I'm not excited about the prospect of any first time coach over Stotts at this point in Dame's career. I'll be optimistic and give them a chance, but that's about it.
After 9 years, bad to horrible defense for almost all of those, very few fast break points, few easy baskets off of turnovers, little passing, with minor exceptions, very poor playoff results.......what would a coach need to to more (or less of) to get actually deserve to be fired in your mind? I'm respectfully asking to try and understand and see what I might be missing. Then again, my goal as a fan is to compete for a championship.
With a solid core of starters that have been together long enough to have ball movement be second nature without hesitation and turnover you start to build a contender...Stotts was patching flat tires constantly since Nurk snapped his leg off....I believe today that if Terry had the roster chemistry and stability and a better bench he'd go the the finals....game 6 we didn't make a shot for 11 minutes in the most important game of the year....Stotts didn't miss those shots ....at any rate..he's gone now...I loved the guys approach to coaching .....think he had a string of bad luck the last few seasons and the covid seasons were hard to deal with for everyone....I don't think the last two seasons can be compared to pre covid seasons...I respect every coach and player who risked it and got tested a billion times to entertain us. I wish Terry were still here...everyone knows that. I accept that he got fired this season after losing first round...although I don't blame him for many losses this season....Terry didn't bench Melo and Enes and let young guys get a shot at playoff ball. That hurt his job security...I think a training camp with Norman and Nurk back and another season this roster would have clicked...covid didn't even allow practice on the road so we did ok on the fly but to contend...I like stability and chemistry to be rock solid. The revolving roster Terry coached was like being a G league coach..71 players in his 9 years is a lot of roster change
@riverman ....Covid affected everyone's practice time and chemistry so to me, that is a wash around the league. Other teams adapted whole new systems or new players and seemed to do just fine. They did miss a lot of shots in Game 6 but to me, part of that is the types of shots they were taking. They were shots out of habit...with far too little ball movement, ISO/hero ball types of shots that are more difficult in the Playoffs under pressure situations. That has been a Stotts trait and one that hopefully won't be missed.
You play how you practice. Stotts let's a lot of crap go unchecked all season long. You cant just flip a switch and play differently for sustained periods.
I've said this before ... there's no reason some really good players wouldn't want to come to Portland. Almost every player that's played for the Blazers has good things to say about the city and community. I just don't think Olshey understands the charm of the city to be able to pitch the advantages. Like someone said in the thread about Olshey's presser ... he's a New York guy, not a West Coast guy. I just think he thinks of what would appeal to him and he can't find anything in Portland that appeals to him. You can't pitch what you don't understand.
I could be completely wrong on this but it felt at times that due to the poor relationship between Stotts and Nurkic, Nurk didn’t give 100% effort consistently and certainly not in the playoffs. He looked like a different player this season than the one the team lost to the leg injury in 2019. And the fact that he was doing things (hedging as an example) tells me that he and the coach were not on the same page. Perhaps the change in coach will bring back ‘Nurk Fever’ Nurk, which would certainly help this team.
History disagrees with you. We can NOT rely on players wanting to come here. They may love it once they get here, but they will not choose it over other markets, all things being equal, having never lived here.
Didn't take long for the next target I see... the guy who just fired the guy you've hated for years is now hard to work with? Why would you think that? Because he doesn't feed the media his roster plan details before they are implemented? I think he's a pretty smart guy when it comes to keeping a good impression of The Blazers public for maybe making us more of a free agent destination or place where agents want to place their clients...it's his job to do that...I like that he checks the media vitriol in a split second...(Popovich does that all the time)....when asked about trading players under contract I respect his flat out refusal to float rumors...my biggest impression about Neil around here is that folks don't like his acting in soap operas or his haircut. If he fails at the coaching hire, they'll probably question his duration here but I don't sense that at all today. Every GM has hits and misses....Neil is just never going to be trader Bob
Where would you rank Olshey in the NBA as a GM? Is this roster better today then the one he had when he became GM? Are we close to being a championship contender?
