khandor’s sports blog

Where does your favourite team rank at the halfway point in the regular season schedule?

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What it takes to win the NBA Championship

This is the Box Score and the Play-By-Play for last night’s game between the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls.

This is the GameFlow Chart.

When you look at the different combinations Lawrence Frank used at the Point Guard and Off Guard positions in this game:

you should get a clear picture of a main reason Detroit lost this game by a margin of 24 points … and it isn’t because:

A. Carlos Boozer [PF] was a 1-man wrecking crew; or,
B. The players on the Pistons roster, as a whole, simply are not “good enough” to compete effectively with a team that has an overall “talent level” like Chicago.

Lawrence Frank is a good NBA head coach who actually knows what he’s doing.

Hopefully it doesn’t take him too long to figure out a workable solution to Detroit’s rotation problem at the guard positions, whenever Rodney Stuckey is not available to play.

There are three main phases to the game of basketball:

i. Offense;
ii. Defense; and,
iii. Rebounding.

Developing an accurate understanding of the overall NBA talent which exists on the roster for each team at the beginning of the season is a fundamental aspect of properly evaluating the day-to-day goings-on across the league over the course of the season.

INITIAL ASSESSMENT OF TEAM ROSTERS IN NBA’S EASTERN CONFERENCE [as of Sun-Dec-25-2011]

The Pistons’ 1st Round Draft Pick/2011 is off to a good start …

holding court in a very solid way … as a legit Point Guard should, i.e. making no major mis-steps, praising the right people, and emphasizing the right things … during his first ‘presser’ at Detroit’s recent media day.

For the benefit of those who think that Lawrence Frank is someone that will struggle to earn the respect of the veteran players with the Detroit Pistons, due to his lack of NBA playing experience:

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His Own Words: Ben Gordon on the NBA Lockout

Grantland: You obviously haven’t been able to talk to your new coach, Lawrence Frank, but what is your impression of him?

Gordon: “I have a lot of game experience playing against him when he coached the Nets and was a Boston assistant. He always seems to be very, very prepared, very meticulous and has an astute attention to detail. That may sound cliché for a head coach at this level. But I think it’s very important to know what your guys can do, putting them in the best situation possible. I think he’s very capable of that. He’s very defensive minded and that’s something our team lacked a lot last year. I’m looking forward once this stuff is sorted out to learning from him.”

Grantland: Last year was a tough year for the Pistons and the bottom hit with reports of players boycotting a shoot-around in protest of the former coach John Kuester. What’s the backstory behind that situation?

Gordon: “Last year, everything that possibly could have went wrong, went wrong. We had a lot of talent. There were a lot of issues in the front office, on the floor, with coaches, with players. It was just a mess. People from the outside looking in don’t realize how bad it was. It wasn’t conducive for playing basketball at a high level and it showed. It was pretty much what everybody saw. Some guys showed up to play. Some guys didn’t show up to play. Whatever point people were trying to prove by showing up or nothing showing up, those points were taken. Six guys showed up. Six guys played and a few other guys decided not to play that night. That was one of the uglier moments during the season. Moving forward, I don’t see that happening anymore. That was probably one of the lowest basketball moments I’ve ever been a part of. Because we’re all a team and we all shared that negative light. Regardless of who played that night, it was bad. But moving forward, I think the emphasis will be much different.”

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Best try thinking, again.

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you already know that, since it’s inception, there have only been 3 NBA head coaches who this corner has advocated should no longer be employed by their [then] current team:

1. Flip Saunders
2. Michael Curry
3. John Kuester

each of whom was working for the Detroit Pistons at the time.

Joe Dumars introduced his new head coach earlier today.

“It’s the players, not the plays,” he said. “There’s an old adage in coaching: ‘It’s not about the Xs and Os, it’s about the Jack and Joes.’ … When I first sat down with Joe, the first 15 minutes basically he was talking about Coach [Chuck] Daly, and what he was as a coach. And what he hit on was why Coach Daly was one of the greatest coaches ever: it’s about meshing and managing personalities. It’s about getting 12 to 15 independent contractors, so to speak, to buy into one vision. “It’s not about the Xs and Os. Now, does that play a part? Of course. I don’t think that our playbook is any more extensive than any other playbook, it’s about the guys you’re coaching, it’s about getting them to play together, it’s about getting them to buy into a common vision about what we’re going to be about. “And you know what? It’s easy to do it when you’re winning, it’s hard to do it when you’re struggling. And that’s why as a coach, you have to stand for what you believe in: this is who we are, this is what we do. And if not, there’s gotta be accountability and consequences. That’s coaching.”

