Warriors dumped Mark Jackson today, some Warrior fans are upset.

SanctionII

Apparently the relationship between Mr. Jackson and the management/ownership of the team was not positive.

So the team announced today that Mr. Jackson is no longer the coach.

Some sports talk call in folks were upset at the move; some others were not upset and wondered who would be hired to coach next year.

Mr. Jackson did have on the floor success in the 2+ years he coached the team, making the playoffs two years in a row and seeing wins of 48 and 51 games. He changed the attitude of the team regarding defense from an after thought to a primary focus (which helped the team win close games it historically would lose). However, the NBA regularly sees coached fired a day or so after a season ends, even when they have highly successful seasons, winning records, playoff runs and coach of the year honors. So Mr. Jackson being terminated is not unique.

I wonder how much effect the Sterling fiasco had on the conduct of the Warriors ownership and management as they chose to sever ties with Mr. Jackson and go in another direction. I assume that ownership, management (and heck everyone connected to an NBA team) is being very, very, very careful in what they do, how they do it, what they say, how they say it, etc. in order to minimize the chances that they will "give offense" and run the risk of being "Sterlingized". Especially since everything one says, does and thinks is subject to being monitored, recorded, reviewed, analyzed, critiqued, filed and stored. You never know when you will be the subject of a TMZ headline. I can see a likely increase in work place "paranoia" arising from the events surrounding the NBA and Donald Sterling.

DIMEMAN

He took his team to the playoffs the 2 years he was there! Bring him to Dallas......Dump Jason Garrett!!!!!

YES!!!!

WTCG

Despite this year's regression they should have kept coach Jackson for at least another year. During his tenure he brought the Warriors from draft lottery mainstay into playoff contention. The players seem to like him as do most fans but there have been grumblings of coaching staff mismanagement, conflicting personalities and strong egos interfering with the peace. Mark Jackson seems like a good coach and I am certain he'll be snatched up by another team within the month.

Winning will cure everything when we look back at this one year from now. If the Warriors go deep into the playoffs next season everything will be forgotten. If the Warriors end up as one of the what it seems like 6 teams that don't make the playoffs then all hell will break loose. This firing reminds me of how the Raiders fired coach Hue Jackson after 2011 despite a much improved season only to turn back into league joke status the very next season. Maybe the Warriors have the talent and only need a change in strategy to make things much better but there is a much more likely chance that this Warriors team will fall back into NBA afterthought by next January. Personally I believe they will fall back into league afterthought instead of improving, but that will depend on who the new coach is.

There is another worry that Lacob will turn into the NBA version of Daniel Snyder instead of the NBA version of Eddie DeBartolo. If that possible scenario pans out God help the team and their fans.

WTCG

<< <i>He took his team to the playoffs the 2 years he was there! Bring him to Dallas......Dump Jason Garrett!!!!!

YES!!!! >>



I'm sure you're aware we're discussing basketball and not football, right?

DIMEMAN

>>>I'm sure you're aware we're discussing basketball and not football, right? <<<

Yes I am.....that's how bad Garrett is!

Cubby

"that's how bad Garrett is!" I don't think Curry is too happy now.

telephoto1

I'm not that conversant with the Warriors but I heard something about Jackson having some sort of heat with the owners...?
Anyone else hear that?

Cubby

Yes, I heard that Mr Jackson was not too friendly with the immediate family of
the owner. But does he have to be? I doubt if that's the reason why he got
fired, though.

WTCG

This article from yesterday was posted on the Warriors page of the San Jose Mercury News:


Firing Mark Jackson: Hard, Right and Necessary for the Next Step
Posted on May 6, 2014 by Adam Lauridsen
Mark Jackson wasn’t fired for his tactical decisions (or lack thereof). He was fired, in part, for how he dealt with the criticism of those decisions. Everyone starts somewhere. The term “beginner’s mistake” implies that there are certain growing pains that — if not excusable — are understandable as we figure our way around whatever we’re doing. But Mark Jackson was three years into his tenure as head coach. He was no longer a beginner. This season — continuing through the playoffs — a pattern was established where Jackson would make questionable decisions and then actively silence or rebel against those in the Warriors organization who would question him. That’s not an environment in which this very talented team can reach its full potential. In letting Jackson go, the Warriors made the hard — and correct — decision.


Some of the stories of Jackson’s last year are starting to emerge. There will be more that come out later. There are a few common problems that run through them.

