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Welcome Lindsay Gottlieb, new assistant coach on John Beilein's Staff

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I expect that neither her athleticism nor religion will affect her ability to coach. I'd be interested to hear about that, though.


For sure her athleticism wont matter, but the last time we had a Jewish coach it didn't end well.
 
Let's try to keep it on the straight-narrow, focused on the B-Ball stuff, alright, Buddy Boys?

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Not at all saying you're lying, if it happened it happened, but it's a little hard to believe. There's the famous story of the US women's soccer team losing to a bunch of 14 year old guys etc. and basketball is a remarkably athletic sport. In my softball circle of over 100, there are good girls who simply do not make mistakes and know what they are doing and can place the ball where they want but field the best guys against the best girls and it'd be a bloodbath

That's one instance of a former All-American female PG, playing on a team with other men, in an unorganized open run setting. So that's a bit different.

On the other hand, a team of male basketball managers (former HS players but nowhere close to good enough to play any level of college ball) and walk-ons (some talented guys and much better than the team managers but also not scholarship athletes), and they were able to consistently compete and often beat a Top 10 womens college basketball team. So I'm essentially agreeing with you.....
 
At FSU the male team managers and walk-ons often scrimmaged against the women’s team.

The games were generally pretty close.

The women wanted every crack they could against the men, but keep in mind, with different size and weighted basketballs, neither coach was enthusiastic to let their players scrimmage.

I do recall a female player or two getting into open runs with men’s basketball team, and more than holding their own. I also recall watching Jennifer Rizzotti basically dominate a male pick-up game at UCONN with male camp counselors from all over country (mostly D-I players).....that was fun to watch....

As I said we would have scrimmages in High School against the girls varsity and sometimes 3 on 3.

Overall, they had good technique and did all the shit everyone is supposed to do, like box-out, set proper picks etc., more methodically than the guys.

They were always very serious about their craft; something young guys are a little deficient at sometimes.

Guys won 8/10 times, due to being stronger, faster, being able to jump higher, but the girls I think had better overall technique to their games.

In NBA circles, I'd say yes. LeBron was pissed Griffin got let go, and felt Koby was hand-picked for "preferential" reasons. Don't get me wrong, Griffin loves Koby, as do many current and former Cavs players. Griffin speaks openly about how magical Koby is, and rattles off stories about his time with him in CLE.....and even stories about attending Koby's wedding. But there was a stigma before Gottlieb's hire, and her hiring only brings more attention to it.

I'm not surprised you, or the vast majority, haven't heard the whispers......I think I've seen some veiled comments about Gilbert in the past (on this board), and definitely recall Altman having to answer some questions about his faith and in turn relationship with Gilbert. So, it's lingered a bit......

I can't stress enough, how little I care about a person's religious background. Can they do the job or not? That's it for me. But playing devil's advocate, there's a shitload of qualified women to become assistant coaches in the NBA. At a certain point, things stop being coincidental.......the Cavs basketball operations side is far from diverse.....and I want to be delicate here. But you can go through the list, and the trend is pretty striking.......

In terms of it being a problem? I'd say yes, within some NBA circles. Gilbert is seen as a guy who meddles too much and puts personal preferences above what others would consider "better opinions or options". He plays favorites over most qualified....in their opinion.

And to hammer it again, because the last thing I want, is to come off as some type of anti-Semite......because I'm not. I loved the Blatt hiring and thought he got a raw deal. I was actually hoping he'd get another opportunity with us when Lue was fired. I hope Koby is extremely successful although it remains to be seen. On the analytics side, and deeper into the basketball ops, I think it comes across as a bit too "tin foily", but the trend is quite similar in terms of diversity.

And everything I type is a bit unfair to Gottlieb, whose resume truly speaks for itself. I think it's great another woman has an opportunity to be an assistant in the NBA. My disappointment is that in smaller circles, this achievement is being looked at as "favoritism". In general, the masses are applauding the decision, but within the NBA, it's seen as "Gilbert being Gilbert". And that is what disappoints me.....

Thanks for filling me in. I had no idea it was a thing.

I also had no idea Altman was Jewish.
 
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In NBA circles, I'd say yes. LeBron was pissed Griffin got let go, and felt Koby was hand-picked for "preferential" reasons. Don't get me wrong, Griffin loves Koby, as do many current and former Cavs players. Griffin speaks openly about how magical Koby is, and rattles off stories about his time with him in CLE.....and even stories about attending Koby's wedding. But there was a stigma before Gottlieb's hire, and her hiring only brings more attention to it.

I'm not surprised you, or the vast majority, haven't heard the whispers......I think I've seen some veiled comments about Gilbert in the past (on this board), and definitely recall Altman having to answer some questions about his faith and in turn relationship with Gilbert. So, it's lingered a bit......

I can't stress enough, how little I care about a person's religious background. Can they do the job or not? That's it for me. But playing devil's advocate, there's a shitload of qualified women to become assistant coaches in the NBA. At a certain point, things stop being coincidental.......the Cavs basketball operations side is far from diverse.....and I want to be delicate here. But you can go through the list, and the trend is pretty striking.......

