Called Terry "terrific," and credits "his assistants" as being one of the best staffs for player development.
"There is a realistic timeline in the Western Conference. We sometimes need to take a longer lens... There is no quick fix that can make us say, 'we are better than the Warriors.' Nobody is afraid to go our and compete, but we require a sense of realism when it comes to this."
"Really excited about Zach Collins. He's a two way player, he's tough, can shoot, can score, defend, is really long. Ironically like CJ, he was also drafted 10th and players usually picked in this range are relied upon early. He's developing and is going to be really really good. Currently we are 4th in the west, and the variance between 4th and 10th in the west is tiny and we can't afford to lose games now at the cost of his development. We also have a ton of positional conflicts with so many bigmen. Collins is in every day and working, and Terry has proved that you don't need minutes to develop. My background affords me the patience, but we are seeing behind the scenes how good this guy is and will be."
Regarding scouting: "I'd rather be on the road, at games, in college practices. I try to be at home when the team is, but when they're on the road, so am I. I try to get to about 85-110 college games in a year. You've got to get out, and for a high level prospect in our range, we have to see him a minimum of 3 times live for each of the staff. And a conference tournament counts as 1 of those times. So between me and the staff, we see each guy live about 12 times + film. I watch a lot of film prior to seeing the guys live on flights from Portland. "
Yeah I wasn’t being serious anyway, but if Olshey said he only saw him live once, I’m guessing he wasn’t being serious either.
I'm glad you weren't being serious; I didn't pick it up because it was definitely the kind of misinterpretation I've seen plenty of times around here. Found the video. Olshey basically said that he went to the Gonzaga-Portland game in January, saw two plays from Collins, and said, "All right, we're done here--he's a top-10 pick". http://www.nbcsports.com/northwest/...ing-neil-olshey-was-sold-zach-collins-january
It was in the context of how there is not one move that we can make to vault ourselves ahead of GS in the next few years. You have to think for the future with both the draft and the players retained in FA.
That it's good that the players feel like they can play with anyone, but basically, the staff has to remain level-headed and realize there is no sense in gutting the team's future in order to acquire a good team that can't beat the warriors
