at the Coaching U Live event at UCF on Thursday. "The numbers think that’s a better shot than the mid-range. And the other reason is, that’s who we have."

Van Gundy went on to say, in general terms, that the Magic haven’t possessed perimeter players adept at penetrating and scoring at the rim. More than 80 percent of the shots taken by Jameer Nelson, Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu are classified as jump-shots.

"Especially from an offensive standpoint, this is a personnel driven league," Van Gundy continued. "You do with what you have. We get it from our media all the time and our fans. We’ll have those nights, 2-for-23 from three. They say you gotta drive the ball more. Who? Who? That’s my question. Who? Who’s going to drive the ball? That’s not who we have. If I had a different team, there are a lot of guys in the league that I wouldn’t shoot threes with. We have who we have and we’re going to build our system around it."
……

Now my question is if Van Gundy were the Hawks coach would he add a full time center
 or keep same philosojhy.

Seriously stumped here. This is what Woodson and Drew do.

"We think it helps our center [Horford] and we think it helps our point guard [Teague] in penetrating if we can spread the floor out,""The numbers think that’s a better shot than the mid-range. And the other reason is, that’s who we have."

would Van Gundy thought of using Gortat to counter Jason Collins and shift Dwight Howard power forward??

Thats what happened last year isn’t it?

"Especially from an offensive standpoint, this is a personnel driven league," Van Gundy continued. "You do with what you have….If I had a different team, there are a lot of guys in the league that I wouldn’t shoot threes with. We have who we have and we’re going to build our system around it."

If Stan Van Gundy had Gortat or any team has 2 interchangeabl centers (ie Varejao and Ilgauskas) will we ever win?

for starting bibby for half the season. im shocked there are coaches worse than him. In the caption is says that he kept a competitive series against the bulls, truth is he was forced to play teague and it ended up better than he thought

A cheap move, and clear sign of how misguided they were.
To put the coach with the least pedigree and least salary in charge of a mature team that has been to second round of playoffs three years running. The top four players making at least 10 times his salary.

Alex will fix it. Either this year, or thankfully after coming strange lockout year comes to an end.

The new candidates should be

1. Jeff Van Gundy (experience and been through the wars)
2. Patrick Ewing (credibility for the Hall of Famer and good seasoning under SVG)
3. Brian Shaw (People were high on him in LA LA land, and I still think Lakers made a huge mistake by hiring brown)
4. Because I Like Calipari, we should go outside the box and try to steal him from KY
5. Rick Pitino – has proven himself at every rank

#1,
 #2 ?? Rambis had good seasoning under Phil

1. yes
2. no
3. has coached NBA before, didn’t traded Chauncey after playing him in a small backcourt?

and whether their talent is good enough to beat the talent they’ll face in the Playoffs

My only concern is if the positives were only positives because of the baseline set by Woodson, and therefore they are really false positives.

Overall, I think Drew did ok. He didn’t sink the ship that he was given, but he didn’t sail into new waters either. He most definitely improved the team on both sides of the ball from a predictability standpoint, but he didn’t improve the defensive efficiency and the offense never seemed to take root with the team and by the numbers was actually worse.

I read many opinions that set his expectations as winning more games than Woodson had the year before and I firmly believe that doing so was truly unreasonable. My personal opinion of Drew’s performance was soley based on the playoffs. Going into the season, I had no doubt that this team could still make the playoffs. The question however, was what would Drew do to make the team more successful in the playoffs? The sample size is obviously small and I’d love to see how he would play things if some of the circumstances had been different, i.e. no injury to Hinrich, but overall, I think he managed it well. I can give him some credit for finding a plan that worked against Orlando and getting the team to actually execute said plan and I’d like to think that Teague shattered whatever ridiculous opinion Drew had of him after Game 1 against Chicago, enough to allow Teague to continue.

The negatives all seem to be personel issues. I don’t think that he will ever be the coach that demands a player to follow along or will ever bench a key player for not following along. In that regard, I think he is too much like Woodson and that we will always have a problem with Josh shooting long jumpers. Drew just doesn’t have it in him to be that kind of a coach. He also relies much too heavily on the mystical ‘veteran’ players. Bibby never should have started this year and JC1 should never come off the bench before Teague if Teague isn’t starting and he IS NOT A PG. The Horford Rule is absurd and I think he completely undervalues Zaza.

I don’t think Drew has what it takes to turn this team into a championship team but I don’t think he’ll run it into lottery land either. I’d probably vote to keep him around for another year because I think he can improve if he’s willing to learn from his mistakes, be open to change, and be willing to demand his players to stick to the plan. I also don’t think there is a lot of options when it comes to coaches right now and I think that the better solution towards getting a championship team is by getting better players.

But that’s just me.