BREAKING: Coach Nate Has Been Relieved Of His Duties As The Coach Of The Barstool Basketball Team
Well, it happened. The inevitable happened. Coach Nate has officially been relieved of his duties as the coach of the Barstool Sports Men’s League Basketball Team. After starting off the season 0-2 with perhaps the most unconditioned players in the history of rec league basketball
the squad took another L last night after shooting 3/30 from 3 point range and 18.4% from the field
It wasn’t our best game, but all the guys played hard, hustled, and took a ton of open shots. The number of open shots was fantastic. The ball movement was wonderful. Unfortunately, the majority of the shots didn’t fall, but that comes with work. We trotted out a team who legit hadn’t played any sort of sport, nevermind basketball, in years. We weren’t going to shoot 50% from the field day 1, day 2, or even day 3.
So last night, everyone left the arena feeling upbeat. We lost the game, but we made improvements. The team felt good, the coach felt good, everyone was in high spirits…
…besides owner of the team Dave Portnoy.
He was not happy with the number of open shots missed, the number of layups that rolled off the rim, or the lack of endurance the guys possessed. So just like that, he has taken my sports coat and put me on my way.
You see, I was brought on to coach without any coaching experience. GM Smitty told me were making a video of a rag tag team of washed up bloggers being coached by a spider monkey with zero coaching acumen. I would blog about it week by week and it would be an ongoing story in the Barstool World. Sounds pretty good, right? Apparently not.
Dave Portnoy was not happy with my coaching, or what he saw of it when he looked up from DM’ing 19 year olds on Instagram. Which in a way makes sense because I’ve never coached basketball before. But I was growing as a coach. I was learning the ins and outs of coaching. And as it turns out, coaching is trickier than I thought. Getting 10 egos who have never played together to play together on the court was tricky. Coley is 6’6 and hates playing in the post and can’t run down the court more than twice without being winded. Kmarko and Caleb both can adequately run the point, but neither is a pure PG. Handsome Hank is a decent shooter but can only play 4 minutes at a time. Smitty isn’t the best at covering his guy on defense. It’s shit like that which makes it difficult, but we were learning as a team.
Going 3/30 from 3 ain’t good. But we were getting the looks. Make a few more of those open shots and we win that game. We went 2/9 from the free throw line. Again, not good. Definitely a place the guys need to improve. The coach can only coach players who can’t hit free throws so much. At some point, they have to hit their open looks and sink a foul shout. And let’s not even get started on their cardio. Championships are won in the offseason with conditioning and diet. We have nobody who has put 3 seconds of thought into conditioning and especially not diet.
Am I disappointed I’ve been let go? Absolutely. I don’t feel I was given an adequate amount of time to implement the system and watch the guys get better. The teams we are playing against have been together for multiple seasons. We have been together for 3 weeks, and haven’t had the same players come to each game, just a mish-mosh each week.
I did my best, but it seems my time has come. I wish the guys good luck as they continue their journey through the bottom tier NYC men’s basketball league.
Thank you for your support. Best fans in the world.
All my best,
Coach Nate