Good move by Terry Stotts

[Gray Mule]

Like him or not --

Believe he can coach or not --

Last night, in the third Quarter, Stotts said, enough is

enough. The starters, who had shown nothing in the

first half, began the third quarter looking even worse.

Pulled the starting five with about five minutes gone in

the third. Pulled them out together. They were all on

the floor together, getting the crap beat out of them.

They sat the rest of the night.

Good for Stotts. That's the best thing he has done since

he has been in Atlanta. He may have no job after this.

They may fire him. He may quit. At least, he let the

world know, these guys aren't playing. If the starters

aren't going to play, they can sit.

We'll see tonight if it changed anything or not.

[Playmaker0017]

See, and I disagree with the move. I think it was a foolish move and that instead of punishing the whole, he should have punished the guilty parties.

It wasn't Shareef or Theo that were putting up stupid three pointers. It wasn't Shareef or Theo that were letting Wesley have uncontested three pointers. It wasn't Shareef or Theo that was not allowing the shot clock to move or avoiding passing more than once.

There were three guys that were not trying and were causing this chaos ....

JT

Dion Glover

and

Stephen Jackson

You make a statement by punishing the correct people.

What he did was embarrass himself, the players and the organization.

Play.

[Admin]

Guilty or not of allowing Wesley to shoot all he wanted....guilty or not of jacking up 3's all over the place SAR and Theo are the captains of this team and if there is a problem on the court with how the other 3 are playing then they have to get into their a$$es and make sure that they are doing what they should be doing and as usual neither of our captains did that. Stotts was completely right in benching them.

However, it looks like the team has quit on Stotts and although thats completely unacceptable for professionals getting paid that much to do, we cant have it and its much easier to replace a coach than it is players and I think its time to make a change. On a team of professionals I really think that Stotts would have a chance of succeeding, but here with this bunch of guys who cant learn and dont care about playing defense he was basically set up for failure, the same as Lon Kruger was trying to coach this team.

The sad part is that why would any top coach want to come here? Surely all of them are going to realize that it cant be entirely the coaches fault that we continue to lose and realistically until 2005 we have no shot of really becoming a different team. We will probably get stuck with another interim or former assistant coach for another year until a top coach becomes available that will want to come into this situation where he can completely mold the team around his mold.

[HawkTodd]

I like the move to bench the players as well. It's a shame sometimes in the NBA with the power the players have coaches can't make moves like this very often like at other levels of basketball.

[Gray Mule]

He embarassed the players? Really? After the way they

had started the third quarter?

And the team? What team? They weren't being a team

at that point.

And himself? After what they were doing to him as the

coach? If anyone was embarrasing anyone, they were doing

it to Terry Stotts, not the other way around.

Too long this has been going on. When SAR & Theo

became captains, they also took on added responsibility

as team leaders. This is what being a captain is all about.

The other three may have been mostly responsible for

the actions on the floor in the first half and the beginning

of the third quarter. What were the two captains doing

to straighten out their comrades? Whatever they did,

it wasn't working. They had oportunity at halftime to

talk to the other three.

I hope the three get to start tonight's game on the bench.

Let Captain SAR and Captain Theo have three new

buddies to play with and see if they can get any defense

out of them. See if they can get any plays out of them.

Something had to be done. Maybe that wasn't what

was the best. Maybe it's all Terry Stotts fault. Maybe

it was all Krugers fault before him. Lennie W. ?

Enough, already. It's time we started to put the blame

on the players. These are professional players. They

are being played millions of dollars to display their skills

and be competetive in their chosen field. They are not

getting the job done. How many players have scored

their season's high against the Hawks? How many

players have scored career highs against this year's

Hawks? The either can't or will not play defense. It

may be the coaches fault. But three coaches and all

the assistant coaches we have had in the past three

years, we blame all of them???

Terry Stotts wasn't the one doing the embarrasing last

night, the players on the floor were

Keep on changing coaches. Keep trying to make out of

this group of individuals something they apparently can't

become, a team. Until they all quit working as individuals,

thinking as individuals, and acting as individuals, they will

never be a success. It doesn't matter who they have

for a coach, to succeed, they must become a team.

[Playmaker0017]

Gray,

Say what you will but the wide-spread opinion is that Stotts is not a professional level coach. He's dreadful. So, you can talk about changing the coach over and over... but we have never switched coaches... not once! We brought in some college guy and then some backup guy. Those aren't coaches anymore than pulling someone off this BBS system.

Then say what you want about the 'C' on their chest, and then lets look back at the coach that can't get them to do anything right either.

Maybe Stotts ought to bench himself PERMENENTLY!

Play.

[Playmaker0017]

Again, I will say the same thing....

The coach can't get them to play properly, and in fact, encourages stupid jumpshots and does not demand better shot selection.

It is NOT Shareef or Theo's job to instruct the team in a different system of basketball.

It is just time for Stotts to bench himself.

Play.

[mdawg]

I thought it was an okay move, but this team won't get motivated by it. If Stotts really wants to prove a point, he should bench all the guys for the entire game tonight. Play Dickau, Diaw, Hansen, see what you have in those guys. He should play Reef and Theo though, because you need to keep their trade value up.

