I can motivate a player to better himself during the off-season. You can motivate a motivated player to reach new heights. But if you have to teach players that have never played hard consistently in their careers to finally play hard for the first time it is going to take more than one season's worth of magic to accomplish. It's going to take habit breaking, which takes mintes being ripped away, games being played, embarrassing players. Their is no magic formula. It takes time to get into the heads of career losers and change their mentality. We all know this. But we still think their is a magic coach out there somewhere. There isn't. LB is doing exactly what needs to be done. Yank minutes, set standards and not give in to guys that have NEVER WON. And be even harder on the young guys so that they don't develop the same losing habits that our vets and our organization as a whole spew from every pore.

No doubt we could have hired another coach that could have won more games with this squad. It would look prettier but the truth is we'd be no closer to a title than we are now. It would be a smokescreen to fool you guys into thinking we are winning. We are finally starting to do the right things subtly. I just hope we don't go down the path of impatience again.

We have a crew of career loser that have no idea what it means to play hard. I want one of two things. I want to get rid of those players OR give our coach the time to teach the lessons that need to be taught even if that means losing. So we aren't still trying to teach these guys 5 years from now.

I'm with you TMS. I agree part of the job of the coach is to motivate the players to reach new heights.. But it is not in the job description to have to motivate them to play hard. That should be a given.

I'm just sitting back praying that we don't fall into the same tired pattern of blaming an individual for a organization wide problem. Fire the person we blame and then just watch the same old crap being done by people with different names. That scares me. I no longer want coach's pointing fingers at players, players at coach's, GM's at players and coach's, fans at players, fans at coach's etc. Instead of pointing fingers and finding scapegoats to make us feel temporarily better, we need to create an air of stability. We need to hire people that can get on the same page. Develop a plan, and stick with the plan no matter how long it takes. I hate the moves Zeke and Laydne made but I do think there is a reason behind all of them. And that is a quick fix to try to save their jobs long enough so that they can then make the moves they know they should. The next GM will do the same thing unless we allow him and LB the time to work things out TOGETHER. This organization, the fans, the media, the GM, the coaches and the players have all created an atmosphere of every man for themselves and we refuse to change it.

Solution: Allow our GM, coach's to make mistakes and build a team instead of waiting for every new player or coach to be a magic elixir that fixes it all. I'm praying that Dolan has learned his lesson because this is the only way.

[Edited by - bippity10 on 03-14-2006 12:42 PM]