New Orleans Pelicans roundtable: Monty Williams firing edition

Feb 23, 2015; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Pelicans head coach Monty Williams reacts against the Toronto Raptors during the second half of a game at the Smoothie King Center. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

What was Monty’s biggest fault?

Rick: Rotations. There never really was a set decision on minutes played for the Pelicans even in this most recent season. It changed like clockwork all season. Monty really liked to experiment with giving different players more and less playing time depending on matchups and recent play. The inconsistency became an issue when other teams would make big runs against Pelican units that didn’t have a ton of experience with each other on the floor together. The biggest flaw was his indecision. To see it cost him his job is painful. 

Charles: I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it was the pace at which this team played. All we heard from players is that they want to run and get out in transition but that just isn’t Monty style. If you look at the makeup of this team it’s almost criminal how slow of a pace they play at. This is one reason I feel the Pelicans would go on these huge scoring droughts, when teams can’t get anything out of their half court sets it helps when you can get easy buckets in transition or push the pace before the defense is set. With Monty everything was in the half court and some plays would not even start until there was 14 seconds on the shot clock. I think that was a bit of the disconnect, Dell got players that can play in transition and Monty just didn’t do it. New Orleans ranked 27th in pace and 24th in fast break points. I just don’t see how that can be with this roster.

Matt: His inability to build a good defense. I know that the Pelicans had no clearly above average wing defenders when Jrue Holiday went down to injury and that stinks. That doesn’t change the feeling that Monty should have been able to find a way to have a league average defense with Anthony Davis and Omer Asik on his roster. Part of the problem was Asik’s inability to handle big minutes but it always felt like Monty’s scheme left something to be desired.

Next: One more run?