During the Celtics/Lakers game. He said no coach has done a better job this year and the Blazers don't belong in the playoff picture, considering all the injuries. Mark Jackson agreed with him.
Well, he has done, don't think I can argue that. Although, he has hurt us a couple of games with his substitution patterns, the game against the Hornets springs to mind.
Trust me, there is some bad coaching going on around the league. I think Nate has done an amazing job this season. Monty as well!
Or we have the deepest team in the league and we are winning because of vets like Miller, Howard, and Roy (when he was healthy). I think we could argue that Miller is just as much, if not more, the reason why we're still in the playoff hunt this season.
To balance out what I said about McMillan in another thread, I think McMillan does deserve some credit. Whether or not the talent was there, that sort of adversity of one injury after another is quite likely to have a deleterious effect on team psyche. It seems like McMillan has kept them on an even keel and kept them from checking out. I understand and agree with the sentiment that players are well-compensated financially to play hard regardless of circumstances...but these are still humans, with human failings. Seeing a season of promise crash and burn to a seemingly unending stream of injuries is not easy. I'm sure McMillan was a large part in keeping everyone's heads in the game.
Nate has always been a good motivator though. It's his x's and o's, as well as his rotation that need work. It's been said before, but the injuries have been a blessing for him. They've taken all the pressure off and now the playoffs would be a huge achievement. That's a far cry from the beginning of the season when everyone was hoping for a deep playoff run.
No coach is perfect. He has a philosophy, and it may not be the best sometimes, but a team's success is half coach, half players. This is the team that this month beat the Lakers, the Magic, and the Mavericks, and took the Celtics into overtime on their own floor. Their losses have come against mostly mid-level teams (yes, a couple of bad ones) who are fighting just as hard to claim a low-tier playoff position. Portland should be at the bottom of that stack, if not worse. They're currently at the top of it.
This, I agree. A lot of teams would've just given up on the season, or made excuses when we were really down. Nate's got his downfalls as a coach, for sure (what coach doesn't), but he's righted this ship as well as possible. Two road victories in Dallas this year short-handed is amazing in itself. He's done a good job with what he's had to work with.
does anyone know any coaching style differences between monty and nate? obviously just because monty is standing up we are still playing how nate wants.... does monty want the team to run?
I made the analogy awhile back, but I'll repeat it here again. I see Nate as a cook and not a chef -- albeit the world champion of world champion greasy spoon line cooks. Give him a limited list of ingredients and he'll whip up some of the best biscuits and gravy or chili you've ever eaten in a truck stop, but ask him to make a souffle and it's just going to end up a dense, flat overcooked denver omlette. There's a distinct difference between the great offensive coaches like Adelman, Jackson, Popovich and Sloan, and the Mike Browns, Doc Rivers, and the George Karl's of the world. Each has enjoyed success with some great players, but in the first group, the truly great ones have systems that make average players good, good players great, and great players hall of famers. And they've all demonstrated an ability to blend multiple moving parts together into a cohesive whole. The 'Good, but not Great' coaches (the category I would place Nate) all usually seem to have a knack for getting their players to play really hard -- which is the one thing I love about him -- but frequently they rely on simplistic schemes designed to feature one or two players, usually in isolation vs. double teams and without much complexity. The end result is usually a team that can beat inferior talent or teams that don't play defense in the regular season and then usually get picked apart by more talented and better defensive teams in the playoffs. Ultimately though, the thing I dislike the most about Nate's style, is that he's got these guys playing in a half-court jump shooting offense; a half-court inside oriented team (the Spurs) would be one thing and a full-court jump shooting team (the Suns at their apex) another, but right now it feels like we've got the worst of both worlds.
And of those three, only Rivers has a championship, and that's because he had KG, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce carrying him.
There is a lot of truth in this. Nate is not a *bad* coach...just very stubborn and narrow-minded. His "comfort zone" is too small...and he has passed some of that on to his players. As long as he can play the game on his terms, he does the job.
The problem as I see it: Nate is a winning coach, but not a championship caliber coach. I want to win championships, so I feel we need to move on.
