Of course the title is tongue in cheek, but Coach Nick from BBallbreakdown.com explained the reason why, in an article last week, and it’s all about Russell Westbrook. According to Coach Nick, “the Thunder will never win a championship as long as Westbrook is the point guard.” Coach Nick was kind enough to join us on the podcast while we attempted to poke holes in his theory.
Topics covered:
- Coach Nick rates Coach Brooks
- Thunder vs. a traditional NBA team
- Why we shouldn’t fear the Spurs
- Why we should fear the Lakers instead
All this and tons more…
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Dear Coach Nick,
I was wondering if you can come up with " Why The Thunder won't win a championship with Scott Brooks at Head coach" I believe it would be just as popular as " Why the Thunder won't win a championship with Russ at the Point Guard". I feel that Brooks doesn't have the balls to make changes for the better of the team. I don't see him going with Harden at 1 and Russ at 2 down the stretch if Russ is having a bad game in forcing shots/turnovers. I agree Brooks has terrible offensive sets and he relies too much on Individual talent, Russ/KD/Harden's one on one ability and Ibaka's shot blocking to bail out poor defense. Is he willing to go up to our big three and change their bad habits? What are Brooks Positives as a coach ? i know you mentioned a lot of negatives and he's fairly young. But we need to win now.
I was disappointed that Joel said that the Spurs handled the Thunder easily in the 3 games they've have played this season. While I will concede that the Spurs are different team now, there is no way the game we throttled them while on the third night of a BTBTB can be considered the Spurs handling the Thunder easily. Dismiss? Okay. But, for someone who follows the team to portray it as the total opposite doesn't seem right.
@qrex I went back and looked - the Thunder won one of the three games, so you're absolutely right. It's not like the Thunder don't have the ability to beat the Spurs, and by the stats I quoted, certainly the Spurs should be concerned with how they defend the pick and roll ball handler and the transition. That said, I don't think much can be gleaned by this crazy compressed season, which is going to make a lot of predictors (me included) look foolish...
@bballSource "this crazy compressed season, which is going to make a lot of predictors (me included) look foolish..."
I'm not sure you need a crazy compressed season to accomplish that feat.
You claim that your biggest complaint is that Westbrook will come down and start the offense without passing but instead just posting up or jump shooting. I don't have the exact stat on that but just my feel from watching the games is that when he does that, he's very successful. Does anyone have the stat of RW's shooting % when he doesn't make a pass, he just brings it up and shoots. I think that would be the quickest way to either support Coach's argument or my argument. If the OKC offense is slightly more efficient when he doesn't pass, that means that RW is seeing something that he can take advantage of on those possessions and doing so, if the offense is less effecient when he doesn't pass that means that RW needs to do it less.
The old Russ DID used to have a problem with pulling up and shooting too often without making a pass. That was "bad Russ" with a "hero mode". However, if a person is really watching the progress of the Thunder, they'd see that Russ doesn't take anywhere near as many bad shots as he used to. Does he still shoot without passing? Yeah, he does. But as you say, he's much more discriminating now. Now, he does it because he sees something he can take advantage of or he's just hot and can't seem to miss.
and btw, I don't want Coach to come up with this stat. I saw his lowlight video of RW in a game where RW scored 36 points on 29 shots with only 2 turnovers. He's got some sort of axe to grind with RW, I need an unbiased source for the stat.
And just a handwaving argument against it but didn't Jordan and Kobe bring the ball up the floor a lot? I could have sworn that those guys did it nearly half the time or so.
Coach, in your article you say that the Thunder would be well better if they moved RW off of the ball and played 'talented rookie Reggie Jackson'. Right? I just want you to come in here and say that you said that you think the Thunder would be a better team with more Reggie and less RW at point.
Lakers in 2 games this season, according to hoopdata, got fewer inside shots than the average Thunder opponent and shot them somewhat worse.
Coach I would like to know how many points Russell scores in the paint opposed to his jump shot? His jump shot merely sets up his penetration game. Although he has been on a shooting streak of late he stills gets to the rim an exorbitant amount of time therefore misleading the amounts of jump shots he takes.
@Bulldog83 Don't know that stat - BUT, I'm going to look at every one of Westbrook's jump shots 16-23' when he doesn't pass to anybody and see what that percentage is. I'm definitely curious
@bballSource are you going to come in here and answer these questions?
@bballSource and how are you going to do that, watch every game?? Or are we supposed to just trust you? You obviously have an axe to grind with Westbrook so any stat you give about him, I want an unbiased source. Sorry. I'm not trusting you to say...'I counted it myself'.
@FF_pickups You are starting to border on paranoid, my friend. I have access to Synergy Sports, which can show you every one of his misses from 16-23 feet all in row with a touch of the button. I can assure you this isn't like some O'Reilly Factor manipulated stat, I have actually have ethics and standards.
From his site: "Coach Nick is the head Boys Basketball Coach at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, CA. He was a basketball manager as a student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where Stu Jackson began the Badgers’ resurgence to national prominence. Stan Van Gundy (Orlando Magic Head Coach) and Sean Miller (University of Arizona Head Coach) were assistants and mentors to Coach Nick during his time in college."
