re: Is it time to admit Nate Oates isn’t a good coach?

This season has been frustrating and about as bad as it could be, but these seasons happen in basketball, especially since transfers started being more prominent 5-7 years ago. Everyone has seasons like this. Literally everyone.

- Roy Williams at Carolina went 20-17 in 2010 and 14-19 in 2020

- Calipari at Kentucky went 21-12 in 2013 and 9-16 in 2021

- Pearl at Auburn went 13-14 in 2021

- Krzyzewski went 13-18 in 1995, 22-11 in 2007 and 13-11 in 2021

- Rick Barnes went 17-14 in 2020

- Tom Izzo went 20-15 in 2017 and 15-13 in 2021

- Jay Wright went 13-19 in 2012

- Billy Donovan went 24-12 and 25-11 (both NITs) in 2008 and 2009 inbetween the back to back titles and 4 straight Elite 8s/Final Four

- Tony Bennett is currently 12-8

- Juwan Howard is currently 9-7

- Matt Painter went 16-18 in 2013, 15-17 in 2014 and 16-15 in 2020


The list goes on and on. The constant roll over of a large majority of minutes in basketball can lead to years where, for whatever reason, your roster is devoid of leadership or fits and it all just kind of goes bad. Even the best, most consistent coaches in the country had a smattering of bad seasons sprinkled in where their roster that year just didn't gel and didn't work.

So, I'm certainly not going to write Oats off because of 1 up and down season where things went off the rails. However, if next year has similar issues, then clearly you have to start wondering what the deal is. But that hasn't happened yet, so there is no reason to talk in hypotheticals.

At this point it's just a team with a bunch of issues that he can't seem to figure out how to reach and fix. It happens. It's nauseating to watch, but it happens. Clearly they'll have to assess why it happened and how to prevent it via offseason, roster building, the way they coach, staff changes, whatever after the year ends. However, right now I'm sure they are just in absolute triage mode trying to shoot every bullet in their gun to find something to stop the bleeding.