At the game the guy sitting next to me was saying how obvious it was Stotts was hired to appease Aldridge. I never thought of it, but he was one of the coaches who coached Dirk to a title, who is very similar to Aldridge. Basically design a team so fun and highlighting LMA he would fall in love with being a Blazer. The guy even suggested that losing last year was by design with no bench not for tanking reasons, but to get LMA and the others fast forwarded in their abilities with all the high minute pressure. Just so this year with a bench they would blossom. Anyway, thought it was worth a discussion. I'm not sure I buh it though.
I think Stotts was hired because he is the anti-Nate. He lets the guys take the shots they want and doesn't berate them if they miss. He inspires confidence.
A big part of Stotts being hired probably had to do with how he would highlight LMA at the time. You want an offense that will allow your best player to create havoc and that's what LA does in this offense. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
Stotts wasn't hired to make LA happy, he was hired to build and offense that played to LA's strengths after his success doing so with Dirk in Dallas.
He is the antithesis of Nate, so that would make any player happy. I don't think he was hired specifically with making Aldridge happy though
The guy's reason for having no bench last year is a stretch. The way I saw it was flexibility for last summer. Which seemed to work. Neil wanted ending contracts IMO and better bench players would have wanted longer contracts. (For the most part)