Those are solid career credentials.
Team record this season W13-L14.
Ranked 197th high school team in Cali. 2295th in the nation, on this site http://www.maxpreps.com/high-schools/birmingham-patriots-%28lake-balboa,ca%29/basketball/roster.htm
@Crow Awesome research on me, fellas. I just took over the program, finishing my 2nd year. The players that are coming now are on a level my school has never had before. If things go according to plan, we'll be competing for a state championship within 2 years. Visit our channel: http://youtube.com/patriothoopsquad for more info!
@SB718 I guess not. But players turn over and sometimes coaches get stronger. He did have his school's all-time most team assists in 2010-11 but it appears that it is a young program with only 6-8 seasons played.
@Crow Guess he won't be winning any titles with his "point guard" either.
Looks like this was his second full season as head coach at this school, after a scandal with the last coach.
2nd round exit in 20 team tournament after a 1 pt first round win. Middle of the pack team.
Has 2 players averaging about 3 assists per game. One short PG, one PG/SG combo guy.
I love the "It's never been done before so it can't happen now." If that were true, we wouldn't have sent men to the moon, women still couldn't vote, and no way would a black man be our President. Get over the "it's never been done before" attitude. Things change. Rose and Westbrook are changing the way the PG position is played. I'd love to see a CHI v. OKC lineup. Then what would all the people say when it would be guaranteed that a non-traditional PG would win a championship.
BTW it is VERY convenient for Westbrook critics to conveniently ignore his assists splits last season pre and post Perkins trade. They also ignore that KD's assist rate and Harden's assist rate is up. Only 1 person can get an assist per possession(I'm sure you already knew that "coach"). Did he just flip a ball hog switch or did he lose two capable scorers beside him in the starting lineup? You think your assists #s may go down with less scorers besides you? Magic Johnson in his prime couldn't cure Serge's stone hands or Perkins being a turnover waiting to happen.
he has terrible points im not even going to get upset at it.
In the age of versatile players, stretch 4s, etc, still holding onto the idea of traditional positional roles is just not intelligent. You can count on one hand the amount of good "true", back to the basket offensively centers in the league that are any good. The defending champions don't have one, the defending EC champions don't have one, the team they beat to get to the Finals doesn't have one, etc. Westbrook is a guard, one of the best(warts and all) and one who clearly has the work ethic to improve(he has already drastically since he came into the league). And oh he never misses a game(think about where this team would be if he had missed even 10). Saying you can't win a ring with him shooting so much while ignoring 3/5 of the starting lineup is incapable of scoring unless someone else creates for them, and (even then it's a shaky proposition) is asinine.
I set subsitutions in NBA 2K12 to "manual", I guess I'm a "coach" now too.
@SB718 Well, I still say you have to actually coach a real team before you get to call yourself a coach. And the role of a back to the basket center has disappeared without question. And lots of positions have changed over the years and yielded great results. But specifically the PG position is still so crucial in the way decisions are made on the court, that this is the one spot that hasn't evolved as much as you might think. The scoring PG has been around for a long time, going back to Tiny Archibald, through Allen Iverson, til now. And one thing is clear - a team whose point guard shoots such a high percentage of their team's shots don't win championships. If his percentage gets closer to 20%, the Thunder's chances of winning go up dramatically...
And who is that "someone else" that creates for 3/5 of the lineup while Westbrook shoots so much?
@bballSource @SB718 I read your article and agree that a lot of your points are relevant and make a fairly strong case. I have made a similar case. But it is not ironclad. The Thunder are still the #1 offense in the league, despite Russell's flaws. They are a dribble-drive team, not a pass it around team.
@bballSource And who employs you as a coach that anyone cares about? A lot of things are never done before until they're done. The Bulls didn't lose the ECF because their PG shoots too much they didn't win because the Heat were the better team. OKC didn't lose because their PG shoots too much they lost because the Mavs were the better team and they choked a 15 point lead with like 5 minutes left.(what would the stats have said before that choke job the probability of winning that game was?) This is the age of data and that's great, that's not the end all be all, numbers can be manipulated when you adjust your parameters.
Correlation doesn't equal causation
BTW the ONLY team(or a good 95 + %, Billups Pistons nonwithstanding) that has won rings dominated by perimeter players without "elite" big men or at least elite offensive big men was the Jordan Bulls. So under your premise there's a fatal flaw in the construct of the team and OKC is doomed, irregardless of how much less Westbrook shoots. I'll take my chances on them creating new history instead of being doomed to repeat it.
I
If you examine Coach Nick's rambling diatribe closely, his logic completely falls apart. Here is his logic train in the article, he says:
1) RW is not a point guard, he's a shooting guard, look at his stats
2) Point guards who shoot this much don't win championships
3) Therefore the Thunder won't win a championhip
ahhh, but you said that RW isn't a point guard, he's a shooting guard so you are misapplying your stats. That's where the point of his thesis fails. RW is a point guard only in the sense that he defends the other team's point guard. On offense, he's a two guard. The Thunder have about as much need for a traditional point guard as the 90's Bulls or the 2000's Lakers which both featured point guards averaging under 5 asissts per game on their way to a combined 11 championships. Steve Nash recently said about RW and Derrick Rose "I've never seen SO many good point guards. They've diversified, guys who are just straight up point guards to the Derrick Rose's and Russell Westbrook's who are kind of like super guards to me, they've created a new position."
