Nate suddenly wants a PG who will push the ball? Are you actually trying to convince me of this given his history as an NBA coach? Ed O.
Personally, I'm beginning to think that Steve Blake is staying and the #2 guard could be Raymond Felton. I'm not convinced Bayless is ready to take over Sergio's role.
Felton is a less efficient but younger Andre Miller. Not sure Portland would like to take a flyer on him.
Andre Miller passes the ball much better than Felton... or, rather, is a much more willing passer. Maybe any given pass is better from Felton, but he doesn't do it as often. Felton better not be a Blazer next year. Ed O.
Ed, how many times last year did Nate implore his PG to push the ball? Did you watch any of the games at all? In timeouts, he'd be begging those guys to push the ball. In the newspaper we'd read how he wants the PG to push the ball. Don't try and tell me you were 100% oblivious to this.
Have you watched Nate's coaching career? That is the better question. 9 years all at or near the bottom in pace. He can say what he wants, but Nate does not want to push the ball.
A classic case of actions versus words. Words - "Please push the ball up the floor. We need to increase the pace." Actions - All of Nate's teams have played at a slow pace. The only question I have is why Nate implores his team to do something he clearly doesn't actually want them to do?
Who cares. Bottom line- pushing the ball last season was a priority with Nate, as repeatedly reported and stated by Nate.
Let's give Nate the B.O.D. and say that he did want to push the ball---why doesn't he bench the guys who are totally blowing him off? I'm pretty sure if you give Sergio or Bayless the ball and tell them to push it up the floor, you'd have to call oxygen timeouts for Greg and Joel and LMA. Our coach shouldn't have to beg and implore to have his wishes adhered to.
Probably because he tells them to push the ball, but he gets far more passionate about turnovers. Since it's practically impossible to increase the tempo without increasing the rate of turnovers (except sometimes for very elite PGs), Nate's players don't push it that much. Nate doesn't bench guys for playing slow because he knows they aren't turning it over much.
So why is it that when something happens like Blake going out, that nobody notices we never had a drop off at PG. The team's turnovers actually went down why Blake was out. The only problem I saw with Bayless, was that sometimes he wouldn't start at game speed, and with only spot minutes, he had a hard time getting adjusted before his playing time was spent, so they just didn't play him. But in games where he got good minutes, he produced well. Lastly, there is no good PG from europe here to take the job. There hasn't been a good PG at all in Portland in about a decade, let alone some mysterious PG here now to save the day. As they say at the drag races "Run what you brung".
