Player The Methodical Meritocracy of Maestro Mitch Johnson and his Many Minions

[Fabbs]

For me, that's all on coaching. This is a young team with players that don't really know how to win, they need to be micromanaged for a year or two before letting them make their own decisions and make the right plays that way.
I got compeltely triggered by this play last night to the point where I didn't even care about the game anymore.
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What is this fucking shit? Like are we seriously pretending an NBA team is defending like this by design? What the fuck are we doing?
And I can find this exact same play and it's variations happen at least 10 times every single game. Just the extent of fuckery and awful defense is different, varying from poor to whatever this is.

The chronic overplaying of help D leading to wide open opponent shot plays like above had been a staple of these Mitch Spurs teams the last 2 years. Like you posted, often 10Xs a game.

 

[scott]

Mitch has to start running the offense through Fox. He turns it on in the 4th, but he should be turning it on like that every quarter. Give Castle less touches and play him off the ball. As a screener and cutter and if they leave him open for 3: let him shoot open ones. You need Castle out there for his defense, but he's getting way too much usage which leaves Fox standing on the perimeter. That has to change.

I think they should be doing this simply for the fact that Fox takes better care of the ball and calms things down. Castle has a stunning 19.5% TOV% whereas Fox's is 11.9% (Harper is at 12.2% for reference).

It's one thing for our PGs to not be shooting well, but it's even worse when they're also turning the ball over like crazy. At least take care of the damn ball!

 

[DTW]

Mitch has to start running the offense through Fox. He turns it on in the 4th, but he should be turning it on like that every quarter. Give Castle less touches and play him off the ball. As a screener and cutter and if they leave him open for 3: let him shoot open ones. You need Castle out there for his defense, but he's getting way too much usage which leaves Fox standing on the perimeter. That has to change.

Agreed. Why are they catering the offense to a second year role player, who has the fourth highest offensive upside on the roster? They're fostering bad habits and playing in his ego, all of which will be more difficult to tone down as he improves.

I don't like some of the rotational decisions myself, but this is not an easy roster to coach. The early injuries were a blessing in disguise, but reality has set in as far as thethree ball handlers not working well together and the lack of shooting on the deep bench.

 

[scott]

Agreed. Why are they catering the offense to a second year role player, who has the fourth highest offensive upside on the roster? They're fostering bad habits and playing in his ego, all of which will be more difficult to tone down as he improves.

I don't like some of the rotational decisions myself, but this is not an easy roster to coach. The early injuries were a blessing in disguise, but reality has set in as far as thethree ball handlers not working well together and the lack of shooting on the deep bench.

The fact that we elected out of a timeout to put the ball in Castle's hands, after he had already committed 7 TOVs, still astonishes me.

I think they gave the TOV on the inbounds pass that Donte stole and hit a 3 to Champ, but that should have been on Castle as well.

 

[ambchang]

I think they should be doing this simply for the fact that Fox takes better care of the ball and calms things down. Castle has a stunning 19.5% TOV% whereas Fox's is 11.9% (Harper is at 12.2% for reference).

It's one thing for our PGs to not be shooting well, but it's even worse when they're also turning the ball over like crazy. At least take care of the damn ball!

I think not shooting well further exacerbates the TO problems as teams can pack the paint and also play the passing lanes more. It just bogs down the entire offence.

 

[spursparker9]

I think in the league....there are 2 types of coaches. The "real basketball coaches" and the "PR soft skills/player coaches".

Real basketball coaches are like Rick Carlisle, Erik Spoelstra, Joe Mazzulla who have proven that they can achieve success with lesser talents through their strategies. They have their style of coaching and are not afraid to clash with players who fall out of line.

PR soft skills/player coaches are like Doc Rivers who always get hired due to their connections with the front offices. Probably tend to give in to his players and push blames away when they under achieved.

I hope Mitch belongs to the real basketball coaches category 1 day.

 

[poopbox]

I think in the league....there are 2 types of coaches. The "real basketball coaches" and the "PR soft skills/player coaches".

Real basketball coaches are like Rick Carlisle, Erik Spoelstra, Joe Mazzulla who have proven that they can achieve success with lesser talents through their strategies. They have their style of coaching and are not afraid to clash with players who fall out of line.

