The Toronto Raptors have fired coach Sam Mitchell, and assistant Jay Triano will take over as...

The Toronto Raptors have fired coach Sam Mitchell, and assistant Jay Triano will take over as interim coach.

"This is a difficult but necessary step the franchise must take," Raptors president and general manager Bryan Colangelo said in a statement. "We appreciate all that Sam has done for the organization, applaud him for his successes and wish him nothing but the best with his future in basketball."

Mitchell was named the sixth head coach in Raptors history June 29, 2004. He posted a 156-189 (.452) record in his four-plus seasons. He won the Red Auerbach Trophy as the NBA Coach of the Year for the 2006-07 season, when he also won Sporting News' NBA Coach of the Year award in a vote among other head coaches.

Via Sporting News, the Raptors fire my all-time favorite T-Wolf, Sam Mitchell

7 months ago Stop-n-Pop Comment 11 comments 0 recs |

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when can the wolves fire whitman

for crying out loud

by Carrion on Dec 3, 2008 5:12 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Our next coach. See my profile image? That’s coming to a sideline near you!

by jianfu on Dec 3, 2008 6:20 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

The original Sam I Am

Well, he’d definitely be an upgrade over Wit’s-end.

Look here junior, don't you be so happy.
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad.

by E-6 on Dec 3, 2008 6:37 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

This gotta be a sign if such a thing exists. McHale should hire this guy as his last act and then leave the honor to himself.

by Wim (Belgium) on Dec 4, 2008 2:34 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

Q: Who hired Sam Mitchell to coach the Raptors?

A: Current country club member Rob Babcock.

Anyway, virtually every fanbase doesn’t like their coach. I suppose a guy like Phil Jackson might get a free pass, but those guys are very rare. Still, since I believe Mr. Mitchell is a virtual lock to be the team’s next coach, I took the liberty to check out some Raptor beat writers and blogs. As far as I can tell, the big complaints seem to be:

1) He consistently waits too long to call timeouts, often long after momentum has been established by the opponent.

2) He has 2 plays: the high screen and roll, and the Chris Bosh iso.

3) He isn’t hard on players.

4) Apparently he thinks every loss is due to poor shooting, and apparently he pronounces shots “shats.” “We didn’t make our shats” is pretty much spoken after every loss.

5) Apparently teams are now focusing on stopping Calderon from creating, essentially letting Bosh get his at the expense of letting anyone else get involved, and Mitchell hasn’t found a solution to this.

So there you go. Apparently Colangelo stacked the deck against him before the season by calling the roster the best he’s assembled in his three years there, and most observers felt this was unfair and the onus is now on him (they have a severe talent shortage on the wing), and Mitchell apparently felt they weren’t athletic enough.

Outside of that, most felt Mitchell was likeable as a person. Some felt he might make a better assistant coach, but some felt if he could start over somewhere he could succeed. He was there for about 5 years, which is probably the shelf life for most NBA coaches before he loses his players.

by jianfu on Dec 4, 2008 11:29 AM CST reply actions 0 recs

If you're interested...

…I like this guy quite a bit:

http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/548198

the article’s kind of brief but spells out the differences between Mitchell and Colangelo. Beyond the differences in style, the biggest knock I consistently heard on Mitchell (I’m a bit of a Raptors fan) was that he wasn’t very strong strategically and wasn’t very inventive/innovative. I’m sure he corrected this a bit as time went on, but in my experience (and admittedly I don’t see many Raptors games from afar), he just wasn’t anything that special, a competent guy who had moderate success when his team bought into his hard-nosed, defensive-oriented approach – which in Toronto wasn’t very often. Anyways I guess I’m being fairly ungenerous to him here, like I said I don’t get to see many of their games. To be honest he reminds me a bit of Wittman, which is why I’m not sure he’d be the best fit here – tough but likable guy, has success when he’s able to get real tough efforts from his players, sometimes seems a bit overmatched with Xs and Os stuff.

He does seem pretty good at developing guys into real NBA players – I think Calderón and Moon are 2 guys who really benefited individually from playing under him.

One of the funniest things I read about him was this “tough guy” drill he apparently does with his big men – he just rolls a ball out on the floor and whoever gets it wins the drill, the others have to run sprints or something – anyways you can imagine how rough it gets, there are basically no rules, you just dive on the floor and beat everyone else out to get the ball. Apparently Bargnani’s success in one of these drills convinced Mitchell that he might have what it takes to make it in the NBA.

by plinytheelder on Dec 4, 2008 12:07 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks for that link...

He sort does seem to share Wittman’s overall philosophy.

Still, considering we’re going to lose a bunch in the near-term, anyhow, if the options after losses is a guy threatening to start Kevin Ollie and Jason Collins (despite all evidence suggesting those guys aren’t doing what he says they’re doing) or a guy who say “we missed our shats,” I choose the later, if only for entertainment/sanity purposes. :)

What they really need is a teacher/evaluator. They really need to whittle down their rotation, and they need to decipher who the keepers are and who to move on from.

by jianfu on Dec 4, 2008 1:21 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Good point,

I think he’d definitely help with the teaching aspect, and hell any change might be good now. I’d probably prefer to see them hire someone else but they could do worse than Mitchell.

I think the “shats” thing, hilarious as it sounds, might just be the way Canadian ears hear American pronunciation. I get made fun of constantly here for my supposedly overly round "o"s.

by plinytheelder on Dec 4, 2008 2:03 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Bummer.

Still, proper pronunciation of shots or no, if he really could offer some promise as a teacher, I could maybe get excited about him (although if he’d just make Wittmanlike attempts to get this team to be the 2007-08 Celtics, then we’re really not making much progress). Getting overmatched on X’s and O’s would be bothersome but it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me (I liked Casey but I don’t think he was a great X’s and O’s guy), so long as the guy could teach and evaluate. Wittman has a lot of things going against him, but first and foremost he seems to struggle figuring out who his best players even are. Granted a lot of this is due to McHale’s penchant for finding near duplicate players (you try choosing between Foye and McCants, or Brewer and Carney), but still, that’s his job.

by jianfu on Dec 4, 2008 2:34 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

Just a quick "I second all of this" motion ^^

by Wim (Belgium) on Dec 5, 2008 2:14 AM CST up reply actions 0 recs

yeah I agree with you guys on the essentials...

…people often say Xs and Os aren’t so important because you can just hire a really heady assistant who knows all that stuff. Not sure I agree – in the end the head coach wants to make all the decisions anyways, or if an assistant is making the decisions maybe the players start looking to him instead of the coach. But suffice it to say that I think Mitchell would be an improvement – for evaluating, for teaching, and hell even for the Xs and Os – the deal breaker for me was that Golden State game a few weeks ago where they went zone and Wittman, for whatever reason, didn’t flash Love – or anyone for that matter – into the high post. Jefferson would have eaten that zone up with a few passes from the high post. Anyways suffice it to say I’m pretty sure Mitchell would have recognized this.

by plinytheelder on Dec 5, 2008 12:50 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs