He absolutely, positively had to give Wall a long leash, for instance—not because Wall gave them the best chance to win a single game on any given night, but because there was no other way to know whether or not he could eventually knock off the rust and regain the sort of form that could help in the postseason.

But beyond that, there’s a huge chasm between “Ty Lue made some questionable rotation choices last season” and “I blame Ty Lue for most of last season’s disappointments” (which were in fact your exact words, despite the claim in your more recent response that “it is not a matter of blame”). That’s just plain silly. Our collective disappointment is 99% related to two right knees and 1% related to any other factor.

If the stars had been healthy, then the main goal of the regular season should be figuring out the right rotation to build around them so as to be the best possible team in the postseason. But that’s a tall order when they’re in and out of the lineup for more or less the whole season. Instead Lue was faced with having to simultaneously achieve two somewhat contradictory goals — winning regular-season games with hodgepodge rotations while also trying to figure out which players best complimented the stars when they were both healthy.

I think this dichotomy would’ve been absurdly difficult for the best of coaches, and I think that was proven by the fact that it was indeed absurdly difficult for Lue, who is in fact among the best of coaches. To me it seems clear that the “Lue sucks” narrative grew a life of its own around here, with the fanbase holding him to a ludicrous standard as a receptacle for the crushing disappointment we all feel about the 213 era not living up to expectations due to one (and only one) factor that’s beyond anyone’s control — the health of the two stars.

Short of Pop or Spoelstra or maybe Kerr, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have coaching the Clippers, and
I definitely can’t think of anyone who could’ve materially changed last year’s outcome. And I know for certain that we’d be hearing none of this had 213 been able to play 70-ish games each last season with some level of predictability from day-to-day and week-to-week.

Ty issues–like having the team use the MLE on Wall 

But how do you put that on Ty vs. the FO?

The vibes are shifting to them. The noise about Lillard, Siakam, KAT are driving Harden’s value down to the point where the Clips could get Harden for cheap. Or, they may go for one of the other players. Structurally, I think getting a Siakam to play the starting #4 provides more value than Lillard at the #1, but if you’re sketching a scenario where Lillard wins his first chip, him playing on a starting 5 with Kawhi/PG/Zu and Mann is a winner. The issue is health and Lue, but that starting 5 has a real shot vs Denver.

I do think that several Ty issues–like having the team use the MLE on Wall instead of Hartenstein when they had a glut of guards and no backup C, because he was going to make RoCo the backup C, which he went away from after a couple of weeks; or like playing those Wall-Norm-Luke bench units because he couldn’t decide who to bench–cost the Clippers winnable games throughout the year, cost them opportunities at continuity, lost locker room buy-in/vibes (I heard at a couple points in the season that some players didn’t understand the reasoning behind some decisions), etc.

All of that contributes to Ty doing a pretty poor job last season, in my opinion–while also not being responsible for star injuries/availability, which were ultimately why we didn’t get where we want to go. But even if the stars had been healthy, I think our team was a mess that wouldn’t have threatened for a title.