Kudos to both men for getting Lawrence Frank’s tenure in Detroit off to a good start.

According to published reports yesterday, the Detroit Pistons have agreed to hire Lawrence Frank, as their next head coach … which is what this corner suggested last week they should eventually end up doing, if they are truly committed to hiring someone with prior NBA head coaching experience.

Q1. What should Pistons fans expect to see from Lawrence Frank?

A1. Expect him to establish a solid 8-9 player rotation for the Pistons, clarifying each of their roles and creating a definitive pecking order for the remainder of the roster.

This is something which good NBA coaches do in their sleep [so-to-speak] … and something which John Kuester was unable to ever do over the course of his 2 seasons as Detroit’s head coach.

Expect Lawrence Frank to do a good job coaching the Pistons and for him to un-muddy the waters fairly quickly for the Pistons at the crucial PG, OG and SF positions, re: the collective mess that exists with:

Rodney Stuckey – No. 1 PG, until further notice
Brandon Knight – No. 2 PG, until further notice
Will Bynum – No. 3 PG, or traded
Richard Hamilton – No. 1 OG, or traded
Ben Gordon – No. 2 OG, or traded
Terrico White – No. 3 OG, or traded
Austin Daye – ensconced at the Forward position with, either, Tayshaun Prince or Jonas Jerebko [if Prince is not re-signed or traded] and Kyle Singler [No. 3?]

For each of the last 3 seasons, the Pistons have had solid [although far from great!] NBA-level talent that has simply not been used properly by Michael Curry and then John Kuester.

In this same regard, at least, Lawrence Frank actually knows what he’s doing as a legitimate NBA head coach.

With this specific hire, by Tom Gores [i.e. their new owner] and Joe Dumars [i.e. their old GM], the Pistons are now substantially ahead of where they were just 2 days ago, in spite of the League’s current lock-out situation … and, the fact that their overall roster does not yet have the talent level required to move into the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference.

According to Marc Stein, the Pistons would prefer to hire a new head coach who already has experience sitting in the lead man’s chair on a NBA sideline.

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Woodson, Frank atop Pistons’ list

Of the five known candidates for job, sources say that former Pistons assistant Mike Woodson is still the closest thing to a favorite, thanks largely to Woodson’s good working relationship with Pistons president of basketball operations Joe Dumars and the fact that Detroit would know exactly what it’s getting after Woodson’s work under Larry Brown during the Pistons’ 2004 title run.

Yet sources say that one reason Detroit’s search has dragged out so long is the strong impression that Lawrence Frank made on new Pistons owner Tom Gores and his advisers, among them former New York Knicks executive Dave Checketts.

Detroit’s choice, then, appears to be a tossup between the unattached Woodson and Frank, who remains part of Doc Rivers’ staff in Boston.

The other three known candidates to get interviews are Kelvin Sampson (about to leave Milwaukee to become Kevin McHale’s lead assistant in Houston), Pistons legend Bill Laimbeer (last seen on Rambis’ staff in Minnesota) and Checketts favorite Patrick Ewing (from Stan Van Gundy’s staff in Orlando). But sources have maintained throughout the process that Detroit’s preference is to hire a coach with previous head-coaching experience in the NBA after the recent unsuccessful stints for first-time head coaches Kuester and Michael Curry.

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If this is, in fact, the case, then …

Joe Dumars should eventually hire Lawrence Frank, as the next head coach for Detroit. In all likelihood, the Pistons would not be able to win the NBA Championship under Frank’s direction, sometime down-the-road, but his career to-date does indicate that he has “the stuff” required – i.e. in terms of having: 1) A good conceptual framework for the way he wants his team to play, based on sound principles of Defense, Offense and Rebounding; 2) The ability to communicate effectively with his best players; 3) A sound grasp of X’s and O’s; and, 4) The ability, and the character, to withstand “the heat” involved with the position; etc. – to direct a first-class squad that is more than capable of consistently competing for a Top 6 playoff position … which would be a solid step forward for an operation that has gone significantly backwards each of the last 3 seasons working under less-than stellar head coaches without proven records of success in the NBA.

If you’re looking for tangible reasons why Brandon Knight [PG] is going to be much better than many so-called “basketball stats gurus” realize, then, look no further:

When you actually watch this young man closely … with a well-trained eye for the type of details that matter a great deal, when it comes to determining success in the game of basketball … it is readily apparent that:

1. He has a very good chance to become a dominant PG in the NBA;

and,

2. The Raptors made a significant mistake in passing him by.