In Tyronn Lue, the Clippers found a familiar coach who can bring needed changes由asjkfj 发表在ClipsNation https://bbs.hupu.com/672
A championship coach. Ample experience coaching stars, under pressure. Deep ties to the organization and the city.
And on Thursday, the Clippers agreed to terms with Lue on a five-year deal after a search process that spanned almost three weeks, multiple league sources told The Athletic
Lue, 43, was the first candidate the Clippers reached out to, approximately one week after they mutually parted ways with Rivers, league sources said. The Clippers’ decision committee — owner Steve Ballmer and the Lawrence Frank and Michael Winger-led front office — contacted a list of 10 candidates, and five of them were seriously considered. Over a period of days, they whittled down the field to three candidates based on the checklist that The Athletic reported on Sept. 29:
A progressive and innovative approach
High-level game strategist
Re-cultivate a gritty identity from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons
Empower and develop young players
Fun and joyous culture and style of play that fans are proud of
The Clippers’ search — the first for Ballmer and this front office — was thorough. They graded candidates on a spectrum of characteristics. In almost every quality, Lue graded as the best or second-best candidate. The Clippers ran through hypothetical scenarios. They considered which candidate they would be most proud to have represent them as an ambassador of the organization.
The answer, the Clippers felt, was staring right at them: Lue, who spent last season as an assistant under Rivers.
After several consecutive days of meetings over meals and interviews at the team’s practice facility, the Clippers determined Lue was exactly the type of coach they were looking for. Lue and one other candidate checked every box on the Clippers’ internal checklist, but the Clippers were more impressed with Lue, league sources said. The Clippers consider him an elite tactician.
The Clippers made the decision to hire Lue on Thursday morning, league sources said. With Lue and his representative, Andy Miller, already familiar and friendly with the organization, it was a relatively easy negotiation process.
Lue won an NBA championship in 2016 as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, with whom he posted a 128-83 record (.607 win percentage) in parts of four seasons and reached the finals three times. The Cavs fired him after the team started 0-6 in 2018-19, following LeBron James’ departure. He also is a Rivers protege — Rivers gave him his start as an assistant in Boston in 2011 and then with the Clippers in 2013 before Lue left for the Cavs, and then Rivers brought him back to Los Angeles.
The Rivers connection begs the questions: Can Lue provide a palate cleanse to the funk surrounding this season’s team, and will any of the concerns or trends from last season carry over?
The Clippers understood the concern about replacing Rivers with a coach who was on the staff last season, when so much went wrong. But they treated Lue — and he obliged — as if he were a true newcomer, without any institutional knowledge. Any mention of the past or how things were previously done was shut down.
The Clippers presented Lue and the other candidates with a blank theoretical canvas. Here’s our roster, cap situation, staff, marketplace, identity and vision. What can you do with all of this if you are our next head coach? What will the next three to five years look like?
Lue then riffed on his vision of how to improve the Clippers’ situation next season and beyond. The two sides discussed how to optimize players, lineups and rotations, how to better integrate the coaching staff with the front office, how to better operate practices, and why community work is so important for Lue and for the organization.
At the same time, the Clippers view Lue’s experience with the roster as an advantage. Even though the two sides treated the interview process as a blank slate, it simply was not. Lue was on the staff last season. He knows what went so wrong — and when — and has ideas on solutions. He knows that talking to Patrick Beverley is different from talking to Paul George, which is also different from talking to Kawhi Leonard. He can push the right buttons.
From that perspective, Lue had a leg up on other candidates. The Clippers understood his high Q rating with the team’s players. The Clippers consulted Leonard and George on the candidates they were considering, and what qualities they sought in a head coach, league sources said. Neither player wanted the final say on the decision, but both offered to share their input, if the Clippers saw it necessary. Ultimately, both players told the Clippers that they trusted the front office and were on board with Lue’s hiring, believing he matches the criteria of what the team needs moving forward, league sources said.
Lue’s Cleveland tenure needs more context, and it informs how he fits with the Clippers. His main experience as a head coach came from taking over a team loaded with talent and egos but short on tempers, and he massaged those personalities into a cohesive unit that became the first team ever to recover from a 3-1 finals deficit and win.
