McMillan liked what he saw last night

LOL. Of course he defends his piss poor decision.

 

I just hope Nate knows what he is doing and has us all fooled!

 

Well, if he liked what he saw in the 4th quarter, maybe we'll be starting Howard and Cunningham to begin the season?

 

Bad teams talk about effort. Good teams don't need to.


It gives me no confidence this team is ready for the next level if the coach can take a loss as a positive.

 

Listening to the game it sounded like the only guys who were getting it done were Blake, Bayless, Nic (for a stretch), Howard, Greg, and Cunningham ... there's your new starting lineup folks.

 

Since you're implying things didn't go well, what did you see last night that you didn't like?

 

This

[video=youtube;Mq_7z_JjGYY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq_7z_JjGYY&feature=related[/video]

 

lol

Nate is such a bad coach he couldn't even turn the lights on last night. We should fire him!

 

I'm sorry if you thought I was implying that. I was really going for absolutely and unequivocally saying it.


Nate's bullshit line up failed miserably, and his line about energy and a turning point was also bullshit because the players that brought the energy are guys that will never see the floor. Players like Bayless, Cunningham, Ime and Howard will be 9-12 on the bench. The starters got outplayed, and once again, Travis did shit.

 

Yeah, the situation is definitely bad if a line-up that did not include Roy or Rudy and played LMA only 6 minutes lost by 3 to a Jazz team that had Deron, Boozer and Millsap each playing 20 minutes or more.

No way we are getting the Stu Jackson cup (that's the pre-season championship, for those of you that are out of the loop).

 

I agree that preseason is pretty much meaningless, but the way you characterize the flow of the game is kind of off.

The only group that made it close was the deep deep bench when they were squared off against the Utah deep bench ... the Blazers regular rotation guys pretty much crapped the bed (whether Roy was in or not and whether LMA played much at all)

 

Facts are that our starting unit did nothing. They got down quick and I don't really think Roy would have been the difference.

It's not the line-up as a whole, it's the starters. Then for Nate to come out and say he was encouraged by the effort?

 

I will say this about Nate, when he was in Seattle he did play guys who played hard over established rotation guys at times ... I think it would spell certain losses, but I wouldn't put it past him to play guys like Cunningham, Ime, Bayless and Howard if they are playing with more energy and hustle than the regular rotation guys.

 

I can definately see Ime and Howard. Nate likes his veterans, but Cunningham will make too many rookie mistakes for Nate. Bayless will never play under Nate.


Maybe Oden will be moved to 3rd team to make room for Howard?

 

Our starting unit was missing it's most important player and had the 2nd best player taken out after 6 minutes, all of this in a meaningless game where the Jazz played their normal starting unit.

With that said, why shouldn't Nate be encouraged by the effort. These guys were on cruise control since the start of the pre-season - and it is clear that they finally got it in their head that having lots of talent and great expectations will not be enough - so they started playing like men. When what is basically a bunch of role players with Miller and Greg (who are our 3rd and 4th best players) basically won the last 3 quarters - why should he not be encouraged?

Just because you guys seem to need a reason to run to the hills does not mean that what he said was not right...

Heck, I was listening to the game on the way to an evening with my vintage car club friends - and I was encouraged to hear they scrapping and making a comeback.

You guys want to tear your hair out? Feel free to. It was the same after the trade deadline last year when half the board was ready to jump from a bridge and was followed by the Blazers finishing the regular season as the hottest team in the league. KP threw the team under the bus, Phoenix was now going to take our lunch and eat it while we finished in 9th place in the west. Yeah, I heard it all before.

This team is going to kick some serious butt this year, everyone that actually pays attention can see it, and everyone that actually pays attention to the fact that pre-season does not count for a reason - can realize that it is used properly for experimentation.

 

It's only preseason but several problems have persisted throughout the 5 games, and I don't think it's absurd to question if they're all going to magically disappear as soon as the games start to mean something. Free-throw shooting is horrible, but correctable. Transition defense is abysmal. Pick and roll defense is horrendous. We still have no fast-break game worth mentioning. Our turnovers have been atrocious, as has our assist/TO ratio for the most part. We still have core guys yet to find their rythm, and almost the entire team still has no clue what their roles are.

I personally was not that encouraged by last night, given the fact that our only saving grace was a late 4th quarter run in which the end of our bench made a run against the end of their bench. I'd much rather that run came from guys who are actually going to be playing meaningful minutes this year.

I'm not overly worried, but I'm not going to just stick my head in the sand and pretend none of this is relevant. It'll probably just take longer for the team to find it's groove than I would have liked, and a few guys will probably get bent, but I'm still confident they'll have a good year.

 

He gets paid to do it and has a proven record of improvement. None of you do. I call that fooled.

 

A lot of people get paid to do things that they aren't good at.


Nate's proven record of improvement has way more to do with the players, than with him. There was no where to go but up when he took over. Now let's see what he does with talent and no excuses.

 

Talk about delusional.

Got yourself a private TV feed or something?

As fans we have only 2 or 3 reliable sources to judge performance in these games. There is the homer radio broadcast, the homer local print media, and the boxscore/stats sheet.

We all know which is fact and which is fiction.