http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/page/ESPN-Forecast-COY-140415/coach-year He isn't even in the running. Doesn't even make the top 5. Do people forget that many pundits didn't even predict we'd make the playoffs? We finished 5th. Good grief. The man has his flaws, but it's amazing how little respect nationally he gets from the writers.
I think it's rich that the top two are a guy who finished 9th in the west and a guy who's team went to the WCF last year and has at least one HOFer. Pretty dammed ridiculous if you ask me.
Couldn't disagree more. Both - in fact everyone in the Top 5 - are far more deserving than Stotts. Hornacek should definitely win it since it's not an MVP of coaches, in which case Pops would win it every single year. I understand that the East sucks, but it's still quite remarkable that CHI, TOR, and CHA all did as well as they did.
Someone had to be in the top 8. They can't all miss the playoffs (at least not in the current system.) Don't give Chi, Tor, or Cha too much credit. I also think Horny gets too much credit because I think people vastly underrated Phoenix. They have some good players on that team.
A 20 or 21 game improvement with largely the same cast of characters should be rewarded. I still think Hornacek should win it, because we were supposed to be mediocre while the Suns were supposed to be challenging for worst record in the league. IMO, Stotts should be second in voting.
Here's the thing max, based on early predictions from the pundits, Stotts and Horny far exceeded expectations. But if you really looked at their rosters, they're about where they should have been anyway. I predicted almost exactly where the Blazers would finish back in July. I also said after the first game of the season that Phoenix was a much better team than most people expected. Yes, the coaches did a good job, but I also think we need to factor in the horrible evaluations that were handed down by the supposed experts.
I respectfully disagree. I think both coaches maximized the talents and abilities of their respective teams, Hornicek a bit more than Stotts.
But that exact same thing could be said about our team. People vastly underrated our squad, with some predicting us to not make the playoffs. So both exceeded poor expectations, but one did it with 2 all stars on his roster, one did it with a team that dumped most of their best players from the previous season.
I hear what you're saying on all counts, and agree to an extent. I just don't agree that Stotts did a better job than those guys. CHI lost Rose and traded away Deng. They have a collection of role players and only fell one spot in the Playoff seeding. And they lost that spot to TOR, who traded away their "best" player and then got better. And I've probably been the only guy here that has said Dragic is better than Lillard. PHX does have some good talent - but they still exceeded expectations by a mile. And they seemed to do it consistently throughout the season, rather than spiking during the first 6 weeks and then falling apart and playing dog-shit basketball for most of the rest of the season. For a team with, supposedly, the "best PF in the game" and, supposedly, one of the best PGs, Stotts did an okay job. We slightly exceeded expectations, but only because we feasted on teams early in the season while they were getting tuned up.
5 new players averaging 10+ minutes per game is not the definition of "largely the same cast of characters" IMO
Whats even funnier than stotts only getting 15 points is jason kidd actually getting any. Maybe stotts should have spilled more drinks.
This. Hornacek took a hodgepodge collection of players and convinced them to play his style of ball in his first year as head coach. He's one of the few players I respected on the mid 90's Jazz teams. The man was a shooting genius.
We're a heck of a lot closer (4 wins away) to the worst-case pre-season evaluation (9th place), than the Suns are (~20 wins away) to their worst-case pre-season evaluation (bottom-ish of the West).
I don't have much of a problem with it. Hornacek deserves it, and that Toronto team has exceed my expectations by far more than the Blazers have. Before the season I thought the Blazers should be about a 6th seed, but could easily be as high as 3 or just miss the playoffs. Would've put a lot of money on it if I had made it to Vegas in time. I think most national media have no idea who is on the Blazer team or how the team only won 33 games the year prior. Those of us who follow the team knew the prior year Blazers would've been a bit over .500 with an average bench. The same national media is giving us little chance of winning a playoff series against the rockets. That's just how it is. The Blazers had far fewer injuries than most teams, they have 4 starters who will play in all 82 games. The Blazers had a number of close games they lost, now if 5 or 6 of them had gone the other way we'd be talking about a team close to 60 wins and then Stotts would be right there for coach of the year voting. But the team didn't win those games so he doesn't deserve that recognition. Would another coach have squeeked out a few more wins in those close games? Would another coach have implemented more effective defensive schemes this season? I'm not sure, I'm super happy with what Stotts has done but with the Blazers being just one of a number of 50 wins teams the coach doesn't stand out. If I had to single out an individual most responsible for the Blazers turnaround from last year to this year it would be Rolo.
Rolo and Mo are why we have so many more wins this year than last year. And in regards to your comment about if we had just won a few more games - that goes both ways. Three games immediately spring to mind that could have easily been losses and put us in a dog-fight for the last 3 seeds: DET (OT last second shot), CLE (OT last second shot), OKC (NYE, Durant missed last second point-blank shot). There may have been others, but these stick out in my mind because it was during the point in time where any criticism was met by a "24-6!" response (or whatever the record happened to be).
Through the first 19 games of the year I think it should go to Mike D'Antoni. Getting that horrific Lakers roster to 10-9 was one of the most impressive stretches this season. The way he is able to design an offense to make DLeague players such as Xavier Henry, Jodie Meeks and Kendall Marshall all be efficient double digit scorers is amazing.
So hornacek is over rated because people underestimated his team, but stotts is underrated because people underestimated his team?
Going from Hickson/Nolan to Rolo/Mo, I think 20 wins sounds just about right. Of course major improvement from Freeland factors in, along with Robinson's progression. But the lion's share goes to Rolo/Mo - those two positions went from (well)-below average to above average.