In Los Angeles, there is an unquestioned, A-1 superstar in Leonard. His presence both instantly made the Clippers a title contender and also eventually ruffled the feathers of some teammates because of the preferential treatment showed to him from top to bottom.
Players like Beverley, Montrezl Harrell and Lou Williams — Clippers bedrocks before the arrival of Leonard and George — bristled when Leonard was permitted to take games off to manage his body and to live in San Diego, which often led to him being late for team flights, league sources said. The team also allowed Leonard to dictate to Rivers when he could be pulled from games, among other things. Lue was on Rivers’ bench for all of this, but the Clippers were Rivers’ show.
Lue was promoted to Cavs coach in January 2016 when they fired David Blatt. Cleveland previously hired Lue and paid him more than $1 million annually to be Blatt’s top assistant. Lue served in that role for a year and a half while Blatt both directed the Cavs to the finals in 2015 — and to first place in the East at the time of his firing a season later — and also while he struggled to gain LeBron’s respect. The latter situation poisoned the locker room.
Upon Lue’s promotion, the first thing he did was to demand that the Cavs’ supporting stars — in this case, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love — sacrifice their individual brands and defer to LeBron. Lue also stripped LeBron of some of the power he’d stolen from Blatt inside the Cavs’ locker room, and demanded the league’s best player get in better shape, which got the attention of the entire team.
In both cases, in L.A. and Cleveland, Lue assumed control of a franchise that was by no means broken and, in fact, was winning. The Clippers were the West’s No. 2 seed and held a 3-1 series lead against the Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals. Before that, they were wrecked by COVID-19 and multiple personal tragedies to players, to the point that they were weeks behind other teams in developing continuity inside the Disney bubble.
His teams spaced the floor well and attempted 3-pointers at a high clip. He is best known for in-game adjustments and for homing in on opponents come playoff time, often devising schemes at both ends instead of deferring to coordinators.
Lue’s adaptability was one of the qualities the Clippers found most encouraging. He’s not a staunch idealist, like Mike D’Antoni or Tom Thibodeau. He’s going to adapt to the roster he has, tinkering with lineups and rotations and style of play to figure out the best approach to match his personnel.
The Clippers plan to have Leonard and George on the roster for multiple years, but they’re aware that the supporting cast around them likely will change over the years, to some degree. That will call for changes in roles and responsibilities for certain players moving forward, as well as a potential overhaul to the team’s pace or half-court schemes. In the Clippers’ eyes, Lue is a coach who is up for the challenge and is open-minded to change.
Some changes that Lue will bring to the Clippers next season include better ball movement and a faster pace, league sources said. The Clippers will experiment more on the defensive end, mixing in more zone coverages and varying pick-and-roll schemes. The younger players on the roster — Ivica Zubac, Landry Shamet, Terance Mann and Mfiondu Kabengele — will be given larger roles and more minutes. The Clippers plan to stagger Leonard and George’s minutes more, as well as testing out different role players around them to see what lineup combinations work best.
Lue is the first coach in NBA history to win his first 10 playoff games. He never lost a second-round game, sweeping the conference semis in all three postseasons. Lue’s teams never lost a playoff series, outside of the finals, and he joined Pat Riley and Paul Westhead as the only coaches to take over a team during the season and win a championship.
If Lue can get the Clippers’ deep, talented roster on the same page spiritually, as he did with the Cavs, and perhaps find the right lineup combinations that seemed to elude Rivers in the playoffs, the Clippers will instantly become, by far, the biggest threat to the Lakers’ title defense.
Lue was nearly hired to be the Lakers’ coach before the 2019-20 season, but negotiations broke down over financial terms of the contract and disagreements about his staff.
Having won in Cleveland, Lue was looking for at least $7 million per season — commensurate with winning an NBA title. Financial terms of his agreement with the Clippers were not immediately disclosed, but his contract is for five years and believed to be in the $7 million range annually, league sources said.
A key for Lue in his second stint as a head coach will be the collaborative process between him and his staff and the front office. For example, Lue is open to working with the front office to fill out his coaching staff. The Clippers want better synergy between the staff and the front office, league sources said.
