Jabroni Lames wrote:cupcakesnake wrote:Jabroni Lames wrote:
lol. This is compete rubbish. You have absolutely no idea how much credit to attribute to Nurse vs everybody else. Like Dwane Casey who gave those guys minutes and other assistant coaches? What about the players themselves and their off-season trainers? Even Casey gave Siakam all the credit for development…. and he had a front row seat.
In this instance we do actually know where the credit is due. Nick Nurse was assigned to working in the offseason to create a bench lineup based around the teams young guys (Siakam, FVV, Poeltl, and Delon Wright). Like you can credit Casey for assigning Nurse to that task, but the principles on offense and defense were installed by Nurse. That bench unit literally outplayed the starting lineup in 2018. It seems even more obvious to credit Nurse because in 2019, the "bench mob" strategic principles got moved to the starting lineup with Nurse taking over the head coaching position. Siakam became a starter, and Lowry completely changed from his pick & roll attack to his quick passing and movement based game.
If Nurse is so great at developing bench units, then why does he only trust like 6, maybe 7 players? That's always been his M.O. He runs veterans and a small handful of guys he trusts, into the ground. Nurse sucks at developing a deep bench. That's undeniable.
Really depends on what you think of the players involved. Despite his profile, Nick Nurse is a pretty new coach (6 seasons, 5 with one team), so it's easy to point at what's happened and call that his coaching style, strengths, or weaknesses.
Nick Nurse started his career by developing a great bench, and that trend continued for a couple seasons. The front office kept losing starting players (Kawhi followed by Gasol, Ibaka, Lowry) and replacing them with projects they believed might pop (Chris Boucher, Stanley Johnson, De'Andre Bemby, Matt Thomas, Patrick McCaw) and late draft picks/undrafted rookies (Terrance Davis, Malachi Flynn, Dalano Banton). They got Trent for Norm, and turned Lowry into Precious Achiuwa, but in general a brutal talent drain was taking place in Toronto but the expectation to win wasn't draining at the same rate. Not sure what that has to do with coaching.
I don't really look at the list of players and think this is "undeniable" proof that Nurse can't develop a deep bench. Developing a deep bench does involve coaching, but the players acquired is the more important factor. I feel blaming the coach for not turning those players into a deep bench is a bit of stretch, but I know it's a commonly held opinion.
You also can't really use this Phili year as evidence either. The Sixers lost Embiid, Oubre, Melton, and Covington for large chunks of the season, and the team still didn't play anyone huge minutes outside of Maxey. 11 different players played at least 19mpg when they were available.