I'm using Julius Randle's long range and mid-range shooting %s this year vs last year to make a point about Coach Thibs and how maybe he got too much credit last season and we shouldn't absolve him from guilt this year by pointing to how he won coach of the year last season as if that makes him above criticism.
Randle shot 41.1% from 3 last season. It's down to 33.7% this year. Or in other words a slight tick under his career average.
(To be fair to Randle, RJ Barrett dropped from 40.1 to 35.3, again back to career average)
And it isn't just three point shooting. Let's look in the mid range:
Randle is hitting just 32 percent of his shots from the long midrange this season.
Meaning Randle ranks in the 46th percentile for his position - a steep drop from the 75th percentile he occupied last year.
51 players have taken at least 35 jumpers from between 16 and 24 feet this season. Randle ranks 49th in that group.
It's worse from 8 to 16 feet, where 16 players have attempted at least 100 shots, and Randle is dead last with a 34.3 percent rate of accuracy.
If you're going to attribute a large part of Randle (and other players) shooting success last year at the feet of the coach and toss him laurels you must attribute a large part of Randle (and other players) shooting failure this year at the feet of the coach and toss him hot coals to walk over.
I prefer to say its not Thibs doing either way. His Coach of the Year award looks more like a "story of the year" award that he received because the knicks stopped looking putrid ( a low bar to clear if ever there was one).
Where I point at Thibs and call him out is that he neglected coaching this team and made a personnel decision after 20 games. Not only did he not talk to Kemba after the benching (cringe) but he abdicated the responsibility of coaching this new starting lineup into cohesion. During the early season Kemba and Julius took turns having good games and off nights. The two of them haven't both played a good game together all season until the christmas game where Atlanta was wounded. A good coach doesn't say "Hmmm... I have two offensive alpha dogs who can't co-exist let me just get rid of one of them and maybe the other will catch fire". That's the kind of move a guy on a sports forum might cry out for sure, but you expect the head fucking coach to think things through a little more. You can't say Alec Burks is the new full-time starting PG. You can't get rid of Kemba for a non-PG. That is just compounding the mistake of benching Kemba.
Thibs - by any measure - is having one of his worst season's as a coach. Coming off a feel-good year where he was gifted an award because he had a bunch of 40% 3pt shooters and they all out shot the team's expectations. Big whoop. Yes, the young players are developing but because of Thibs struggles I have to wonder if the youth development is really his doing, or more on the rest of the coaching staff and or the players themselves.
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