Critiquing Cowens

As most of you know by now, Golden State canned head coach Dave Cowens this weekend after an 8-15 start. While the move was hardly unexpected, the Warriors weren't exactly awash in talent, so the nagging question that remains is this: did Cowens deserve to be fired?

Last week I did an evaluation of Jeff Van Gundy's tenure in New York, where I ran through some basic questions on how the coach did and then reviewed the answers. Today I'm going to run Cowens through the same test.

As I said a week ago, when I look at how a coach is doing in basketball, I take a look at four things:

1) Did he use the right players?
2) Did his team play hard?
3) Did his team play smart?
4) Did they win more than could have been expected?

Now, let's give Mr. Cowens his exam.

1) Did he use the right players?

This is a tough one, because last year the Warriors had a bajillion injuries. But in general, looking at the player PERs, the best guys got the most minutes. You could quibble and say that Vonteego Cummings and Adam Keefe may have gotten too much burn, but that's about it.

This season, Bob Sura's whining aside, was a similar story. The only guy to get minutes he didn't deserve was Erick Dampier, and the alternatives there didn't look any better. However, if we're nit-picking, I do think he should have moved Troy Murphy into the lineup for Dampier to clear room on the low block for Antawn Jamison to operate.

I'm also not holding the benching of Marc Jackson against Cowens, since all indications are this was a directive from management (borne out by the fact that Jackson has two DNPs in the two games since Cowens was fired).

Finally, Cowens deserves a ton of credit for moving Larry Hughes to point guard, which worked out better than anyone had any right to expect. He took a player who was a brick waiting to happen at shooting guard (PER 13.68 last season) and had him producing in a big way this year (team-high PER of 20.87).

2) Did his team play hard?

As I mentioned a week ago, the primary indicator I use for how hard a team is playing is defense. Last season's Warriors were tied with the Bulls and Wizards for the worst defensive efficiency rating in the league, at 106.7. But perhaps we should cut Cowens some slack because of all the injuries his squad suffered - the Warriors basically played the second half of the season with a CBA team.

This season, with a healthy crew, the Warriors are tied for 18th in defensive efficiency with a mark of 104.2. That's an improvement, but hardly a ringing endorsement. There's some pretty good defensive talent on this team, too: Hughes, Richardson and Dampier are all good defenders, and bench guys like Mookie Blaylock, Chris Mills and Adonal Foyle have good reps as well. Danny Fortson and Troy Murphy are probably only the bad defensive player in the bunch, so you'd think that perhaps the Warriors could do better. The only thing to say in defense of their record is that the Warriors, according to Jeff Sagarin's ratings in USA Today, have played the league's third-toughest schedule so far.

3) Did his team play smart?

A week ago in the Van Gundy piece I ranked the league's smartest and dumbest teams last season, using for my criteria 1) an ability to avoid turnovers, 2) an ability to avoid fouls, and 3) taking intelligent shots on offense, which should be reflected in a high number of points per shot attempt.

Last season's Warriors get decent marks in this category, especially considering how beat up they were. They finished last in points per shot attempt, but were in the middle of the pack in turnovers and did well in avoiding fouls. Their overall rating of 45.0 was 15th in the league.

The same, however, cannot be said for this year. The Warriors are in the middle of the pack in avoiding fouls, but are second to last in both points per shot attempt and turnovers per possession. As a result, they are dead last on the Hoops IQ charts right now (if you're curious, San Antonio, the Lakers and Boston are the top three).

Visually, I get the same impression. When you watch them you can't help but thinking that they're not a very bright offensive team - wild drives and poor offensive spacing are the main problems - and in fact their best "play" for most of the season has been the offensive rebound.

4) Did they win more than could have been expected?

Last week I introduced the 'expected wins' stat for coaches, comprised of two parts last season's record, one part the previous year's, and one part a .500 season. Here's Dave Cowens' record at Golden State:

Season  Par  Wins   vs. Par 
2000-01  28   17     -11
2001-02   7    8      +1
Gst Career           -10

The Warriors weren't good before Cowens showed up and weren't expected that to get much better. His teams didn't improve on that expectation.

Conclusion

Overall, then, Cowens' record is mixed but certainly on the negative side. Oddly, personnel was the one area where he was most criticized and yet undoubtedly where he was strongest - the Hughes move was his best decision at Golden State and his rotations made more sense than a lot of other coaches'.

However, the Warriors didn't play particularly hard, and they certainly didn't play smart, and because of that, they haven't been able to improve on the misery of the last few seasons. While it's ironic that the area where he was criticized most was probably the one thing he did best, the numbers back up the assertion that Cowens wasn't getting the best out of the Warriors.

Pot Shots

To the other four people who watched Saturday's 80-79 snoozer between the Hawks and Bulls: I feel your pain ... A couple big game scores from this weekend. Kevin Garnett took top honors had 29 points and 24 boards against the Kings on Friday for a score of 36.1. Also, special kudos go to Milwaukee's Michael Redd, who went 9-13 for 21 points in just 17 minutes of action against the Pacers Saturday, for a game score of 15.2. Shareef Abdur-Rahim's 50-point night against the Pistons is still the runaway winner, however, with a mark of 45.4.

NBC is apparently going to lose the rights to NBA broadcasts after this season, and not a moment to soon. Just one more year of listening to the wandering rants of Bill Walton and watching three cardboard cutouts deliver the halftime show before we can move on to something (hopefully) better ... Nice to see the Griz are still keeping Stromile Swift's PER of 22.21 on the pine; after all, it's important that they get some burn for lynchpins of their future like Grant Long (PER 8.74) and Tony Massenburg (2.75).