PR soft skills/player coaches are like Doc Rivers who always get hired due to their connections with the front offices. Probably tend to give in to his players and push blames away when they under achieved.

I hope Mitch belongs to the real basketball coaches category 1 day.

None of those coaches won anything without top tier talent on their team. Not so sure they are "real basketball coaches".

Spo gets a lot of love for repeatedly being a 6 through 8th seed in one of the most desirable markets in the league.

 

[Fabbs]

None of those coaches won anything without top tier talent on their team. Not so sure they are "real basketball coaches".

Spo gets a lot of love for repeatedly being a 6 through 8th seed in one of the most desirable markets in the league.

Rick Carlise took one of the GOAT Spurs teams 2014 all the way to 7 games.
If definition of good coach is as it should be maximizing the talent they have, Rick was very good. Spurs consistently had much better talent.
Cubes blowing up that Champ team was not on Rick.

 

[Area 51.247]

Agreed. Why are they catering the offense to a second year role player, who has the fourth highest offensive upside on the roster? They're fostering bad habits and playing in his ego, all of which will be more difficult to tone down as he improves.

I don't like some of the rotational decisions myself, but this is not an easy roster to coach. The early injuries were a blessing in disguise, but reality has set in as far as thethree ball handlers not working well together and the lack of shooting on the deep bench.

Development and assessment?

Developing Castle's distribution skills, court awareness, and overall competence over the season, against both good and bad teams, in a variety of situations.

Assessing whether that development will improve his overall skills or does the team need to move in a different direction for where and how he plays, who he's on the floor with and in what situations, and possibly what his ceiling and floor are.

 

[Itzsoweezee]

Posting up Wemby against Randle failed over and over again. And then they went back to it again on the last possession. Take Randle out of the paint and force him to guard Wemby one on one on the perimeter!

I don’t recall any out of timeout plays this season that have actually worked well. I thought Mitch was supposed to be an offensive coach?

 

[CrustyCoastBendFan]

Posting up Wemby against Randle failed over and over again. And then they went back to it again on the last possession. Take Randle out of the paint and force him to guard Wemby one on one on the perimeter!

I don’t recall any out of timeout plays this season that have actually worked well. I thought Mitch was supposed to be an offensive coach?

HAHA,It was as simple as Wemby setting a pick on whoever was guarding the ball handler and switching Randle onto them. Wemby could roll to the basket, pop to the perimeter. You guys and your can-kicking. This Dunning Krueger Simulator idiot coach can't even do this!

If you keep seeing dummy mitch just saying, "wemby do something"
"Fox do something"

Then going to the post game presser and say, "well were just not following the process"
"The guards just have to go through this, you know, way too young.": "too short, too skinny"
"Out of our weight class"

Instead of, calling the simplest play as illustrated above, this means..

PR soft skills/player coaches are like Doc Rivers who always get hired due to their connections with the front offices. Probably tend to give in to his players and push blames away when they under achieved.

.... Mitch belongs to PR soft skills/player coaches category 2

He’s already spun you all, watching this team go up 16-0 in the opening minutes, pushing the lead to as much as 19 by mid to late third, and convincing you it all fell apart just because the other coach put Randall on Wemby and your favorite whipping post of a player just isn’t good. Now he’s got you doubting what you saw with your own eyes thanks to his PR spin at the podium.

Now you’ve got everyone trying to trade that underperforming player for someone else after his poor rotations and lack of play-calling have left the team looking terrible and stuck at .500 over the last stretch of games.

HE SUCKS
HE is DUD
aka BUST

 

[NotRobDiaz21]

Decent transitional coach but won't lead us to the promised land tbh imo

 

[Raven_]

yeah, he sucks.

 

[Dbreiden83080]

Decent transitional coach but won't lead us to the promised land tbh imo

Have to wait and see how it plays out? The Spurs are not exactly going to go out there and make some big splash in the coaching department. That’s not what they do. The league continues to go in the direction of younger guys getting opportunities so you really don’t know if they are going to be any good?

 

[Fabbs]

Is it correct to assume Pop had 80%+ say that Mitch would be next?
Regardless of what is spun about group decision.
This was during the Pop dictator / Yes men era.

 

[poopbox]

Is it correct to assume Pop had 80%+ say that Mitch would be next?
Regardless of what is spun about group decision.
This was during the Pop dictator / Yes men era.

