Mike Bianchi just brought the Sentinel to a new low...
Brian Hill is deserving of another year
The caller on the sports talk radio show called Brian Hill "the worst coach in the NBA" Monday and said Hill must go.
The e-mailer writes that Brian Hill "must be replaced" if the Magic are to progress as a franchise.
Even Magic President Bob Vander Weide, when asked following the season-ending playoff loss to the Detroit Pistons if Hill would return as coach, gave a resoundingly vague vote of non-confidence.
Answered Vander Weide without really answering: "Let me just say I'm satisfied with where we are right now."
And let me just say: ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR MINDS?
Fire Brian Hill?
The Magic ought to be begging Brian Hill to come back next season and coach this mediocre team back into the playoffs.
Please, Coach Hill, come back and we promise we'll get you a shooting guard who's had less than five surgeries on his ankle.
We promise we'll get you a point guard who is taller than Danny DeVito.
We promise we'll draft a player who actually wants to play on this continent.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced Brian Hill is a great NBA coach. I can question his substitution policy with the best of them, but this talk about firing him after only two years is pure insanity. Why would you fire him for getting the most out of the team he inherited? You heard me: He got all he could out of a young, fundamentally flawed roster. He coached a mediocre team to a mediocre record and somehow got the Magic into the playoffs for the first time in four years.
The Magic don't need better coaching; they need better players. They have one starter (Dwight Howard) who could start for the Pistons. And let's not forget two of their promising young building blocks -- Darko Milicic and Trevor Ariza -- were buried on the bench of their former teams and then jettisoned. These are works in progress, not elite-level players.
And is it the coach's fault his players can't make free throws? Hello, isn't this the NBA? By the time you get to this level, shouldn't you have already mastered this rudimentary skill?
The game's greatest coaches would be .500 with this roster. In fact, the greatest coaches in the game have fared no better than Brian Hill this year. Pat Riley has already been blown out of the playoffs and Phil Jackson is on the verge of being eliminated, too. And in case you haven't noticed, Jackson has the greatest player in the game -- Kobe Bryant -- and still can't get past the first round.
Besides, can you imagine the message of mismanagement it would send if the Magic fired Brian Hill -- again! Didn't the Magic bring back Hill because they felt guilty about prematurely firing him a decade ago? How would it look if they prematurely fired the same coach twice? They would not only be portrayed as inept, but heartlessly inept at that.
Furthermore, haven't the Magic changed coaches and GMs enough over the past three years? Isn't it time to have a plan -- and stick to it? Change is not always a good thing. Ask the Minnesota Timberwolves, who fired Flip Saunders three years ago because all he could do was take the team to the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons. They haven't been back to the postseason since they fired him.
Brian Hill got the Magic to the playoffs this season. That's at least a baby step in the right direction.
Don't give him the boot.
Give him a raise.
Give him some time.
Most of all, give him some players.
The caller on the sports talk radio show called Brian Hill "the worst coach in the NBA" Monday and said Hill must go.
The e-mailer writes that Brian Hill "must be replaced" if the Magic are to progress as a franchise.
Even Magic President Bob Vander Weide, when asked following the season-ending playoff loss to the Detroit Pistons if Hill would return as coach, gave a resoundingly vague vote of non-confidence.
Answered Vander Weide without really answering: "Let me just say I'm satisfied with where we are right now."
And let me just say: ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR MINDS?
Fire Brian Hill?
The Magic ought to be begging Brian Hill to come back next season and coach this mediocre team back into the playoffs.
Please, Coach Hill, come back and we promise we'll get you a shooting guard who's had less than five surgeries on his ankle.
We promise we'll get you a point guard who is taller than Danny DeVito.
We promise we'll draft a player who actually wants to play on this continent.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced Brian Hill is a great NBA coach. I can question his substitution policy with the best of them, but this talk about firing him after only two years is pure insanity. Why would you fire him for getting the most out of the team he inherited? You heard me: He got all he could out of a young, fundamentally flawed roster. He coached a mediocre team to a mediocre record and somehow got the Magic into the playoffs for the first time in four years.
The Magic don't need better coaching; they need better players. They have one starter (Dwight Howard) who could start for the Pistons. And let's not forget two of their promising young building blocks -- Darko Milicic and Trevor Ariza -- were buried on the bench of their former teams and then jettisoned. These are works in progress, not elite-level players.
And is it the coach's fault his players can't make free throws? Hello, isn't this the NBA? By the time you get to this level, shouldn't you have already mastered this rudimentary skill?
The game's greatest coaches would be .500 with this roster. In fact, the greatest coaches in the game have fared no better than Brian Hill this year. Pat Riley has already been blown out of the playoffs and Phil Jackson is on the verge of being eliminated, too. And in case you haven't noticed, Jackson has the greatest player in the game -- Kobe Bryant -- and still can't get past the first round.
Besides, can you imagine the message of mismanagement it would send if the Magic fired Brian Hill -- again! Didn't the Magic bring back Hill because they felt guilty about prematurely firing him a decade ago? How would it look if they prematurely fired the same coach twice? They would not only be portrayed as inept, but heartlessly inept at that.
Furthermore, haven't the Magic changed coaches and GMs enough over the past three years? Isn't it time to have a plan -- and stick to it? Change is not always a good thing. Ask the Minnesota Timberwolves, who fired Flip Saunders three years ago because all he could do was take the team to the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons. They haven't been back to the postseason since they fired him.
