2026 West Semifinals: (1) Oklahoma City Thunder Vs. (4) Los Angeles Lakers

While pedestrian Goran Topic is on the bench?

 

Can we please stop with this "magical coaching tree" stuff

Ime Udoka was the golden fruit of the holy San Antonio coaching tree, he spent 7 of his first 9 years in coaching there before getting promoted in Philly and Brooklyn and finally becoming COTY in Boston (and then... nevermind.....)

And yet everyone now thinks he sucks (justifiably, IMO, but beside the point).

Do you actually think Mitch Johnson - who literally nobody had ever heard of until Popovich had his stroke last season - is the guy who is "developing" Wemby and Castle and Harper or are they all just - way better than the Rockets last few draft picks.

How come the Spurs coaching magic didn't work when their foundational rebuild pieces were Jeremy Sochan and Josh Primo - hmmmm....

Same with OKC - is it Marc Daigneault coaching that made Chet & Jalen Williams both better than Jabari and Tari or the fact that they are just better players ? And also does having the 2x MVP putting up some of the greatest offensive seasons in history factor in here?

 

People have different opinions but I was always on the Presidents of Bball Operations' and GM's side.

They are the real MVPs.

 

San Antonio never would’ve even taken someone like Reed Sheppard over Castle to begin with because they know talent when they see it

a bunch of people on here didn’t want Chet in the draft because of “injuries” and would’ve taken Jabari over him…OKC didn’t even consider something like that

hell, there are many who thought Cade would be a bust

Does Detroit have a really good development program? Or is Cade just that guy

 

Detroit's player developmental coaching program was to fire Dwayne Casey, fire Troy Weaver as GM, pay a zillion dollars to Monty Williams, fire him after one year, then hire JB Bickerstaff (who everyone on this BBS *absolutely hated* and mocked mercilessly after he took over for McFail )

Somehow this approach worked for both elite blue chip well developed instinctive guys like Cade & completely raw prospects like Duren

People just see what they want to see. The things the Rockets should have done to be more like the Spurs is to draft Kawhi and Wemby (and Castle).

 

This is the guy that punked Sengun btw

 

If the two teams flipped the rosters, they may have a chance.

 

I asked ChatGPT...
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a00108f87848191849e3c5e4ccadd90

No one could fix Primo... not even professional psychologists.

 

nevermind