Quick Poll - Paul Westphal

There are six to choose from. But you’re right – no one is talking about Westphal on this site, and I should not have brought it up. I’ve let the cat out of the bag – shame on me.

If you take him out at 9 minutes and wait until 3 minutes are left, he’s as good as fouled out for that 6 minutes. Sometimes a guy will play for a quarter and a half with 5 fouls, and never get a 6th.

Evans had an off night, tough to imagine he was going to catch fire no matter how it played out.

I’ve always liked Westphal, even if the last few games have really…irritated me, to put it lightly. I think he’s a good coach, and I haven’t heard any of the players complain about Westphal since the Hawes thing last season. I think someone needs to teach our players how to defend, and for that purpose, I think we would be better off hiring a defensive-minded assistant coach to complement Westphal and the rest of the staff.

I voted to keep him and hire someone to help with the players.

But I’m starting to wonder if “philosophy” is all he has.

Still, it’s only 7 games in, so I’d prefer to have him running the team for the remainder of the season. But if this team continues to underachieve, it might be time then to pull the plug.

Thanks Xiane for this simple, and enlightening perspective

We need to hire that guy so we can fire him again.

Hmm, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea…

Against the Lakers and the Wolves in particular, we were not playing well overall but were still playing well enough that making a few more free throws would have changed the whole game. You still never know if we would have been able to ultimately win those games or others, but this team has enough issues to overcome without constantly putting themselves behind the 8 ball with free throws.

I obviously don’t know what Coach Westphal is or isn’t doing to address the free throw problem, but it clearly isn’t working. I worry and suspect, based on Westphal’s approach to other problems, that he feels like he can’t shoot the free throws for the guys and they should all know how to make a free throw by now, so all he needs to do is keep telling them that they need to do a better job with free throws and they need to listen to him. Even if it’s not quite that extreme, I think the team needs to address the free throw thing more directly and more forcefully. Bring in a free throw expert or a Sport Psychologist for an entire day of practice and have the guys work hard on completely changing their mental approach to free throws.

Other than team defense, free throw shooting is to me the issue that has been having the biggest impact on us losing games. The defensive issues could take most of the season to get fixed. I really believe the free throw issue could be fixed much quicker than that, and fixing it would pay huge dividends immediately.

This will be the main reason for the remaining 40-50 losses this year, too.

Ah, that’s right. No one remembers those conversations now. The plan is the plan is the plan. This team was effectively born last season, it is walking this season, and like anyone learning to walk, there will be stumbles. We might see some actual running before the season ends, but some of it will be full-speed into a brick wall.

Everyone bitches about the lack of continuity, youth, arena volatility, and everything else, but some of you are actually considering sacking the first decent coach we’ve had since Adelman because this non-playoff caliber team looks ragged and is losing games to some weak squads?

At the risk of invoking politics (and I will only glancingly) I would love to do a separate poll in which I was able to cross-reference the results to see if those who feel Westphal should be fired 7 games in also believe that 18 months is quick enough to dig the largest economy in the world out of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

If those of you who think the incumbent should be canned have a better candidate to lead us to a brighter future, feel free to drop it here as a reply. Otherwise, at least admit you’re having a temper tantrum, and let’s talk hoops. I honestly don’t know if I can get through another season of a “TRADE KEVIN MARTIN” style siege that we went through last year.

Moderators: By all means delete this if you feel it’s over a line.

Some high quality assistants could certainly help with team defense, and a more fluid offense, which are the two things that I yell at my television at during our games.