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PHILADELPHIA -- Jim O’Brien is obsessive on the defensive end of the basketball court, but takes a laid-back approach to offense. While he will "micromanage" on defense, he favors an uptempo offensive style with an emphasis on catching the defense off balance.
"I don’t feel the need to move the defense back and forth when we have the ball," he said. "I’ll take the first good, open shot that we can get. I’m not adverse to that. I just believe we’ll work so hard on defense that the players will feel confident with their ability to create on offense."
That’s one reason he expects to get along with Allen Iverson.
"I think Allen will probably be more comfortable with the way I coach offense than anybody that he has played for maybe in his life," O’Brien said. "I have a lot of respect for players like him and other All-Star type of players who understand the flow of the game.
"Sometimes, as an example, I was murdered up in Boston because Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce would take (quick, bad) shots. But two years ago we came from (behind) 21 times in the fourth quarter because you have to have the ability to strike quickly.
"The guys that are gonna get you off the schneid a lot of times are Allen Iverson or Paul Pierce or someone like that. A little bit more freedom doesn’t mean there’s not a plan or parameters on the guys. We’ll monitor that."
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Now here's where the questions start. I'm a fan of Jim O'Brien and I think he'll do a good job here, but is it smart to already plan out an offensive scheme even if you don't have the players for it? This is the second year in a row, a coach came in saying that the team was going to push the ball more, and shoot the three more, and for both seasons we have pretty much the same team. And if it didn't work too well last year, what would change to make it work this year?
Yes, O'Brien is like John Wooden in comparison to Randy Ayers, but some guys on this team at this point in their career are built for the Larry Brown maximize each possession type offense. Examples being Aaron McKie, and Eric Snow.
With his idea of playing Iverson at PG, at least during stretches of the game, I was comfortable, until I heard he was interested in letting Iverson jack up the first shot.
That's not the best idea, and it's something that's going to take a lot of getting used to.
In O'Brien's best season, when the Celtics beat us
and went on to lose in the Eastern Conference Finals, their lineup was smallish, and anchored by Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker. Is this what he's looking for with us, eventually down the road?
Let's break down the starting lineup of that team, and see if there's any comparison to this team:
PG: Kenny Anderson - Solid PG, ran the offense, played defense, hit the open shot when the defense sagged off of him.
SG: Paul Pierce - 2G who could handle the ball relieving the PG, could run the offense, great scorer.
SF: Eric Williams - Tenacious defender, did all the dirty work, including cleaning up the boards. If left alone, he could also hit the open jumper, even the occassional open three pointer.
PF: Antoine Walker - Point foward, also handled the offense, was undersized, not much of a defender. Shot a high volume of threes.
C: Tony Battie - Shotblocker, who could hit the mid-range jumper with some consistency.
Are there any comparisons? Sure, you can reasonably compare Snow with Anderson (of that year), Iverson with Pierce, and Dalembert (almost, doesn't have the jumper) with Battie. If you look at it though, that team didn't accomplish much of anything. So is that really the way we want to go?
Right now we don't have much of a choice with what we have (which is better than others think), because O'Brien seems determined to play this style. If I had to choose, I'd go with more of an offense like Larry Brown ran in Detroit this season, as a transition between the last time we had a real coach and now. And slowly as the personnel for OB's offense come in, we could go that route.
He sees us as a scrappy coach on defense, which is good, because that's what the personnel calls for, but when it comes to offense, I get pretty scared. How about you guys?
Jim O'Brien's Offensive plan
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