***Official Caitlin/Fever/Kate/Meg Games Mega Thread***
- Thread starter Tenacious E
- Start date
I never said coaching wasn’t important - I said they should be force multipliers. In any event, maybe sides should stay, maybe she should go. I could go either way.
There aren’t a lot of great coaches in the WNBA because the pay for coaches isn’t there. Sides earns about half a million per year. Olympic coach Reeve earns 700k, Hammon is at 1MM, and Tibbets is at 1.2MM
To put that into perspective, Bluder was earning 1MM in base salary before her two Final Fours, and added several hundred thousand in bonuses for each of those seasons. Jan was given a million dollar salary as head coach, someone that has never been head coach before. Mulkey, Geno, and Dawn each earn over 3MM per year.
The true coaching talent is in college.
To put that into perspective, Bluder was earning 1MM in base salary before her two Final Fours, and added several hundred thousand in bonuses for each of those seasons. Jan was given a million dollar salary as head coach, someone that has never been head coach before. Mulkey, Geno, and Dawn each earn over 3MM per year.
The true coaching talent is in college.
Maybe not "intentionally" or consciencely. Still as I asked before should some of those scuffles have become more intense, just where would Smith's alligence lie? It seemed obvious to me that the Fever staff didn't feel they could trust Smith to bring her "A" game against the Sun. Thats simply not a situation that any coach could allow, especially in a one and done playoff game. I see no way that doesn't impact how teams will look at her as a possible roster addition. And thats BEFORE Carrington went on social media imploring the Fever to "free" Smith from being on their roster. It appears that neither of these women are smart enough to understand the position this puts the Fever and possibly other teams in....
Interesting how many missed layups there are. Percentage has to be high from what i have witnessed.
To be fair, there’s a reason why absolutely difficult tasks are called layups.
You could say that about a LOT of coaches. I mean is Kim Mulkey a "great coach" or a great recruiter? She had both Naylissa Smith at Baylor and Angel Reese at LSU. Both good athletes who have VERY limited skill sets. How much did they get, "coached up"?
I'd have to agree mostly about Sides. The biggest issue is the roster. Just too much dead weight on the bench to compete with the top teams. Thats not on the HC.
I've also made the same comment about college football. Was Meyer a great coach at OSU, or Day? How hard can it be to recruit there? And frankly when you have basically an NFL roster loaded with high 4 stars and 5 star players, how do you not beat pretty much every one you play? Great coaching, or just better resources?
There's a lot of different kinds of intelligence and a lot of different kinds of stupidity.
Exactly. None of the shit she or Smith have put out on social media speaks to someone who has thought this through to a logical conclusion..
For a minute I thought Stewart was going to start crying after that 2nd missed FT
Relatively speaking, she's not athletic enough and low effort. That's her biggest draw back other than her shot that takes 4.5 minutes to get up. When you watch her run she looks like someone trying to run who just got out of the pool with their shoes/socks still on.
How about this one. The Warriors going from Marc Jackson to Kerr. That's what I always think of when people underestimate what a bad coach can do to a good group of talent. If Marc Jackson had one more year they have one less championship.
The Liberty were up 18 pts in the 2nd qtr last night vs the Lynx; they were also up 15 pts with 5:20 to go in the game. The Liberty collapsed/choked & lost in overtime, 95-93.
Before last night, WNBA teams were 0-183 across postseason play when trailing by 15 or more points in the final five minutes of regulation
Fire their coach, too!!!
Minnesota, now with home court advantage, needs to go no worse than 2-2 the rest of the series to win the WNBA Championship.
Do you have " One is the Loneliest Number" by Angel Reese?
I have to come back to this one since you said "down the river". I have a story to tell! And it has nothing to do with my moniker.
Well I saw that Asheville NC had serious flooding due to Hurricane Helene. We visited there three years ago. We were in downtown, visited the Moogseum and the Art Museum. It's time for dinner and we looked all around and seemingly every restaurant was full and had a two-hour wait list. We ended up at a fast food restaurant Moe's Southwest Grill where you made your own tacos. It wasn't bad and my kids enjoyed it. It was right off a bridge on a main road. I had to wonder if the restaurant was affected by the flood. I found its website. There are actually two Moe's in Asheville, ours is the one at the Biltmore Village. The website said both restaurants were open and taking orders. I just didn't quite believe it since I read that the Biltmore Village was heavily damaged. So I searched online further and found an article from Raleigh News & Observer. It specifically mentioned Moe's Southwest Grill at Biltmore Village, and there was a photo of the restaurant with debris piled sky high in front of it. At least, the restaurant wasn't "sent down the river", the Swannanoa River, to be more precise.
And why is this related? On top of the News & Observer article, in the ad space, there was this headline in large text, "Former Iowa star Gabbie Marshall fires back at old teammate Caitlin Clark"...
On the Sides being a bad coach topic, I'll present a few things that to me are unforgivable:
Not having CC at point guard with the ball in her hand for how many games to start the season? Absolutely moronic.
Not calling timeouts to stem momentum changes up to the very last game. It's like she's oblivious to what's going on out on the court half the time.
Sitting CC and Boston at the same time. She did this often and it was a disaster every time. Along with other puzzling lineup choices. It goes back to point two. You have to expect a little run from the other team when you have to rest your stars but you have to either get them back in or call timeout when it's more than a little run and you have to be more strategic about it.
She simply is not a good coach. There are many bad coaches in the WNBA so it's not just Sides.
Not having CC at point guard with the ball in her hand for how many games to start the season? Absolutely moronic.
Not calling timeouts to stem momentum changes up to the very last game. It's like she's oblivious to what's going on out on the court half the time.
Sitting CC and Boston at the same time. She did this often and it was a disaster every time. Along with other puzzling lineup choices. It goes back to point two. You have to expect a little run from the other team when you have to rest your stars but you have to either get them back in or call timeout when it's more than a little run and you have to be more strategic about it.
She simply is not a good coach. There are many bad coaches in the WNBA so it's not just Sides.
I do think you have to give Sides some grace considering her lack of experience, but even more so the situation. To have this mega watt star thrust into your lineup it had to be overwhelming for everyone involved. Just as it took players like Boston and Mitchell some time to realize how to mesh their skills with the outlier of a player that CC22 is, it took the coach some time. Understanding just how to use her skills. When to let up in the reigns and just let her go. How to mesh her other level talents with those around her. Yes there were still those moments where you thought, "what the hell is she doing". Still theres no question they played considerably better after the break. I'd also point out that just as CC22 was under the microscope of intense scrutiny, so was Sides. More then any coach in the league she was critiqued for her handling of Clark. I'm not sure how many of the coaches would have handled the situation. Even for those who throw Bluder into the conversation, remember she had a two year run to work with building a formula to mesh Clark into the team concept BEFORE the lights really turned bright white on "the Caitlin Clark effect". What most people saw was the finished product, and not the struggles of those first two years.
Jan calling in the big guns to seal the deal with recruits?
CC22 is somewhere getting some rest. If she was calling in the big guns to land Hays she could have brought in Gussy, herself a NPOTY as a POST player. These new ladies are committing because of "the family" and culture of Iowa womens basketball that Lisa and Jan built there. Thats still there today with this new group....
No ones being a dummy. You're making an assumption they were even there for some other reason then to visit Jada which is what the video showed. All the pics of the Hawkeyes downtown were of the recruits and the coaches and current players.
