03-11-2005, 07:51 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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-LIFETIME MEMBER-
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Bowling Green, OH
Age: 24
Posts: 12,110
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As coach, O'Brien feels the frustration
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As coach, O'Brien feels the frustration... after all, he's from Philadelphia, too
Jm O'Brien gave the struggling 76ers a day off Wednesday. You couldn't have blamed the embattled coach if he had wanted to spend that time away from the maddening crowd. But there he was at a luncheon reunion gathering of former Markward Club award winners.
Only in Philadelphia...
Lou Peltzer, a former teammate at Saint Joseph's University, and Greg Jones, a lifelong friend, were there in support. They knew the Sixers were three games under .500, that they had just been hammered 104-85 by Golden State.
"They stood on either side of me," O'Brien said, laughing at the moment, "and said, 'We're your wing men.' "
O'Brien, in his first season with the Sixers, knew he needed all the help he could get. He heard the fans booing Tuesday night. He understands their impatience and disappointment.
"I'm probably as impatient as they are," said O'Brien, who starred at Roman Catholic High and was the Markward player of the year in 1970. "Philadelphia fans want winning teams and they want teams that will work hard.
"I think our guys this year have worked hard. I think we were absolutely dead-legged the other night, but I can certainly understand the frustration of everybody, from the [coaching] staff to the players to the fans to management. There's no avoiding that in a situation that we're in right now. It's our job to turn that around...
"If anything, I think people have to be patient with the situation. People pay good money for their seats. They can be as impatient or as patient as they want to be. It's a tough load to put on somebody's shoulders."
Asked whether he had been surprised at how quickly the fans showed their impatience, O'Brien replied: "I'm from Philadelphia. It looked like we were in slow motion and [the Warriors] weren't."
O'Brien talked about the difficulty of having played six games in eight nights, about the lack of practice time with a full squad, about integrating Chris Webber and Rodney Rogers into the offensive and defensive schemes at both ends of the floor. As an example, Allen Iverson (left shoulder strain) and Kyle Korver (right knee sprain) sat out yesterday's practice, and Webber (left knee synovitis) practiced to tolerance.
The focus of yesterday's session was to institute and refine ways to develop an Iverson/Webber balance. O'Brien wants Iverson to remain in attack mode, but he also "wants to get it in Chris' hands as much as humanly possible."
Logic says that teammates tend to spot up when Iverson drives toward the rim, but that when Webber has the ball they have to have what the coach terms "purposeful movement."
"You play basketball off of him when he is facing up," O'Brien said. "When the ball gets in Chris' hands, that's a time for all four people to move."
O'Brien said the Kings were accustomed to playing that way and had taken that approach from the first day of training camp. The Iverson/Webber approach is new to everyone.
Asked whether he feels a sense of urgency, O'Brien said: "Hell, yes. I live in a constant state of urgency. With [21] games to go, we have to start winning. I know that, and I think our guys came to practice certainly with the same mentality."
"Wing men?" We'll see.
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"Roy Williams does not deserve all of the criticism he receives for his poor pass coverage. His Stop Rate of 43% ranked 6th among all safeties involved in at least 40 passing plays. Williams' biggest problem in pass coverage is that he gets little help from Keith Davis" - 2006 Pro Football Prospectus
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As coach, O'Brien feels the frustration
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