crzymdups wrote:Phil has always been about building a team atmosphere and team ethos... that's been his biggest failure here. I get that he wanted to trade Melo, but his little mind games with Melo in December seemed to completely derailed this season. On the hand you can say, "yeah Melo has to be tougher than that"... on the other hand you can say "what the hell was Phil thinking." The team was building chemistry and faith in each other... I think Phil was pouting because they had abandoned the Triangle at that player's meeting (which Phil was present for) to get their win streak going.
I don't think his statement had anything to do with the team playing badly. The statement was mostly praise for Melo, even comparing him to Jordan/Kobe. My god, that's a huge compliment from Phil. All Phil said is Melo needs to move the ball quicker, and it was in response to a specific question about how hard it is to get a system run with someone like Melo. There was no slight there. Now the Rosen article and all that has happened in the last few weeks, that's a different story. That's Phil playing mind games and trying to force Melo to either play at a superstar level or force out, I do think Phil has messed up with that. It wasn't the right thing to do.
But the reason we are no good is the way Melo and Rose (more Rose) approached this season. They were all raving about having never played with this much talent before. Yet, neither Melo or Rose were willing to change the way they played. The Miami Heat had a similar situation at first with Wade/James/Bosh. Not saying these guys are as good with KP as that trio. But teams struggle at times. In our case what happened is Rose and Melo never did what James and Wade did. James and Wade altered their games a little, allowing others to be involved and being able to share the offense. They took so much passion and effort into their defense. Rose and Melo neither show any leadership on offense nor do they give a damn about defense.
The only veteran who came this year with the right attitude who was serious about winning was Jennings. Jennings once scored 50 in a game, and averaged 17 points a season. He's in a contract year. He could have played like Lou Williams. Instead he played like a real point guard, mistakes and all (because truth is he's not even naturally a pass first point guard, he is trying to become one now). If Rose and Melo came into this season with the same attitude as BJ which was - max defensive effort, pass first, shoot second, leadership - this team would have been top 5 in the East right now, easy. That's not on Phil at all.
I also think Hornachek deserves considerable blame. He has been inflexible with lineups and roles with regards to starters. Melo always at the 3. KP always at the 4. Rose always at the 1. Try something different, maybe? How can that hurt? A good coach adapts when teams don't show good results, Spoelstra in Miami moved Bosh to 5, Bron to 4 and changed roles for Wade as well. He figured things out after a slow start. That's good coaching there as well.
Where Phil has failed in my book is that he has not step in. He allows Hornachek to mess up, allows Rose and Melo to play this stupidly. And his only reaction is cheap shots from Rosen and trade talk. As a coach he would have stepped in and gotten on Rose and Melo for how they were playing. There's no way he would have tolerated this type of mentality from any of his teams. So why does he let Horny just sit back and take this? Maybe Phil is actually happier with the way things are going and that the team is going to get a lottery pick. There's no other explanation in my book.
