I'm coming around to the fire Nate camp also. I think he is a good overall manager, often a good motivator and a fairly good game planner. However I think he is weak in two areas; teaching fundamentals and/or holding the players accountable for executing those fundamentals. Having a strong general manager in place might help in these problems; he could hire a good teacher as an assistant coach and he could strongly "suggest" that at some point Nate might have to sit guys who aren't executing until they start executing. I think Nate's insistence on making every game crucial has held back the longterm development of the team. So I guess I'd rather keep him and find that strong GM, at least try that first.
The team hired a Sonic, and has added several Seattle people, so why not Laimbeer. I'd hire shaq as the coach if it helped the team win a title.
The odd thing about this thread after a bad loss to a team coached by Kevin McHale is several people say we should hire big white NBA champion Bill Laimbeer as coach. For the last year or two I advocated hiring Kevin McHale as coach. (Not because he's white, but because he could really improve Aldridge.)
I've been impressed with how much the Blazers have won, given the injuries and patchwork rosters and constant turnover. You have just two guys drafted by the team getting starter type minutes. The only two real constants are Nate and LMA. Given a mandate to win, a coach will play his vets over the young guys. That said, Jerry Sloan might want to coach again.
The players are still playing for Nate. The real problem is our collective group of players. It's a GM thing. That and injuries to Roy & Oden.
I've been waiting for this thread to surface on S2 for a while now, as the inadequecies of McMillan become more apparant. Personally, I've been waiting, for years now, for Allen to cut this dead weight anchor from my favorite team. Too domineering with his ideals & too oppressive with his tolerance for risk/reward play, he fosters an atmosphere where the players are often 'over thinking' out there on the court. Other teams, regularly look more sophisticated in fundamentals and execution than the McMillan Blazers do. Not to mention it's some of the worst offensive basketball to ever (un)grace the NBA. Quite frankly his teams are the worst fast breaking teams I've ever seen in professional basketball. Atrocious. Nate's canning and the overhauling of management, strength & conditioning and nutrition personnel has been a long time coming, and is well and truly overdue. He's managed to stick for, what, 6-7 years now? What's the definition of insanity again?
Two? LaMarcus was not drafted by Portland. Same goes for Batum, he was drafted by Houston. (ok, that's splitting hairs)
The Blazers whiffed on McHale and Adelman when they were available. I'd have hired either in a second and thanked Nate for his loyal service. I'd take a chance with Laimbeer. There are certainly a dozen other good basketball minds working in the industry who I've never heard of. Hire one of them. This allegiance to anything and everything Seattle is killing this franchise. Vulcans/Paul Allen need to take off the fucking blinders and see the full range of possibilities.
It's easy for a coach to look good in his first year. Look at the number of CoTY who were in their first year with their teams. I betcha it's really high. Then look at the number of those coaches who were fired within 2 years. Likewise. Didn't PJ Carlesimo win in his first year as Blazers coach? Now look at the number of CoTY that Jerry Sloan won. Zero, right? He should've been sacked LONG ago. And look at that bum Phil Jackson - hardly won it at all in all those years of coaching. McHale is a motivator. He's a good motivator. He's got that young team playing the right way. But can he sustain it? I'd prefer not to lurch from coach to coach every year, if it's all the same. If Nate was going to be fired, it should've been after the Blazers with a healthy Brandon, Aldridge and Oden and HCA lost to the Suns. At no other time has he had superior talent and underperformed. And you can argue that the Suns were pretty unstoppable at that point (until they made the West finals...)
I wish I could remember which owner, but back around 1980 one of the owners changed the head coach every year for about 3 straight years. He said that if they didn't turn the team around in a year, they were gone. That was better than giving some loser 3 years before the owner woke up. Most great coaches and players make it obvious in their first year whether they are a special talent. I just don't believe in waiting year after year because the guy teases us with potential.
If Nate is fired, the first place he will end up is in LA as the Lakers coach for fired Mike Brown. And he'll do EXTREMELY well there. I don't think I can live with that.
Here are the reasons why I'm tired of Nate. 1. Has players out of positions that they are not comfortable with such as Crawford at point guard? Seriously? 2. Rookies, he never plays them more than 10 minutes in a blowout games. 3. Give rookies some valuable playing time if the starting point guard is taking a break if we have a lead of 4 points or so. Put the backup point guard back into the game a few times.
I don't think so. While he'll use Kobe as a more talented Roy, the depth will be worse than here. He doesn't play rookies because he has no confidence in his own skills at the end of the game. He knows he needs to maximize the lead before the 4th quarter, for the lead loss he knows is coming.
