No problem I'm just hear to help. If you ever need to see it again, just tell me. Again, I'm here to help.
NBA players and executive throughout the league think highly of Nate McMillan. The US Olympic players adore him. But, one bosomy, miserable, mediocre message board poster thinks he's garbage. Oh, the madness!!!
What are you sighing about? You honestly think Nate was real adaptable in years past? I'm not criticizing him, I'm just pointing out what I consider to be a fact, that until this year, there wasn't much evidence he was ever going to be able to make a drastic adjustment. I give him full marks for being able to do it after 10 years.
adjustments have to be drastic to count as adjustments? If that's the case, then not many good coaches do make adjustments.
FIFY. Not many coaches make adjustments, it's the good ones that do. Nate's been one of the most "stylisticly" rigid coaches I've ever seen in the decade he's been a coach. Maybe it was him seeing Popovich completely flip the script to great success or maybe it was hanging around Chip Kelly in the off-season, but something clicked. Good on him.
to be fair, he did ask Canzano what more he needed to do after the PHX series. You know, where he was outcoached/out-tacticianed/outsmarted/whatever you want to call it by Coach of the Millenium Alvin Gentry.
Chip Kelly? ok Popovich has been roughly the same coach for the last 15 years. With great success. What flipping the script? Running a little bit more last season because of an aging Duncan? Hardly completely flipping the script, but so be it. Other than getting an extra 3 possessions a game out of it over 2 years prior, they were still stylistically about the same. How often did other good coaches make drastic changes? Jerry Sloan ever jump drastically from his PnR? Phil from his triangle?
Who are some of the good / great coaches that have made "drastic adjustments" in their system? Edit: RR7 beat me to it, even using the same 3 coaches as examples. I'd even add Adelman to the set.
I'm not explicitly talking about stats or pace, I'm talking about making adjustments to get the most out of the players you have. Prior to this year, Nate more or less had a system he wanted players to adapt to. With some of those other coaches you mention (aside from Sloan) they've frequently tweaked their offenses to fit their people. Again, I'm going to say this one more time (and S L O W L Y ...) so nobody misses it; I'm giving Nate credit for finally breaking his own mold and showing that he can in fact adapt the team's style of play to fit his people, but at the same time I'm going to be honest about what I perceived as shortcomings in the past. The final test for me will be to see if Nate can make sound in-game and game-to-game adjustments when the playoffs roll around -- an area he's struggled with in the past.
Adjustments to make most of players you have. I mean, Nate didn't have Andre do the exact same things he had Steve Blake do. He made adjustments to his offense to have his PG do different things. Nate never ever had joel play and run plays on offense the way Camby does from the high post. So, it would seem, he adjusted based on getting the most out of those players. there are similarities to some stats that will show up player to player on Nate coached teams, because it is his style of play, same way with, really, every coach, good coaches and bad. They will make small adjustments, but ideally, you find guys that fit your system and style of play.
Yes, certain players are more skilled at certain things and they've been permitted to do some of those things when they've come here. But no matter who has come and gone, until this year the Blazers were almost strictly a turnover averse, plodding, half-court, jump-shooting team. Is it really that controversial around here to suggest that Nate saw some shortcomings in his approach and (finally) took steps to correct those shortcomings? Increasingly it appears to me that the only acceptable "answer" around here when Nate's coaching gets brought up, is that Nate's been doing it the best possible way every year and to question his methods and results is somehow verboten.
We're talking about the same guy that stuck Sergio at SG so that Jack could play PG, and then did the same thing with Andre so Blake could start. And kept it there through 20 games of a 9 PER. Yeah, stubbornness is one of Nate's traits. Some may see it as a fault, some as a strength, but there's no way to defend Nate as some agile-thinking innovator.
