Coaches like Phil Jackson, Sloan and Adelman

are Chefs and coaches like Nate are cooks.

Chefs are ones that know all the ingredients inside and out. Understand how to use them to their full potential. Able to blend the quality ingredients without using instructions, because of their "know-how" and ability to "think outside the box". But most importantly, they make the most of what they have.

Cooks on the other hand, need recipes and direction from others. They don't want to make mistakes, therefor they stick with what works for others. They have an idea that salt is salty and rosemary is usually used for meat, but they don't really know why. It's more like "Well that's what I've heard, so it must be what's good". They are cookie cutter food preparers.

So the Blazers are a Gourmet restaurant, owned by an owner that has given the team a blank check. KP is the manager, that found the best ingredients possible and the best venue. The players are the quality ingredients. We just need a chef to bring out the identity of the venue. Something that people will remember forever when they get a taste. Can Nate become a Chef? Of course, but the dude better realize he needs to know all the players inside and out. Not using Oden to his full potential and not stressing all options of Miller, leads me to believe he's just a cook. A good cook though if that makes you feel better.

 

Unfortunately, Sloan just re-upped with Utah for another year.

 

You forgot Popovich? shame on you!

 

If Nate is a cook, then Roy is an egg: versitile, useful as a binding agent, a thickener, and in nearly every tasty dish this side of France. However, if you just throw an egg into hot milk, it scrambles. You have to temper your eggs. You have to make sure that every ingredient meshes. High quality ingredients are fantastic to have around, but sometimes you have to go through hell to properly prepare the ingredients for mixing. Sometimes all the ingredients have to be cold. Sometimes they all have to be room temp. Sometimes you have to temper and double boil and mix in small batches. There's so much prep work before the batter can go into the oven.

We've added ingredients, lost ingredients, and have a few temperamental ingredients. Nate is being forced mid-stream to bake a slightly different cake, and there's some additional ingredient prep to go. Sure, we wish the eggs could just not scramble when tossed in the hot milk, but you know what? Those are tasty eggs, and you just have to deal with the prep time.

I'm going to give Nate another week to prep the ingredients before I tell him he's ruining the cake.

 

I have always looked at coaches as either pacesetters, or reactors. Some coaches take what they have, and no matter what the situation is, they make their strength your problem to deal with. Then you have coaches that are the reactors, who wait and see what the other coach does, and try to match up with it. There are very few coaches who dictate how the game will go. There are a ton that sit back and react. Nate, Dunleavy. Avory Johnson was that way, and that is why he lost to Don Nelson. Don Nelson went small, Avory Johnson went small to match up with him, and Golden States smalls are much better at small bal than Dallas was. It was the same reason we lost to them when we played them recently and they only had 7 guys in uniform. We won the first quarter where our starting lineup with the 2 bigs was in and dominated. Then once Nate started F'n with the lineup and trying to match up we got toasted, because he is a reactor.

 

KP gave his head chef the top ingredients for a steak house, a fish house, a mexican restaurant and a French bakery. It's nice to have top of the line ingredients, but is that chef supposed to combine all of those ingredients into one free flowing menu that doesn't look a little awkward? Or focus on the steak house, since those are REALLY the best ingredients he has, with a dabble in the french bakery, because those are the next best?

 

So what your saying is, KP gave him all the ingredients, and Nate gave him a McMuffin?

 

But it's a tasty mcmuffin.

 

So..find a tall, slender old white-guy?

 

And I don't want to be overly negative of KP. He has done a great job of adding talent, adn adding talent that for the most part fits really well together. But using the restaurant logic, it's like the manager of the steak house getting a sweet deal on fish, so he decides what the hell. And then gets a great deal on a pizza oven, so, hey, why not? Now, if he can trade that pizza oven and cheap fish for a herd of top of the line cattle to boost his steak house, great. But adding a sweet brick over to a steak house doesn't improve the steak.

 

It seems timing is everything for getting a good coach. They either come up through the ranks and appear out of no where, or you have to jump on a good coach when they are available in order to get one. If you go into the market when there are no good coaches available, you have to roll the dice and hope one coming up through the ranks will fit the bill.