As the Clippers build Lue’s staff, Lue likely will turn toward two of the people closest to him as his assistants: Chauncey Billups and Larry Drew, league sources said. Billups is perhaps Lue’s best friend in the NBA. Lue spent the first two months of the pandemic at Billups’ home in the Denver area, teaching Billups what he knows about coaching. Drew was not only Lue’s top assistant with the Cavs — and finished the season as their coach after he was fired — but stepped in for Lue in 2017-18 when he had to step away for a few weeks to manage a lingering health condition.
Lue missed 10 games that season while dealing with physical complications caused by anxiety, which were cured through medication and better sleeping and eating habits. After leaving Cleveland, Lue rededicated himself to working out and dropped 30 pounds.
Lue is wildly popular among players, inside and outside the Clippers organization. He has relationships throughout the league and commands respect not only because of his title in Cleveland and his ability to communicate, but also because he played in the NBA for 11 seasons.
At night in the Disney bubble, Lue often was seen holding court, outside at the resort, regaling players from numerous teams (such as Kyle Lowry, the Toronto point guard with whom he’s close, as well as other Raptors) with stories and lessons.
He was on two championship teams with the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, was recruited by Michael Jordan to join him on the Wizards, and played for Rivers on the Magic. He’s played with Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Tracy McGrady, Dwight Howard, Yao Ming and Jason Kidd, and has coached LeBron, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett, Kawhi, Paul Pierce, Irving, Ray Allen, Blake Griffin, Rajon Rondo, Love and George.
Essentially, he has played or coached with most of the major stars of the past two decades. He has the temperament and the requisite experience with strong personalities and large egos, which will be necessary for the Clippers to solve some of the locker-room riddles that plagued them this season.
The Clippers have completed their first two steps of the most important offseason in franchise history, by parting ways with Rivers and replacing him with Lue. The next steps include building the rest of Lue’s staff, evaluating and potentially replacing the rest of the basketball staff and then improving the roster via free agency and/or trades.
The Clippers are confident that whatever changes they make, big or small, Lue is the right coach to maximize the roster next season — and for years to come.
A championship coach. Ample experience coaching stars, under pressure. Deep ties to the organization and the city.
And on Thursday, the Clippers agreed to terms with Lue on a five-year deal after a search process that spanned almost three weeks, multiple league sources told The Athletic
Lue, 43, was the first candidate the Clippers reached out to, approximately one week after they mutually parted ways with Rivers, league sources said. The Clippers’ decision committee — owner Steve Ballmer and the Lawrence Frank and Michael Winger-led front office — contacted a list of 10 candidates, and five of them were seriously considered. Over a period of days, they whittled down the field to three candidates based on the checklist that The Athletic reported on Sept. 29:
A progressive and innovative approach
High-level game strategist
Re-cultivate a gritty identity from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons
Empower and develop young players
Fun and joyous culture and style of play that fans are proud of
The Clippers’ search — the first for Ballmer and this front office — was thorough. They graded candidates on a spectrum of characteristics. In almost every quality, Lue graded as the best or second-best candidate. The Clippers ran through hypothetical scenarios. They considered which candidate they would be most proud to have represent them as an ambassador of the organization.
The answer, the Clippers felt, was staring right at them: Lue, who spent last season as an assistant under Rivers.
After several consecutive days of meetings over meals and interviews at the team’s practice facility, the Clippers determined Lue was exactly the type of coach they were looking for. Lue and one other candidate checked every box on the Clippers’ internal checklist, but the Clippers were more impressed with Lue, league sources said. The Clippers consider him an elite tactician.
The Clippers made the decision to hire Lue on Thursday morning, league sources said. With Lue and his representative, Andy Miller, already familiar and friendly with the organization, it was a relatively easy negotiation process.
Lue won an NBA championship in 2016 as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, with whom he posted a 128-83 record (.607 win percentage) in parts of four seasons and reached the finals three times. The Cavs fired him after the team started 0-6 in 2018-19, following LeBron James’ departure. He also is a Rivers protege — Rivers gave him his start as an assistant in Boston in 2011 and then with the Clippers in 2013 before Lue left for the Cavs, and then Rivers brought him back to Los Angeles.