@FF_pickups I appreciate your thoughtfulness in your comment, but its your logic that is fuzzy at best. He is NOT merely a PG on defense because he brings the ball up and initiates the offense almost every time he's in the game. This is the definition of a point guard. The Bulls and Lakers champions had PGs with few assists - but they also took few shots - and that is the premise of my argument regarding why they won't win a title. It's the percentage of his team's shots he takes. What I was saying is that he SHOULD play the shooting guard position, find a pass first point guard who will play really tough defense to bring the ball up and let Russ attack from curls and on the wing.
I don't know who's read the article but if you did, in it coach Nick says "the Thunder have talented rookie Reggie Jackson who can be a distributor, tenacious defender, and a restorer of balance." To any of us who've watched the Thunder for five minutes this season or based off of how the Thunder team embraced the idea of demoting RJ and bringing in a nearly washed up Fisher, I am going to go out on not so big limb and say that Coach Nick isn't the best talent evaluator around.
@FF_pickups I fully believe in RJs talent level. He'll get there. But yeah right now, he is not going to help this team.
He's got a chance to get there someday but Coach Nick said in the article that the Thunder would have a better chance of winning a title if they played 'talented rookie Reggie Jackson' more at point and less of Westbrook. smh. Anyone who makes that claim is losing all credibility with me, I'm sorry.
I agree with your criticism of Westbrook. But realistically, I don't understand how that equates into not winning a championship with him at PG. Looking back at past data doesn't apply to this team because a team like this has not been around before.
Wait...the Thunder will never win a championship with Westbrook as PG but they're gonna lose the finals only because Thibs is a better coach than Scotty?
Disreputable of this "Coach Nick" to act like he's a disinterested observer of RW's faults. Coach Nick is Reggie Jackson's offseason coach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB0LynEs0y8 RJ is his only NBA client, and directly competes with RW for playing time. How can he be objective, especially without revealing his client? It's absurd. If Coach Nick could have done a better job with RJ over the summer, maybe the Thunder wouldn't have had to trade for Derek Fisher. RJ looks unprepared to play significant minutes in the playoffs.
@DXL This is funny - I am not Reggie Jackson's offseason coach. But I am honored that you think I do coach him. And from what I've seen of RJ - he looks good and needs more of a chance.
@bballSource Then you haven't watched him enough. He's good for a rookie but not yet a backup PG for a championship contender. Did you watch him in garbage time vs. the Bulls?
Also, really tell us your background and what gives you credibility as a "coach".
@jallenmorris Scroll up, and you'll see someone else who did the research on me...
@bballSource @DXL
NIce to know you read DT..... apologies for questioning your integrity.
A lot of us agree with you about Russ' issues on defense (particularly with pics and just getting back down the floor. That said. Russ is a total stud at 23 and keeps improving every day.
@mjokc88 We at least you didn't tell me to get cancer. That would be plain mean.
@mjokc88 That is taking disagreement way too far IMO.
@bballSource Hey, i'm glad that you read DT so that I can let you know how much of a piece of shit you are. Trying to rip on one of the leagues best PG to make a name for yourself. Fuck off, die in a fire. Thanks.
@BRY BRY @DXL I just heard Skip Bayless talking about the Spurs and I found myself agreeing with him. I thought I HATED Bayless, HATED HIM, but he's been saying stuff I agree with... BTW, focus on what I said about Westbrook's shooting w/o passing first - this is the biggest issue I have.
@bballSource @DXL
Sorry..... now I'm insulting your intelligence lol
@bballSource @DXL
I know Skip Bayless had been luring you to the dark side lol
@BRY BRY @DXL And somehow, Russell Westbrook has been trying to change my mind about his game... is it working? Must... can't... don't... know... ;)
@DXL
Wow....... a little integrity would be nice Coach Nick......
@DXL if what reggie jackson is what we get after coach nick worked with him, he must be a really bad coach. I like reggie but there are a lot of coachable things with him.
@f5alcon Reggie will get there. I can remember Ibaka always looking totally lost on defense and constantly being out of place not so long ago. Now, he's a DPOY candidate. I'm not sure Reggie will make that kind of jump, but he'll get a lot better, I think.
@TaoMaas @f5alcon
I've always been one of Reggies "haters" but, i do agree with giving the kid a chance, however(i know you've already said that he may not even make the same type of jump), i watched Ibaka play for the spanish league way before the Thunder were intrested in him(they showed alot of the games in Mexico, i lived in Monterrey for about a year during that year i got to see Ibaka play a few times on TV.) Ibaka's potential was much more then what Reggie currently has.
@DXL Haha. I never saw someone mention that before.