 

The best chefs are able to incorporate disparate cuisines into a fusion menu. That's what they do at Chez Phil Jackson and Chez Rick Adelman.

Nate McMillan's Diner is probably clean and the food is often inoffensive, but really doesn't do a lot with the ingredients it has available. I think the cook here is eminently replaceable...not by any fellow off the street, but probably by any competent cook. To really pull in the crowds and be a Michelin star winner, you need a creative chef.

 

Are you sure Nates place isn't a "Norths Chuck Wagon"

 

Maybe so. But if you have the best steak chef in the business, do you want to push him slightly away from that, to do a fusion menu? I disagree to an extent about Phil incorporating any "ingredient" into his menu. Look at what he has generally worked with with his teams. You see teams that try to focus on bringing in players that will fit in the triangle. Their GM isn't bringing in ball dominant PGs. There's slight shifts in the menu. But Gasol is a good fit in the triangle. Artest doesn't throw off the dynamic of the triangle. His teams are designed around a good system. Adelman has seemed to thrive with a high post offense. Having guys like Webber and Yao in those offenses are definite pluses. Different guys can fit into those systems, but his teams are generally built around a style, not the reverse. Look at Jerry Sloan. It doesn't seem too often his GM is going to go out and sign or draft really dumb players that are ssoft and weak. It seems more that they get pieces that slide into his system. Will he improve some unlike that in his system? Yes. He is a great coach. But guys like Harpring work well in his system, and wouldn't elsewhere.

 

My bad.

 

The analogy is starting to get confusing. Who's the "best steak chef in the business" here? Is it McMillan? I don't think McMillan has a system that he's shown to be excellent at instilling. Also, I think that top tier coaches do have something they're most comfortable coaching, but they're also good at figuring out how to extract as much value as possible from players who aren't ideal fits.

You would have said ahead of time that Artest was a "triangle player?" I would not have. Artest is a ball-stopper on offense, and the triangle preaches passing from everyone on the floor and versatility. I'd say that Artest is the opposite of versatile on offense. On defense, Artest is a very Phil Jackson kind of guy, but I think the fact that Artest hasn't thrown off the dynamic of the triangle demonstrates what I mean about Jackson being able to weave in disparate elements.

He was able to design the triangle around two wing players in Jordan and Pippen and then, pretty much without missing a beat, around a dominant low-post player and a wing, with Shaq and Kobe. And then, again, around a high-post player and a wing, with Gasol and Kobe. It seems to me that while Jackson has a system, he manages to make it work well with different types of players.

I'd say that Yao is a low-post player while Webber was high-post, and the offense he runs in Houston is quite different from the one he ran in Sacramento and both were significantly different than the ones I recall him running in Portland.

That said, I don't entirely disagree about what you said, that Jackson and Adelman fit players to style and not the reverse. The point is, they're not locked into certain types of players. They can take the best players of what they're given and weave them into "their system." I don't think McMillan can do that. Andre Miller is evidently not a fit for his system, so his response seems to have been to diminish Miller's role. I really don't think Adelman or Jackson would have simply thrown up their hands and said "Miller, while a talented point guard, doesn't perfectly fit my system so he'll just have to be a reserve."

I think McMillan makes a fine caretaker coach. Had he replaced Larry Brown in Detroit, for example, I think he'd have done fine coaching an established set of players who already had defined roles. He also did fine with Portland when there really only were a couple of offensive options, so "Let Roy do his thing and let Aldridge score when he has the opportunity" worked fine. This is the crucial stage, though...a talented team without a defined pattern for winning. This is not where I think an average or caretaker coach is called for.

 

I had always thought it amusing that PJ would issue "required" reading material (based upon their respective personalities/temperament) to his players.

In retrospect, there's, perhaps, method to that madness.

 

Repped! I love it! Thanks for running with my analogy!

 

Do you think that's what's happening? I think the talent here is very compatible blended right. Who doesn't fit? Seriously, based on the analogy who doesn't fit?