Wins comes from good 4th Quarter Coaching!

[Stahmenah_Vybz]

http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/scoreboard according to these sports analysts speaking about the Miami's winning streak, they seem to think that good coaching in the forth quarter can take a team past a team with better talents. Basically at the 4:00 min mark they go into details about this point.

Do you guys think if we had a coach that truly knows what he was doing or a coach that would listen to those assistants who knows what they were doing, would would be in a better place now? I for one agree with this point.

[CalgaryRapsFan]

If this claim is true, than the inverse must also be true, that poor coaching in the 4th quarter leads to extra losses. As Raptor fans this season, we've seen far too many 4th quarter collapses and have often blamed the loss on poor coaching. I absolutely think that coaching decisions, especially in the 2nd half / 4th quarter play a big role in determining the outcome in games. I don't think DC is a 'bad' coach, but he's made many boneheaded decisions throughout the season, which I feel have cost the team several wins (especially during that horrid start to the season).

It's interesting to think about, not only in terms of current coaches, but past coaches. I know Triano is widely regarded as a horrible coach, but I always thought he seemed to be an exceptional gameplanner, as his teams always seemed to play very competitively in the first half of games. My biggest beef with him was that he always got outcoached at halftime. Opposing coaches would adjust their gameplan and adapt to the Raptors, which allowed them to outplay the Raps in the 2nd half. Triano always seemed unable to deviate from his gameplan and relied too heavily on his pre-game x's & o's, rather than adapt in-game and make adjustments.

For many past Raptors coaches, likely due to their collective inexperience, I found that whatever in-game adjustments they made always seemed to be in reaction to adjustments made by the opposition (ie: going big or small). I don't recall any past Raptors coach ever taking the iniative and forcing the opposition to adjust to them within the flow of a particular game. DC has seemed willing to do this a little bit lately, by playing small ball, but I get the feeling it's been done more out of necessity/desperation, than actual strategy. I therefore don't find it overly suprising that past Raptors coaches haven't really ever resurfaced in the NBA, as anything more than assistant coaches.

[ebrian]

I certainly agree that if a team has a superior coach they have a better chance of closing out games than an inferior coach. On the other hand if the inferior coach has a great team and the superior coach has a horrible team, the inferior coach will probably win.

This article states that good coaching in the fourth quarter can take a team past a team with better talents. I tend to disagree unless the difference between the two teams is marginal. However such is the case with the Raptors that most teams have superior talent, like, it's not even close. In our particular case, I don't think combining the braintrust of the top coaches in the history of the NBA is going to make that much of a difference. Maybe we win 5 more games that we didn't win.

[slaw]

While I am not of the view that 'coaching doesn't matter', I think that coaching, particularly at the NBA level, makes a difference only around the margins. A really good coach might win you a handful of games more in any given year and a really bad coach might lose you a few. Obviously, that can matter if the team is close to contention or playoffs, etc. but for a team like Toronto or Miami (at either end of the spectrum), I don't believe it makes much of a difference.

The guy I always point to here is Doc Rivers. Doc Rivers coached some of the worst teams in Boston Celtics history. Fans wanted to run him out of town on the rail. Then, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett come to town and all of a sudden Doc Rivers is one of the greates coaches in the history of everything. This isn't to diminish what Rivers has done but the reality is that Doc Rivers couldn't even get to .500 without those guys.

Skill, and superstars, rule in the NBA. It ain't a coaches' league.

[ezz_bee]

My current opinion is also that coaches only make differences around the margins.

[Nilanka]

How wide of a margin are we talking about here? If the Raptors are basically a .500 team (+/- 5 wins), there's a significant difference between finishing with 36 wins vs. 46 wins.

Does anyone think there's a coach out there that can get this current roster to 45 wins?

[slaw]

How wide of a margin are we talking about here? If the Raptors are basically a .500 team (+/- 5 wins), there's a significant difference between finishing with 36 wins vs. 46 wins.

Does anyone think there's a coach out there that can get this current roster to 45 wins?