The Rivers connection begs the questions: Can Lue provide a palate cleanse to the funk surrounding this season’s team, and will any of the concerns or trends from last season carry over?
The Clippers understood the concern about replacing Rivers with a coach who was on the staff last season, when so much went wrong. But they treated Lue — and he obliged — as if he were a true newcomer, without any institutional knowledge. Any mention of the past or how things were previously done was shut down.
The Clippers presented Lue and the other candidates with a blank theoretical canvas. Here’s our roster, cap situation, staff, marketplace, identity and vision. What can you do with all of this if you are our next head coach? What will the next three to five years look like?
Lue then riffed on his vision of how to improve the Clippers’ situation next season and beyond. The two sides discussed how to optimize players, lineups and rotations, how to better integrate the coaching staff with the front office, how to better operate practices, and why community work is so important for Lue and for the organization.
At the same time, the Clippers view Lue’s experience with the roster as an advantage. Even though the two sides treated the interview process as a blank slate, it simply was not. Lue was on the staff last season. He knows what went so wrong — and when — and has ideas on solutions. He knows that talking to Patrick Beverley is different from talking to Paul George, which is also different from talking to Kawhi Leonard. He can push the right buttons.
From that perspective, Lue had a leg up on other candidates. The Clippers understood his high Q rating with the team’s players. The Clippers consulted Leonard and George on the candidates they were considering, and what qualities they sought in a head coach, league sources said. Neither player wanted the final say on the decision, but both offered to share their input, if the Clippers saw it necessary. Ultimately, both players told the Clippers that they trusted the front office and were on board with Lue’s hiring, believing he matches the criteria of what the team needs moving forward, league sources said.
Lue’s Cleveland tenure needs more context, and it informs how he fits with the Clippers. His main experience as a head coach came from taking over a team loaded with talent and egos but short on tempers, and he massaged those personalities into a cohesive unit that became the first team ever to recover from a 3-1 finals deficit and win.
In Los Angeles, there is an unquestioned, A-1 superstar in Leonard. His presence both instantly made the Clippers a title contender and also eventually ruffled the feathers of some teammates because of the preferential treatment showed to him from top to bottom.
Players like Beverley, Montrezl Harrell and Lou Williams — Clippers bedrocks before the arrival of Leonard and George — bristled when Leonard was permitted to take games off to manage his body and to live in San Diego, which often led to him being late for team flights, league sources said. The team also allowed Leonard to dictate to Rivers when he could be pulled from games, among other things. Lue was on Rivers’ bench for all of this, but the Clippers were Rivers’ show.
Lue was promoted to Cavs coach in January 2016 when they fired David Blatt. Cleveland previously hired Lue and paid him more than $1 million annually to be Blatt’s top assistant. Lue served in that role for a year and a half while Blatt both directed the Cavs to the finals in 2015 — and to first place in the East at the time of his firing a season later — and also while he struggled to gain LeBron’s respect. The latter situation poisoned the locker room.
Upon Lue’s promotion, the first thing he did was to demand that the Cavs’ supporting stars — in this case, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love — sacrifice their individual brands and defer to LeBron. Lue also stripped LeBron of some of the power he’d stolen from Blatt inside the Cavs’ locker room, and demanded the league’s best player get in better shape, which got the attention of the entire team.
In both cases, in L.A. and Cleveland, Lue assumed control of a franchise that was by no means broken and, in fact, was winning. The Clippers were the West’s No. 2 seed and held a 3-1 series lead against the Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals. Before that, they were wrecked by COVID-19 and multiple personal tragedies to players, to the point that they were weeks behind other teams in developing continuity inside the Disney bubble.
His teams spaced the floor well and attempted 3-pointers at a high clip. He is best known for in-game adjustments and for homing in on opponents come playoff time, often devising schemes at both ends instead of deferring to coordinators.
Lue’s adaptability was one of the qualities the Clippers found most encouraging. He’s not a staunch idealist, like Mike D’Antoni or Tom Thibodeau. He’s going to adapt to the roster he has, tinkering with lineups and rotations and style of play to figure out the best approach to match his personnel.