Last off-season, when Mike Malone took the Kings’ head coaching job, Lacob and Myers approached Jackson about getting another experienced assistant to serve as his chief deputy. Jackson fought hard to promote from within (Pete Myers). The new assistant added to replace Malone — Brian Scalabrine — was at the end of the coaching bench. This decision set the tone, more than any personal squabble over where Jackson would live or where an assistant would park, for how his season would be evaluated. Jackson had bristled during at earlier comments that Malone was responsible for his success. The 2013-14 season would be all Jackson and “his guys.”
During the season, Jackson actively avoided engaging others in the organization on basketball matters and grew angry when they would interact, even casually, with players on these issues. Zach Lowe already reported that Jackson banned Jerry West from practice and team functions for a period of time. Kirk Lacob, who helps the team with a variety of basketball analytics, among other things, also caught Jackson’s ire for discussing basketball-related issues with players. The “difference in philosophy” with Scalabrine has been well documented, including the allegation that one source of Scalabrine’s frustration was the coaching staff’s lack of attention to detail. We can safely assume that Darren Erman wasn’t allegedly recording coaching meetings because he agreed with everything that was being done, but because he believed there were fundamental problems. While there’s no dispute that Jackson was the coach and had final say over basketball matters, it’s these types of things that Lacob likely had in mind when he commented today that Jackson needs to be as good in his next job at “managing up and sideways” as he is managing his players.
Jackson was plagued all season by reports that he wasn’t adequately preparing his team for games — particularly when they were the humdrum variety against the bottom half of the NBA ranks. Lacob took the unusual step of even publicly commenting on some of his frustrations. Despite this spotlight on his prep work, Jackson continued to engage in behavior that some in the organization found highly questionable. Reportedly, after the Game 2 40-point blowout, Jackson reconvened his team for a 20 minute practice the next day — far shorter than usual. In Game 3, the Warriors came out flat and made similar mistakes to those that cost them the prior game. It wasn’t until the second half of Game 3, when Jackson finally went small, that the team snapped back to life. Would extra prep work before Game 3 have made the difference in the first half in a game where the Warriors eventually lost by 2? There’s no way to know for sure, but Jackson’s decision again raised eyebrows.
Jackson carefully cultivated the image that he was loved by his players. For many, that’s undoubtedly the truth. Curry couldn’t have been more vocal in supporting him and others have weighed in after his departure. But according to sources with direct knowledge of the situation, not everyone felt the same way, with roughly half the locker room ambivalent or worse in their views on Jackson. The public got a glimpse of this during the Bogut sleep-injury brouhaha. What should have been a couple of off-hand remarks, chalked up to the fog of pre-game chatter, instead triggered Jackson’s most heated press conference of the year. The absolute and forceful nature of his denials was meant to project strength, but seemed to indicate the opposite. Jackson’s best argument for keeping his job was the love he received from his players. Even that appears to be a more complex picture than Jackson and his supporters have presented.
So do these issues — working with others, responding to criticism and engaging in thorough preparation — justify letting go a 51-win coach with back-to-back playoff appearances? Lacob and Myers ultimately decided yes, because they have greater ambitions for this team than winning 51 games, and they don’t have unlimited time to achieve them. It was going to take time for Jackson to develop his coaching chops, and given the very slow progress, development was by no means guaranteed. The Warriors also likely feared that Jackson’s other problems were limiting his ability to develop his own skills as a coach and draw on the resources around him.

For these reasons, the decision to fire Mark Jackson was as much — if not more — about the future than it was the past. The Warriors were making the same mistakes — ugly isolation sets that killed their greatest strengths, passing and shooting; careless late-game turnovers; head-scratching substitutions — in game 1 of the season as in game 7 of the playoffs. Curry, Thompson and Green all improved as individual players this year. Iguodala was a major talent added to the starting line-up. Bogut was healthier for more of the season (but not the playoffs). And yet the Warriors only made a marginal bump in their overall record and took a step back in their playoff accomplishments. Given the skill, basketball intelligence, coachability and character of these players, Jackson had a lot to work with as a coach. He got a fair amount from it — in large part because he is a tremendous motivator — but where Lacob and Myers want to go next, they’ll need more than just a motivated team.

jdip9

Bad move for the Warriors....Jackson seemed well-liked by his players, and they played hard for him (somewhat of a rarity these days in the NBA). I doubt the next coach will get that level of effort from the team. No doubt Jackson will catch on somewhere else.