Brian Hill got the Magic to the playoffs this season. That's at least a baby step in the right direction.
Don't give him the boot.
Give him a raise.
Give him some time.
Most of all, give him some players.
posted by OVERWADED @ 12:09 PM
8 Comments:
At 12:21 PM,
OVERWADED said…
I'm sorry; I just had to post this on here...
I noticed BIG had already had the pleasure of reading this column, so I wanted to make sure everyone else did! I'm cruel, I know...
Anyways...
Someone needs to remind Mike Bianchi that the NBA is a business; multi-million dollar business.
My favorite part, he says: "The game's greatest coaches would be .500 with this roster."
So, in the weak-ass East, Brian Hill finishes 40-42. But if we had one of the games greatest coaches, we'd have only won 1 more game?!?!
Hahahahahahahahahahaha. No, OK, I'm going to be serious now; hahahahahahahahaha. I'm sorry, I just can't help it! Anyone who isn't in a coma with half a basketball IQ knows otherwise!
I’m going to try and take that column as a total joke, because nobody could be that stupid. Maybe Otis Smith wrote it for him, and paid him a few thousand to publish it in the Sentinel?
Regardless whoever wrote that load of crap needs to be FIRED!
At 12:35 PM,
Big Figure said…
I beleive your conspiracy theory now more than ever,they are going to bring this joke of a coach back,then say we all wanted it....
At 5:42 PM,
Ken said…
Mike Bianchi is the worst sports writer in the world and the Sentinel is the worst paper for giving this asshole a job.
At 8:45 PM,
Mike from Illinois said…
Unbelievable... practically everyone can see how poorly the Magic offense is designed, and how poor the substitutions are on a game by game basis.
Well, I guess we better get used to the fact that Brian Hill will return as coach next season, like it or not, and focus on what player moves and acquisitions are going to be made in the off-season.
At 8:47 PM,
OVERWADED said…
THE HILL TOP-ICK
This is how stupid these polls are...
Right now, supposedly 57.2 of the vote says we want Brian Hill back.
In the other poll the Sentinel has going; only 49.7% of the vote wants Grant Hill back.
So you're telling me Brian Hill is wanted more in Orlando than Grant Hill?
After all the injuries and what not that has come along with Grant, I'd still like to have him come back at a bargain price; farrrrr more than Brian Hill!
I call shenanigans! Shenanigans!!!
At 8:56 PM,
Matt said…
Mike Bianchi has been blasted by the public on that stupid article. I just posted the following on Sentinel's blog:
"I expected, and wrote about it, that Magic organization would blame it on the players - youth and inexperience - and would consider making to the play-offs an improvement. What I did not expect was Mr. Bianchi becoming the mouth piece of the organization. If Mr. Bianchi cannot see the obvious shortfalls of Brian Hill -which I doubt is the case - he does not qualify to be a sports writer, heck he does not qualify to carry one's jock. If he is intentionally misrepresenting - which probably is the case - then he is definitely on Magic organization's pay roll.
A clear act of dishonestly is the Sentinel's poll on the coaching issue. By looking at the sentiments on this and many other blogs, it is obvious that the poll has been manipulated. What merit a poll has any way if anybody can vote multiple times? None whatsoever, but it proves one thing; Hill's supporters, or I should say employees, do not have a shred of honesty to stop manipulating the poll. Shame on Sentinel, as well to become the vehicle of such blatant distortion."
If they get away with this crap, we all have failed, but watch if they are able to fill the seats, or get the arena construction off the ground. They will be boycotted by the public, and will suffer miserably by it.
At 9:30 PM,
OVERWADED said…
Well said Matt... I honestly don't know if I can go through another season watching Brian Hill coach our team. The fact that he made it to the end of this season was pushing my limits. I love the Magic; I always have, and always will. But I just don't know if I'll be able to seat and watch our players being "coached" by this idiot any longer.
The only thing I can say for sure is I won't be attending any games until he is gone. Otherwise, I’d probably already have a pair of season tickets.
This past season, I gave away tickets multiply times, because I just didn't want to be there and have to watch the games throughout. They were boring and torturous at times, because every game was the same thing as the previous. It’s pretty sad when I can sit back and call every move Brian Hill is going to make before it happens. We’re probably the easiest team in the league to scout.
The next step, I stopped watching the games live, because it was too frustrating. This led to me watching all the games DVR-ed, so when it got to horrible, I could walk away whenever I wanted.
Besides you guys, I've never known anyone who is more of a "die hard" Magic fan than myself. But this season pushed me, and most of it had to do with watching the way Brian Hill coached this team game after game, poor rotations, no adjustments, not playing the guys and lineups he should, misusing players, SAME OLD SHIT EVERY DAMN GAME!
I just don't understand how the organization could entertain bringing him back. It's wrong in so many obvious ways.
Even the guys who work for the Magic know this. TV, radio, THE MAIN TV AND RADIO GUYS, yeah, they play basketball at RDV every week. And when they're not on the air, they speak a little more openly. All of them know Brian Hill sucks; they're just not aloud to say it.
Rant over.
At 12:40 PM,
Anonymous said…
Don't know who the SOB claims Bianchi is a dodo, but he wrote the most tuned article on Bret Favre; it is a classic and Sicko needs to find it and read it and shut his d a - - mouth up! R. C.
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