In terms of it being a problem? I'd say yes, within some NBA circles. Gilbert is seen as a guy who meddles too much and puts personal preferences above what others would consider "better opinions or options". He plays favorites over most qualified....in their opinion.

And to hammer it again, because the last thing I want, is to come off as some type of anti-Semite......because I'm not. I loved the Blatt hiring and thought he got a raw deal. I was actually hoping he'd get another opportunity with us when Lue was fired. I hope Koby is extremely successful although it remains to be seen. On the analytics side, and deeper into the basketball ops, I think it comes across as a bit too "tin foily", but the trend is quite similar in terms of diversity.

And everything I type is a bit unfair to Gottlieb, whose resume truly speaks for itself. I think it's great another woman has an opportunity to be an assistant in the NBA. My disappointment is that in smaller circles, this achievement is being looked at as "favoritism". In general, the masses are applauding the decision, but within the NBA, it's seen as "Gilbert being Gilbert". And that is what disappoints me.....
Interesting information..like to know who in the NBA you speak to but I know you aren't going to let us in on that.
Old saying..as far as whats being said in circles...you don't worry about things you can't control.
Gilbert doesn't seem worried about what others think about his decisions including us fans..
My concern is how itchy is his trigger finger going forward?
 
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A little worried that athletes won't respect female coaches sufficiently

That's always possible - perhaps even likely that at least some players will feel that way.

But she's being brought in as an assistant, which helps mitigate that a ton. And if she does a good job as an assistant, she'd probably win most of those guys over as well.

That's why I think the first female head coach is almost certain to be an internal hire.
 
I'm not worried about the respect, I'm worried about it literally being a different game. NBA level male athletes just have an entirely different set of physical skills and capacities than female college-level players, and the game itself reflects those differences. There are all kinds of things that work well in the women's game that won't work in the NBA game because it would be completely impossible to execute them against NBA-level male athletes. Then the player development challenge is very different too because you are developing different capacities.

Well, there are a lot of men who coach women's teams....

I personally think the biggest adjustment basketball wise will be the speed/length of defenders. That essentially shrinks the floor significantly. But if she's got a good basketball mind, she should be able to make that adjustment fairly quickly.
 
That's not what happened, so it seems fairly irrelevant. And I'm not sure we have any evidence that Altman would have forced a coaching hire on Beilein had he not been on board. My guess is that Altman tabbed Gottlieb as a female coach he liked and wanted to hire if his coach was on board and that's pretty much what happened. It seems like we're legitimately trying to build a culture here this time around and I don't think forcing an assistant on our head coach would gel with that.

But there's nothing wrong with the GM identifying potential assistant coaches he likes and asking the new coach to interview them to see if it works. That's, like, part of the GM's job.

Sure.

Like I said, ultimately it's much ado about nothing because people are saying Beilein is on totally on board. Obviously it wouldn't leak out until way down the road if he wasn't anyway.

I just think it's very possible that Beilein's complete lack of NBA experience/NBA contacts is working in Altman's favor at this point in filling out the coaching staff HE wants to see v. the one Beilein wants to see because Beilein doesn't really know any of these people anyway.

When your head coach doesn't really have NBA contacts and also isn't bringing any of his college assistants with him to the pros, I don't think it's out of the question to assume he's going to be more apt to go with whoever the GM suggests.

Personally? I think Altman was planning to bring Gottlieb on board no matter what Beilein thought about her. Just my opinion based on certain things in the article. For that matter, I think it's possible that something similar happened with Bickerstaff during the interview process as well. Altman and his crew interviewed him and really liked him, but Gilbert preferred Beilein, so Altman elected to essentially bring on the guy he liked as well.

Before anyone rushes to say "oh well that wouldn't happen!" the Gilbert signed off on literally that exact thing with Blatt and Lue barely five years ago.
 
Interesting information..like to know who in the NBA you speak to but I know you aren't going to let us in on that.
Old saying..as far as whats being said in circles...you don't worry about things you can't control.
Gilbert doesn't seem worried about what others think his decisions including us fans..
My concern is how itchy is his trigger finger going forward?
With his health issue, I think he is gonna lay low on being involved with the Cavs... Wonder who would be taking the role of owner or whether it is really going to be the Koby show
 
With his health issue, I think he is gonna lay low on being involved with the Cavs... Wonder who would be taking the role of owner or whether it is really going to be the Koby show
No inside info here, but I would imagine Altman has the reigns of basketball ops and Len Komoroski will oversee all the rest of day-to-day operations with the franchise.
 
With his health issue, I think he is gonna lay low on being involved with the Cavs... Wonder who would be taking the role of owner or whether it is really going to be the Koby show

The question is -- how low? Is he completely incapacitated, or can he communicate & understand enough to at least get briefed and sign off on major moves? From what we've heard it seems more likely to be the former, but we don't know.
 

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