NBA 2019-20 thread.

The Beilein experiment was a bad idea that's already gone on waaaaay too long.

 

I bet you haven’t seen him play.

that doesn’t make him a hall of famer but I’m confident you haven’t.

 

Imagine coaching millionaires who couldn't even address the coach about something he said, and instead had their agent tell ESPN.

 

Imagine taking a job coaching highly skilled millionaire adults and thinking you could treat them like 18-year-olds and not adjust your coaching in the slightest, and then dropping "thugs" on them in a film session.

Imagine coaching professionals in such a manner that they apparently don't feel they can go to you with that kind of an issue, and it requires your assistants to point out later that you just hit your team with a racial insult.

 

I think it was the GM, wasn't it?

Beilein never struck me as a horrible, overbearing person. Seemed to garner a lot of praise, actually, for not treating his players the way Tom Izzo treats his guys.

But I suppose you can see it from your angle. Beilein is entirely bad, the players are entirely good. They seem pretty immature, to me.

 

You really do love your authority figures, eh? Is that something we should explore?

 

Or you could actually pay attention to what someone else is saying and attempt to have a conversation, as opposed to the "smugness from on high" approach.

Beilein is probably a lovely guy. He seems to be very well respected in the college basketball community. He's done very well with 18 year olds.

He's now coaching professionals. He is, according to those reporting on the team, quite insistent on coaching them the same way he coached 18 year olds. He drills fundamentals endlessly. He likes to name plays after wild animals. Everyone else in the league runs a curl; Beilein tells them to do a Polar Bear. The players seem to hate it and his system is not working by any standard.

And then he calls a roomful of wealthy black professionals "thugs."

I don't know if that's what he meant. I think his "slugs" excuse is somewhat plausible. But it's a pretty awful mistake to make, and one you can't afford in a roomful of people who think you're already in over your head.

I think someone moving from college to pro should adjust his approach. I think treating pros like college kids is foolish and going to alienate your players. When you cap that off with a racial insult -- intentional or otherwise -- it's not going to fly.

But hey, I'm too stupid to see nuance. Perhaps you could explain it to me.

 

This is what you took out of this? Jesus.

 

Seems very white and black to you.

 

Yeah, this was never going to work and I was always convinced the only reason Beilein tried it was to be able to say he did and to get one last big payday before retiring.

 

Probably a good thing he didn't characterize greedy and selfish players as ... uh ... "niggardly" in their approach to the game.
I mean, come on John.

 

Good thing Bielien wasn’t talking about all the teams that are bigger than the Cavs.