[pathway23]

I think we should go with a lineup of Dickau, Hansen, Diaw, Reef and Theo and let backups be Vaughn, Crawford, Mohammed, and Nailon. JT and SJax should get zero playing time and Glove garbage time. These guys continue to make bone-headed plays out there. But I agree with Play, Stotts doesn't have the right system for these guys to play in. We don't use guard to guard screens, or pick and roll with different combinations, we have pick and roll with the same 2 guys all the time, no screens for Reef in the post when he is guarded by bigger guys, etc. I would love to see what this team could do if it ran guard to guard screens and there were screens for Reef.

[Admin]

You are saying that the players shouldnt be accountable for jacking up shots like that and that Stotts is the bad guy for benching them for doing it and yet you claim that he was encouraging it? Somehow I cant see how that all fits together, do you see any logic there at all?

Say some regular joe from here on this website is at work and has a big presentation coming up and he totally blows it because he did it the way that he wanted to. Now, should he be held accountable for his poor performance or should his boss be?

I am sorry but maybe I just have too much pride in myself to let my boss get blaimed for anything that is my responsibility and its a [censored] shame that the players on this team dont feel the same way....err should I say JT doesnt feel that way. He is acting like a schoolgirl complaining about Stotts coaching only after he was benched the other night and has basically laid down on him since then. JT just wishes he were back in the old days when Lenny and Kruger would baby him and not get on him. You dont see Theo and SAR talking about bad coaching do you? Of course they dont have much room to talk when they arent being leaders on the court. Say what you want about its not their jobs to police their teammates on the court but it [censored] sure became that the day that they became the captains of this team. Its like that in every professional sport there is and in most jobs its like that as well. As far as I am concerned just like Gray Mule said the 1-3 guys should be benched and lets see what this team can do with some the bench guys starting those positions and I betcha it would be a completely different result because they would actually put forth some sort of effort instead of just laying down trying to get the coach fired. Wow JT is really starting to remind me of Terrell Owens and his antics. I think that until JT gets his [censored] together I will call him TO2 from now on instead of JT.

[Playmaker0017]

Dolfan,

No that isn't even close to one-tenth of a modicrum of what I intimated.

What I said is that Shareef and Theo shouldn't be benched any more than the coach being benched for JT, Dion Glover, and Stephen Jackson chunking up shots and playing zero defense. The ones doing the chunking and lack of defense should be the ones being benched. THAT is what I alluded to.

That is like me eating a piece of chocholate cake and you gaining the calories.

Yes, Theo and Reef are captains and should try to maintain control, but CAPTAINS are lower than coaches. It is the COACHES responsibility and the captains just help enforce.

As for Stotts encouraging poor play - go read his accounting of his offense. He promotes [censored] poor play. He enjoys our "motion offense" and whoever takes the shot is whoever takes the shot. He doesn't care. HE HAS STATED THIS IN PLAIN ENGLISH!

Play.

[pathway23]

Yes. Jaywalker knows a LOT about this team and even talks to Stotts and he alluded to the fact that he didn't run plays for Shareef. He ran plays for perimeter guys. They are playing pretty horrible but they are carrying out ineffective plans of his. As Mike Glenn alluded to last night, when your team has a problem with turnovers you have to do something about it. You have to take out the guys that are careless, you have to run plays where no dribbling is required, whatever, but you have to do something. Stotts seems to allow players to attempt to create their own shot by dribbling when they can't do that. Same thing Lon/Stotts allowed Dog to do last year. Our coach needs to realize the limitations of personnel and their strengths, and capitalize on the strengths and reduce the limitations. Stotts and Lon weren't able to do that. They allowed weaknesses to overcome strengths.

[Iman]

I was optimistic with our play early in the year. Who knows, maybe if we had held on to our leads and won some of those close games we might have been borderline playoff team this year. But it didnt happen and it's getting worse. Terry Stotts shoud give up any thoughts of being a head coach for a while after this year and try to showcase some of his other skills so he can find another good assistants job next year. He should play a combination of his younger and smarter players and just use JT, Dion, and Jax off the bench as sparkplugs. If he puts them in they'll launch a few quick shots he'll know if they are on that nite and if not then sit them back down. Start JV, Diaw, Nailon, Reef, and Theo. Then bring JT off the bench early for Nailon so he still gets more minutes than Nailon and as many as JV. Then by midseason I hope Dickau might surprise us and be able to start.

With ownership transition in the wings I see Stotts as an adequate option until around game 60 or so. Then new ownership should be able to make a splash with a big name and let them finish out the season in preparation for next. My vote is definitely for Fratello with Nique somewhere in the mix as GM or top assistant, preferably the latter since Knight seems to be a good judge of international talent and we will have some nice draft picks coming up. Before next year I'd try to signup Reef at around the same or slightly less money for 5 years or so and build around him and our drafted talent with plans for JT as an expensive but useful bench player. I'd lean towards drafting bigmen and signing secondary free agent scorers with Theo and Hendu's freed up cap space.

[Dukegotgame]

I agree that the players are to blame for what happened last night, however Stotts should be blamed also. I mean Wesley was drilling us all night, and Stotts made no adjustment to stop it that I could see, and even if he did it failed horribly.