The Clippers plan to have Leonard and George on the roster for multiple years, but they’re aware that the supporting cast around them likely will change over the years, to some degree. That will call for changes in roles and responsibilities for certain players moving forward, as well as a potential overhaul to the team’s pace or half-court schemes. In the Clippers’ eyes, Lue is a coach who is up for the challenge and is open-minded to change.
Some changes that Lue will bring to the Clippers next season include better ball movement and a faster pace, league sources said. The Clippers will experiment more on the defensive end, mixing in more zone coverages and varying pick-and-roll schemes. The younger players on the roster — Ivica Zubac, Landry Shamet, Terance Mann and Mfiondu Kabengele — will be given larger roles and more minutes. The Clippers plan to stagger Leonard and George’s minutes more, as well as testing out different role players around them to see what lineup combinations work best.
Lue is the first coach in NBA history to win his first 10 playoff games. He never lost a second-round game, sweeping the conference semis in all three postseasons. Lue’s teams never lost a playoff series, outside of the finals, and he joined Pat Riley and Paul Westhead as the only coaches to take over a team during the season and win a championship.
If Lue can get the Clippers’ deep, talented roster on the same page spiritually, as he did with the Cavs, and perhaps find the right lineup combinations that seemed to elude Rivers in the playoffs, the Clippers will instantly become, by far, the biggest threat to the Lakers’ title defense.
Lue was nearly hired to be the Lakers’ coach before the 2019-20 season, but negotiations broke down over financial terms of the contract and disagreements about his staff.
Having won in Cleveland, Lue was looking for at least $7 million per season — commensurate with winning an NBA title. Financial terms of his agreement with the Clippers were not immediately disclosed, but his contract is for five years and believed to be in the $7 million range annually, league sources said.
A key for Lue in his second stint as a head coach will be the collaborative process between him and his staff and the front office. For example, Lue is open to working with the front office to fill out his coaching staff. The Clippers want better synergy between the staff and the front office, league sources said.
As the Clippers build Lue’s staff, Lue likely will turn toward two of the people closest to him as his assistants: Chauncey Billups and Larry Drew, league sources said. Billups is perhaps Lue’s best friend in the NBA. Lue spent the first two months of the pandemic at Billups’ home in the Denver area, teaching Billups what he knows about coaching. Drew was not only Lue’s top assistant with the Cavs — and finished the season as their coach after he was fired — but stepped in for Lue in 2017-18 when he had to step away for a few weeks to manage a lingering health condition.
Lue missed 10 games that season while dealing with physical complications caused by anxiety, which were cured through medication and better sleeping and eating habits. After leaving Cleveland, Lue rededicated himself to working out and dropped 30 pounds.
Lue is wildly popular among players, inside and outside the Clippers organization. He has relationships throughout the league and commands respect not only because of his title in Cleveland and his ability to communicate, but also because he played in the NBA for 11 seasons.
At night in the Disney bubble, Lue often was seen holding court, outside at the resort, regaling players from numerous teams (such as Kyle Lowry, the Toronto point guard with whom he’s close, as well as other Raptors) with stories and lessons.
He was on two championship teams with the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, was recruited by Michael Jordan to join him on the Wizards, and played for Rivers on the Magic. He’s played with Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Tracy McGrady, Dwight Howard, Yao Ming and Jason Kidd, and has coached LeBron, Chris Paul, Kevin Garnett, Kawhi, Paul Pierce, Irving, Ray Allen, Blake Griffin, Rajon Rondo, Love and George.
Essentially, he has played or coached with most of the major stars of the past two decades. He has the temperament and the requisite experience with strong personalities and large egos, which will be necessary for the Clippers to solve some of the locker-room riddles that plagued them this season.
The Clippers have completed their first two steps of the most important offseason in franchise history, by parting ways with Rivers and replacing him with Lue. The next steps include building the rest of Lue’s staff, evaluating and potentially replacing the rest of the basketball staff and then improving the roster via free agency and/or trades.
The Clippers are confident that whatever changes they make, big or small, Lue is the right coach to maximize the roster next season — and for years to come.
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