Don't think Pop has any say at all tbh cause he would never let his pet cat Sochan get benched.

 

[Spurminator]

You guys are hilarious.

You have the #2 team in the NBA, where almost every contributing player has significantly improved since last year (when they were 16-24 in the first 40 games), despite their all-world player being out 14 of those games and on a minutes restriction half of the other games. They're 3-1 against the defending champions and frankly, outside of last night's second half, they look like the alpha dog any time the two teams play.

Every fanbase can nitpick individual plays and decisions by their coaches, but looking at the big picture if you're already screaming for Johnson to be fired, you have several screws loose. (And I say this as someone who wasn't a big fan last year but can now see that this is really his first season where he's truly calling the shots.)

This is the best the team has looked in almost a decade. Try to enjoy it!

 

[RC_Drunkford]

Mitch has to run Wemby/Fox DHOs with Wemby rolling to the rim for a lob or poppin out to the 3-point line. I just watched some tape of him in the Kings offense. They were running a ton of DHOs with him and Sabonis. Different actions. Sabonis is one of the best DHO hubs in the league, but Wemby demands so much attention that they could easily run some of this, yet we never see it.

Even when Fox was going off for us, most of his buckets come in transition or off catch and shoots. It's very rare that there is a pick & roll involved and those are mostly with Luke.

Also people seem to forget that for the 12 games Wemby missed, Castle was out for 9 of those as well, putting the ball in Fox' hands by default.

During that stretch Fox averaged 18 shot attempts, 26.7 PPG, 6.3 AST 1.6 STL with 8 FT attempts per game on 48/38/82 shooting . It's no wonder he can't catch a rhythm if you let him get 9 shots for an entire game and have Castle be the defacto PG. This is on the coaches.

 

[RC_Drunkford]

You guys are hilarious.

You have the #2 team in the NBA, where almost every contributing player has significantly improved since last year (when they were 16-24 in the first 40 games), despite their all-world player being out 14 of those games and on a minutes restriction half of the other games. They're 3-1 against the defending champions and frankly, outside of last night's second half, they look like the alpha dog any time the two teams play.

Every fanbase can nitpick individual plays and decisions by their coaches, but looking at the big picture if you're already screaming for Johnson to be fired, you have several screws loose. (And I say this as someone who wasn't a big fan last year but can now see that this is really his first season where he's truly calling the shots.)

This is the best the team has looked in almost a decade. Try to enjoy it!

Mitch has done a good job on a lot of fronts. The defense has gotten even better and is now 3rd in the league. We're the best defensive rebounding % team in the NBA and had a top 5 offensive rating as well at some point. Those Wemby post ups at the top of the key look better and better. But the offense in general needs to be fixed. Half of your rotation falling off a cliff offensively is not just the players fault.

 

[spurraider21]

offense was humming with Fox running the show. granted, a lot of that came with castle out so we surrounded him with shooters in Champ, Vassell, Barnes

Castle should be able to play off-ball with screens/cuts too, not just standing around for a 3pt shot the defense is giving him. but with Barnes slumping, its harder to find ways to mask his shooting

 

[BigTimeBum]

I feel like the offense needs to go through fox to start the game. Utilize his speed to break down the defense. Get the pick and pop going with him and wemby. Get the shooters open.

 

[Spurminator]

Needs to go through Fox for most of the game, imo tbh. And we might need to explore the PG market in the next month for another ball handler.

 

[RC_Drunkford]

I feel like the offense needs to go through fox to start the game. Utilize his speed to break down the defense. Get the pick and pop going with him and wemby. Get the shooters open.

a Wemby/Fox two-man game should be our go-to play period. Haven't seen Mitch run any of it though.

 

[RC_Drunkford]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2011117150048555324

https://twitter.com/x/status/2011117731039625647

Castle's decision making needs some work as well

 

[DTW]

Development and assessment?

Developing Castle's distribution skills, court awareness, and overall competence over the season, against both good and bad teams, in a variety of situations.

Assessing whether that development will improve his overall skills or does the team need to move in a different direction for where and how he plays, who he's on the floor with and in what situations, and possibly what his ceiling and floor are.

Okay, but then why acquire Fox in the first place? If they wanted more of a spacer and secondary ball handler, they could have spent lesser resources on a better fit.