because he has about 2 more hitches than he had last season. it’s like watching a golfer who has one of those herky-jerky looping swings.

that’s something to watch for it the next game. And besides, why can’t Biedrins use getting fouled to his advantage? If the opposing center or pf is going to foul him, why not keep feeding Biedrins until they foul out? A reverse Hack-a-Biedrins! Please foul Biedrins with your best players, or send them to the bench and bring in your backup bench players!

If Nellie has really lost his passion for the game, don’t you think this team would have packed it in long ago? Don’t you think this team would come out lethargic and apathetic and simply “go through the motions” for all 48 minutes? I don’t see that. This teams plays as hard as they can with the limited about of bodies, talent, and experience that they have. Where do you think this “never give up” attitude comes from?

I think Nellie doesn’t appear passionate about the game because he sees the more basic fundamental problems or missing abilities within our players, and no amount of in-game coaching will fix those. So I think he spends his “passion” developing the players, particulary the young players in Curry, Morrow, and Randolph. Certainly you’ve seen the tremendous growth of Curry, the modest but noticeable growth of Morrow, and even the slow but visible turnaround of Randolph. Where do you think that comes from?

I’ve watched or listened to just about every Nellie pregame, postgame, practice, and KNBR interview. He has not wavered in his assertiveness and firmness when he talks about the game plan and strategies, or talks about what the players have and have not done. So I believe him when he says he’s still passionate about the game. Besides, you can say the same thing about Monta not cheering for his teammates as a sign that he’s disconnected from the team, but I don’t see any uncomfortableness or awkwardness between the other players and Monta in all the games we’ve played (well, since the Jack trade).

And as for whether it’s “right” or not to publicly criticize Biedrins, I can claim that it’s “not right” to take away a kid’s allowance, or ground them, or spank them. But if nothing else has worked, then what should I do? Keep letting the kid screw up?

You said yourself that in real life, you “shy away from any confrontation given the slightest chance”. To me, I extrapolate that you’re not a competitive person, and/or you’ve never really faced a “whatever it takes” situation. So it’s easy to claim that publicly criticize Biedrins is the “wrong way” to do it. But if you’re in a competitive environment such as the NBA, and it is your job need to get Biedrins to play more aggressively, and you must get results out of Biedrins, and you don’t have time to wait for him, and nothing else you’ve done privately has worked, are you really going to stand by your philosophy of not publicly criticizing him? Or are you going to throw that out the window and say “whatever it takes”, and try publicly pointing out his problems?

I do the same thing to my coworkers (we’re software engineers). Whenever I go and review their code, I demand that they prove to me their code completely fixes the bug, that their code didn’t produce any new bugs, that their code is properly documented, and other little procedural things so that questions and problems don’t come back to bite us later. Only when the prove to me that their code fix is safe and stable do I give the OK to check in their code.

And I can see that they’ve picked up my style, because now when I do a review on their code, they’re consistently ready to show me that their code works, that it’s stable, correctly documented, all without me asking. They know that if something’s missing or wrong, I will “pressure” them by making them fix it, and then know I’m relentless about it and I don’t let anything slip by. Because they know that I don’t like wasting my time dealing with questions or problems later that we could have prevented by executing the proper procedures carefully, thoroughly, and completely in the here and now.

So anyway, how are you going to feel if Phil Jackson called out Biedrins and said Biedrins played “without a heart”, as in, “without courage”? That’s essentially the same thing Jackson did with Sasha. How are you going to feel if Phil Jackson called out Randolph for being “lazy”, or Radman for being “disgraceful”? Will this technique suddenly be right because you like Phil Jackson, but not Don Nelson?

Nellie never said he’s quitting on Biedrins. He described all the issues Biedrins has that he needs to work on, and he wants Biedrins to snap out of it and get his confidence back.

As for “taking the heat”, that was something you wrote.

Publicly, as the coach, you take the heat.

I assume you meant that the coach should take the criticism and responsibility for a player’s failures.

This strikes me as a problem of personnel (e.g. the ball is in the hands of guard(s)) who don’t get the ball to bigs in the low post as often

See, this was my initial thought, too, but then I thought about the team we had last year, and somehow Biedrins was averaging a career high in scoring. Was Jack really that big a factor? Was not having Monta a big factor? Jamal Crawford? Our team last year, overall, strikes me as similar to this year, so I’m not sure personnel is a big factor.

I’m inclined to blame Nellie more than anyone else.

I’m starting to feel that way, too. Not that Biedrins is without blame, he could play better offensively, but as I said somewhere else in this thread, getting Biedrins more involved and his game back to where it was should be a focus for Nellie right now, and it really shouldn’t be that difficult if he tries – run some plays for Beans, tell him he’s going to get more touches and he’s expected to try to score so he gets more aggressive, get on his teammates to get him the ball by the rim…..it’s probably just hard to do all that when you don’t coach practices. Ugh.

i understand the inherent need for fans to believe in the talent of the players & that if they only had the right coach things would be different – but it rarely works that way. coaches in basketball are relatively insignificant outside of who they decide to play.

Except we’re not talking about some ridiculous unfounded hope, here. We know what kind of player Biedrins is – we’ve seen it over the last few years. If he doesn’t roll, you take him out, tell him to roll next time, and put him back in. If he doesn’t roll, you take him out. Again, this is basic coaching – we’re talking about a guy who knows how to play properly – he’s done it for years, and if for some reason he’s not making the correct reads….it should be an easily correctable problems. These guys need to play in Nellie’s system, and if they aren’t doing it right….well, it’s his job to get the team playing properly within his scheme. That’s what coaches do.