Coaching from the Couch: Criticizing Frank Vogel
By Ben Gibson
It is natural for a fan to react to what they see in front of their eyes. Do fans go overboard sometimes? Of course. Knee-jerk reactions. Questioning the coach’s intelligence. General malaise with any and every move the coach makes. Cries of “What is he doing?” tend to reign down as a team falls further and further behind.
But how fair is that? Not very, according to one anonymous NBA coach.
"It goes back to one of the first things we talked about, which is ‘coaches are all-powerful beings. People think and NBA coach can change the course of the game through one action or one tough speech or recognizing something that is happening on the floor that no one has ever recognized before and making that strategic adjustment. That’s simply not a realistic way of looking at it, but it’s the way a lot of people imagine coaching to work. It’s much more the small changes and tweaks that help the team, especially through a playoff series, where you can make adjustments not only in a game but as you go from game to game."
Seth Partnow’s post on Hardwood Proxysm points out a few of the misconceptions fans have about what an NBA coaching and explains the reason for some of the perceived issues. For example: When the TV breaks into a huddle during a timeout, why does it seem like the coach is basically doing nothing?
"“Why aren’t they teaching and making adjustments in the huddle?” is the common refrain. The answer is: they are. However, broadcasters are prohibited from televising the strategic guts of these conversations. As Coach explained:They are not allowed to show the actual real work, so all you get is the platitudes and them exhorting the guys. You don’t hear the actual meat of it: “OK guys, DeRozan has just taken us off the dribble going right 3 times, we need to do a better job downing him on the pick and roll, sending him to the big and then sending help if Amir Johnson pops.” You don’t get any of that stuff. All you get is “Guys, run back on D, get on the boards.” It’s very misleading."
For some none of this may be new, but Partnow gave a good chance for this mysterious coach to vent a little about the frustrations about public perception.
How guilty are we here at 8 Points, 9 Seconds of trying to coach from the couch, of trying to outsmart Frank Vogel? Probably more than we’d like to admit.
How many times did we call for shuffling the line up? There is only so much the coach can do about locker room culture, with is more under the jurisdiction of the players. We’ve criticized the style of losses despite a strong winning record. As the 2013-14 season wore on, there were calls for Voegel’s head, espically when the Pacers struggled against the Atlanta Hawks. It should be said Vogel did have to make some adjustments within the Hawks series, with mixed results. We told him he needed to let go the big, mash mouth physical basketball that got them to the playoffs four years straight, then watched Roy Hibbert revive himself (for one game) and beat out the Atlanta Hawks in Game 7.
Not that all our criticism wasn’t valid and being critical is kinda our job. We’ve tried to figure out why the Indiana bench is where players go to die, how the team actually had changed despite a the same starters in 2014. We also try to praise him when we see a new wrinkle with the team, but sometimes it is best to just let Frank explain things.
The anonymous coach does understand why fans are the way they are, he just asks for a critical eye when judgements are made.
"I try not to watch in real time with a critical eye too much though obviously it comes up some. I’ll definitely ask myself questions while watching: OK this guy sat down (on the bench), why would you continue to play this other guy? To save his minutes for a particular matchup? You’ve exploited something in pick-and-roll twice in a row, why did you go away from it? I’m of the school that you should keep running something until they show they can stop it. At that point you should have counters in place anyway. It’s almost “run it again” just go with a different initiating action. So I’ll definitely watch in that way, but it’s more questioning than critical. It’s more a learning experience for me than ‘what an idiot? Why did he do that?’"
Personally, I usually refrain from trying to take down a coach, but when I do criticize I try to rely on numbers to help pick apart what I’m seeing and figuring out if what I think I see matches up with the results. Coaches shouldn’t ever be beyond reproach, but smart criticism goes further than just calling Frank Vogel an idiot.
But he does suck as a soccer coach and will always be one of our favorite stupid humans.