you're the 2nd person to say something like that so I'd like you to point to posters who are criticizing Olshey today who never criticized him before I've been slamming him since the Aldridge team fell apart in 2015. I've got a decent memory and the people here I've seen gouging him the last 24 hours have been doing so for multiple seasons. now, there might be a couple of posters so disgusted by the way Olshey threw Stotts under the bus yesterday, they have joined to Olshey-sucks choir, but I'm not sure who they are
I'll answer! 15-20. Not the worst, not better than half the GMs in the league. With the challenges of a small market franchise I think you need a top 5 GM to be a championship contender. That ain't Olshey. We're better at PG and Center. Tie at SG. Worse at SF and PF. So it's a tie. After nine years the roster is not better, not worse, treading water. No. So he's an average GM at best. I think you can be a poor to average GM for the Lakers and see results. Doesn't work for a small market team. Time for an upgrade!
I'm not the biggest Olshey fan, but I think fans are too short attention span at times. They bitch that he ended the LMA teams (though you could argue that A: LMA leaving was the real reason and B: that team had peaked), and then they bitch at who he brought in (admittedly, they were odd choices) but bitched when he broke up that team. Then were excited when he brought in players that actually filled needs (defensive minded wings and decent shooters) and then bitched at him when the coach buried one of them and refused to make any kind of adjustments in the middle of the games (that has to be Neils fault, amiright?). And the same people will bitch that he didn't bring in superstars as if all it takes is the Blazers wanting them for them to play for the Blazers, nor has there been a long history of them wanting to play for the Blazers over the last 51 seasons (curse you Neil! How could you not have gotten any superstars to play on the 2006 Blazers!!). I think the biggest issue is that the GM (and imho, the ownership group) and the coach were never really on the same page as to what the teams direction should've been (based on the limitations of what they could trade for/sign, etc). Some bad draft picks were made, some good ones were made. Some players were passed over who probably wouldn't have gotten the same opportunities they got in their current teams. But it's Stotts who decides who plays, it's Stotts who decides who randomly goes in the doghouse. It's Stotts who decides who can shoot as many times as they want independent of how they're shooting or how their teammates are playing (no one outside of Damian should be given the green light). It's Stotts who couldn't make in game adjustements. It's stotts who would shoe-horn players into roles that didn't suit their talents.
I'm sorry but apparently this is the new fairy tale it's on you to point out specific posters who are criticizing Olshey now who haven't before yesterday. If you can't, then it's just a straw man what is true is that there is a 'speak-no-evil' sub-set here who will go after posters who speak that evil without substantively addressing the evil they are speaking of
Impossible to answer that until he's hired a new coach in my view....I think there are clearly 4 or 5 better GMs in the league that won't be available for Portland even if I wanted them....I think Jerry West is the best there is...Masai Ujiri number two...I don't think Neil has built a contender yet but I think the roster is better than when he took over....the starting core of Lamarcus, Wes, Nico had been together before Neil got here so that would've been the best starting unit until Wes got hurt...Neil had injury bad luck with Pau Gasol and Festus Ezili and then Zach and Nurk.....I think we'd have been much better with Zach backing up Nurk than Enes but this version of our roster has the deeper 3rd string than we've had in Neil's time.. If we were a contender now we wouldn't have fired Terry......Rodney Hood, Zach, Nurk and CJ being injured this season sucked the chemistry out of the staring lineup from early in the season....Rodney didn't come back to form and Zach didn't get to play a game.....I was banking on next season with fans and a training camp to see what this roster could do with some chemistry....Norm joined the team on the road and barely sniffed Portland or the fans.....I also think the lack of fans affected our home game energy alot more than we think....we were the last team to allow fans to attend games.....Nurk fed off fans and he isn't the same player with canned applause and empty gyms...our problems with being a contender go way beyond Neil's handling of the roster...Terry desperately tried to find a core identity and had to plug in bench players pretty much his whole tenure here