Are we sure this is a 500 team? I have my doubts.

Coaches that would make this team better? Sloane? Stan Van Gundy? After Adelman went to Minny I now will never again say, 'no way will that guy ever go there'. Problem is, Colangelo has a track record of hiring inexperienced coaches. As long as he is here, I don't see any of those guys being hired by Toronto.

[ebrian]

I think next year given this roster we're a 38-40 win team. Some assumptions include JV playing better, Ross improving. A different coach might improve that, but then you have that situation where if you don't replace Casey in time, then we're talking about an adjustment period and all that. Might still be the same number of wins.

I don't think Casey is going anywhere. As I've stated many times already, no reason to fire him until we lose games we're supposed to be winning. Yea, we lost some games in the 4th but maybe from a different perspective you can say "Wow, Casey kept us in the game for 3 quarters! Let's triple his salary!".

[d749]

i think we have been losing games we're suposed to be winning and thats the problem. we have no comparisson without seeing them under another coach but i think most of us believe that we have lost more than our share of games we should have won.
i get both sides though

[robert parrish 00]

I think so

Casey has a huge impact on the 4th.

It's hard to win when your starters are on the bench till the 8 min mark of the 4th.

[ezz_bee]

How wide of a margin are we talking about here? If the Raptors are basically a .500 team (+/- 5 wins), there's a significant difference between finishing with 36 wins vs. 46 wins.

Does anyone think there's a coach out there that can get this current roster to 45 wins?

I don't think there's a coach in the world who could have gotten this year's Toronto Raptors anywhere close to 45 wins. Next year, assuming that JV and others make some improvements on their own this summer, then maybe, but part of that will be because the players themselves have better skills.

I agree that Casey hasn't done a perfect job this year, far from it. All things considered though, I'm not sure a different coach would have made a difference.

[iblastoff]

Casey has a huge impact on the 4th.

It's hard to win when your starters are on the bench till the 8 min mark of the 4th.

its harder to win if you think starters should be playing full 48 minutes.

[Stahmenah_Vybz]

If this claim is true, than the inverse must also be true, that poor coaching in the 4th quarter leads to extra losses. As Raptor fans this season, we've seen far too many 4th quarter collapses and have often blamed the loss on poor coaching. I absolutely think that coaching decisions, especially in the 2nd half / 4th quarter play a big role in determining the outcome in games. I don't think DC is a 'bad' coach, but he's made many boneheaded decisions throughout the season, which I feel have cost the team several wins (especially during that horrid start to the season).

It's interesting to think about, not only in terms of current coaches, but past coaches. I know Triano is widely regarded as a horrible coach, but I always thought he seemed to be an exceptional gameplanner, as his teams always seemed to play very competitively in the first half of games. My biggest beef with him was that he always got outcoached at halftime. Opposing coaches would adjust their gameplan and adapt to the Raptors, which allowed them to outplay the Raps in the 2nd half. Triano always seemed unable to deviate from his gameplan and relied too heavily on his pre-game x's & o's, rather than adapt in-game and make adjustments.

For many past Raptors coaches, likely due to their collective inexperience, I found that whatever in-game adjustments they made always seemed to be in reaction to adjustments made by the opposition (ie: going big or small). I don't recall any past Raptors coach ever taking the iniative and forcing the opposition to adjust to them within the flow of a particular game. DC has seemed willing to do this a little bit lately, by playing small ball, but I get the feeling it's been done more out of necessity/desperation, than actual strategy. I therefore don't find it overly suprising that past Raptors coaches haven't really ever resurfaced in the NBA, as anything more than assistant coaches.

I was gonna ask about those past coaches and if that applied back then also, but you answered that question already!

[Stahmenah_Vybz]

I Maybe we win 5 more games that we didn't win.

I am thinking it would be more than 5 wins or so!

[Stahmenah_Vybz]

Does anyone think there's a coach out there that can get this current roster to 45 wins?

I think that it is possible to get to 45 wins if that coach gets the team to play less hero ball and more team ball, passing the ball around more and actually giving a damn on defense.