In Reply to: I agree with most of your comments … posted by mikeo on July 11, 2025 at 17:39:09
Cronin was doing both. He kept coaching Mara up so that he could play more comfortable in his system and he was also adapting his schemes to take advantage of Mara's unique skills. As an aside, I thought what Cronin was teaching Mara was going to be a huge positive factor for Mara on down the line. Now, perhaps some may think Cronin wasn't moving fast enough to adapt his system to Mara? I was one of those who thought that. But I can see what Cronin was trying to do and I have no problem with that. Like I said, it's easy for us to pick away at what Cronin was doing from a safe distant vantage point with no possible repercussions for us. I thought Cronin was being responsible to himself, his team, and Mara.
Also like I said, even though I may have disagreed with the speed Cronin was moving I thought he was doing a good job at bringing Mara along while also trying to maintain any momentum the team was experiencing. With a few more advantageous bounces here and there the Bruins could have had a very good season. Even without that I still thought the Bruins had a pretty good year.
Now if Mara had returned and Cronin would have continued in his slow manner to utilize Mara's skills then I believe there would have been a huge problem and Cronin, IMO, would have mostly been at fault. But I didn't think that was going to happen. I thought both Mara and Cronin were poised to blossom - Mara on the court, and Cronin in his coaching methods. Of course we'll never know because Mara couldn't see it IMO and flew the coop. Maybe he was right or maybe not. None of us were close enough to the situation to see what was rally going on and we'll never know. Oh well, time to move on. Best of luck to everyone and I'm anxious to see how this current Bruin team evolves.