Re: Credit Pitino with the loss

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

DJessen writes: 

> This was another loss you can hang around Pitino's neck. Again, I blame the 
> substition pattern. Sure, it would help if we had Pierce and Fortson. But I 
> think the remainders are still good enough to beat this Rockets team. 
> 
> Case in point: I really feel that Walker has to play 40 minutes of the game 
> to be effective. When Pierce is gone, you would think it would be a 
> no-brainer anyway. However, Pitino took out Walker in the middle of the first
> and didn't return him until the middle of the second. Walker, who was dried 
> out, instantly starting taking it upon himself to make up for lost time and I
> don't have to tell you the end result. Now, Walker played quite a bit of the 
> second half, But notice, he really didn't starting really getting into it 
> until the middle of the fourth quarter.

Walker played 39 minutes according to the box score. Are you really
complaining that Pitino played him one minute too few? Didn't it work
out well that Walker was saved for the second half where he produced
well?

> Case in point: I have never liked Dana at the point guard position. I much 
> prefer Overton. Notice how well the second unit played at the end of the game
> against the Spurs when Pitino finally put Overton at the point. Dana seemed 
> like it as well and really started stroking the jumpers and racing down the 
> court for layups. Well, Pitino puts Dana in towards the end of the first 
> quarter against the Rockets and Dana, still hot from last night, confidently 
> pulls up and drains a long jumper. However, two minutes later in the game, 
> Pitino goes back to Anderson for the entire second quarter. For the first 
> time it looked like Dana was hot and I wanted him in there, even at the point
> guard position, Pitino doesn't. Now Anderson had a nice overall game through 
> out. However, when Pitino put Dana out there in the third quarter, he 
> promptly missed two wide open jumpers. Out he came but now he definitely 
> didn't have the confidence. Why not ride the hot man earlier?

You can't win here. When Pitino keeps Dana in, everyone complains about
how the offense grinds to a halt. When he takes him out, he's destroying
Dana's "hot hand" which is based on what, a single jumper? Meanwhile
Kenny's shooting 70% or so and you want to keep him on the bench. 

The thing about substitutions is that they are the easiest thing to
second-guess, because you get to do it in hindsight. If you leave someone
in and he goes cold, you can blame the coach. If you take someone out, 
you can say that he had a "hot hand" (BTW, evidently people have done
statistical research concluding that there is no such thing) and the
coach ruined it. If you bring someone in and he performs well, the coach
gets no credit; if he performs poorly, it's because the coach ruined his
rhythm. Could it be that players just miss shots?

I think when you judge coaching, a good thing to do is try to decide 
whether the players are taking open shots or not, or getting good matchups
or not, instead of whether the coach is recognizing whether players are
"hot" or "cold".  
 
> Case in point: As I have mentioned before, I have never understood how Pitino
> can ever  have a Celtic team out there playing without a Walker or Pierce and
> sometimes not even a Griffen. When the Spurs play, Robinson and Duncan takes 
> turn resting so one of them is always in there. When Bulls played, Jordan and
> Pippen did the same. Why wouldn't you want to have one of your best players 
> on the court at all times? Does it make sense to rest them at the same time? 
> Pitino likes to play a unit of Barros, Cheaney, Walter, Williams and Battie. 
> Who is supposed to shoot the ball? I think the players ask the same question 
> because no one is aggressively looking for his shot. Is it supposed to be 
> Dana? It is difficult for him to get that shot off when he is also the point 
> guard who is supposed to be creating shots for others.

This is definitely a valid debatable point about substitutions, and I
have much less of a problem with this than the whole "hot/cold"
issue. Different coaches do this different ways with varying
success. In the games I've seen, either Pierce or Griffin has been
on the floor almost always; I actually don't recall seeing the lineup
you mention, but I could just be missing it. But he could do more to
keep two starters on the floor constantly, say. The idea is probably
to play the bench together more so that you can put together more time
for the starters together as a cohesive unit. 

> All in all, I believe Pitino is a good coach and has done a great job 
> gathering in the team that we have. How he gets these guys to scrap until the
> bitter end, I'll never know. However, I just don't understand the master 
> plan.  How Fortson will fit into this when he is healthy is an even bigger 
> mystery...

Fair enough. I think that figuring out where Fortson fits is difficult
because we haven't seen him on the floor. And I think that we will
definitely see another big trade before the Pitino regime has ended.


> 
> DJessen33
>