After catching glimpses of Skiles during the playoffs, I have to agree with GrahamC that Scotty has lightened up a lot since he left here. He was not constantly screaming from the sidelines - he actually appeared quite composed and sat some of the time.
I don't know what that means in terms of how long he'll last in Chicago - it's reputed to be a tough place to coach because management likes to have a lot of input on what the team does. Perhaps Paxson has muted that.
One thing I didn't get a feel for was how well Skiles was doing with his handling of the substitutions, which in his case is very indicative. When he was here he substituted quite well in the first halves of games. That started to fall apart in the third quarter and by the end of games he was frozen with panic. Its not a stat that you can look up but while he was here Skiles absolutely never made an unforced substitution during the last five minutes of a game that was remotely close. Yet until that point he'd yank a player with 5 or even 4 fouls to make sure he was available during those last minutes. Absolutely made no sense.
If he's still like that it doesn't bode well for success in the playoffs, which have more games decided in the last few minutes - and one can bet that the Bulls will be looking for success in the playoffs in a year or two.
It's pretty much certain that he'll rub some of the players the wrong way even if he doesn't carry his criticisms of them to the press as he was wont to do here. He is one abrasive person and it would take a complete personality makeover for that to change. Remember Rex Chapman's statement about Skiles, "Even his friends think he's an a$$hole!" Rex was reputedly his best friend at that time.
I have to disagree about Marbury not being a Skiles type of player - that's only about 1/3 true. On the offensive end Marbury fit well with Skiles half court ideas and Marbury was plenty tough. He did fall down in focussing his efforts on defense. The big problem with the team at the time was that we didn't surround Marbs with the kind of offensive players that complemented his game. For some strange reason BC was looking for players that liked to run, while spot up shooters were what was needed. I always thought Skiles should diversify the offense by having a good variety of plays that were options off the early phases of the P&R - though that may not have made a whole lot of difference. But the lack of shooters was murder.
