What it will take to get Stotts fired?

They have so many freaking holes, but we neither have the personnel, nor the strategy to counter them at the moment. That LA team is not championship caliber.

 

It might win because there really isn't a great team out there. I agree with you though in that I think most years they wouldn't win.

 

You are 100% correct. And frankly, it's not even about making an NBA finals.

Just make a list of guys who just played significantly better after leaving Portland. Off the top of my head, it's probably just Jake Layman and Pat Connaughton (both really young guys who just realized their upside.)

You could argue Aldridge got a little better, which implies Stotts isn't as good of a coach as Popovich, which I will happily agree with. But if we are only looking at coaches as good or better than Popovich, well, good luck hiring one of those.

Olshey has done an excellent job of bargain bin hunting both in the draft and free agency. But in the end he's been too precious with CJ and other players that he should have been much quicker to trade.

 

I agree 100%. All the Terry needs to go stuff is a great conversation, but I give it like a 1% chance of happening. If it does happen it'll be part of basically a complete overhaul of the entire team and Dame will probably be gone too. We can say he's under contract but he's a superstar they get what they want in the NBA.

 

Please tell me what Jake Layman did this year at all that would make you think he improved?

 

Why is this the barometer to evaluate Terry's coaching? Maximizing talent is one thing, but actually being able to win in the playoffs is quite another.

I agree that Neil is as much to blame if not more for our troubles, but year after year, we see Terry struggle to make changes and solve problems in the playoffs.

He can't coach defense even if his life depended on it. Even with Wes/Nic/Aldridge, our defensive rating was only 9th best in the league in 2015. The best defensive team he coached was actually in 2017, when we were 7th. We were 27th this year.

While his offenses have very good in the regular season (top 3 three times in 8 seasons), he consistently fails to make adjustments in the playoffs. His solution to solve Dame traps is to put both Whiteside and Nurkic in a lineup with Dame? How does he get away with that? Terry has major holes that have to be acknowledge. He gets a pass every year because of injuries or Dame bailing him out, but if we want Dame to do more than just get to the playoffs, we need improvement from everywhere-- including coaching.

 

I agree with all of this except firing the coach. I'd like to see what Stotts could do when not saddled with Olshey's vision.

That first paragraph is quite stunning to re-read. Portland has only been truly spared Olshey's incompetence with contracts by his own failure to get guys to sign. Hibbert, Monroe, Kanter, Parsons, Whiteside, Turner, Leonard. That's a murderer's row of terrible solutions to the modern NBA. If you add up all the money he wanted to chuck at these guys you're probably looking at a quarter of a billion dollars. Fuck.

And then to watch Aldridge leave without compensation. We all wrote that off as Aldridge's flakiness, but when you get down to it it's the GM's job to make sure this doesn't happen.

It's quite striking that Stotts has been as successful as he has been given the stupidity of our GM.

 

How is Stotts expected to succeed in the playoffs without talent? I can't think of a better barometer for a coach than how his players do when he's not coaching them. It levels the playing field.

 

lol. I caught a couple games where he looked good. But I could be wrong.

 

I'm not trying to defend Neil because I think he is as culpable if not more for our troubles. His roster construction has been appalling, and his draft misses often get overshadowed.

But we have the 2nd, 4th, and 5th best players in this series this year and are getting massacred. And the way LA is defending Dame is the exact same way every team has defended him since 2015. Why do we do nothing different? We have ended every season by losing 4 in a row in the playoffs the last four years in a row. He hasn't made a single adjustment in any of those seasons.

 

I think the brutal thing is, it seems like the Blazers literally fall apart and have no answers at the end of every playoff run. You can sort of get away with that when GS is wrecking the entire league, but if you arent going to trade CJ, or Fire Stotts or rebuild, running it back with slight alterations becomes insanity at some point when they have major flaws that dont really get addressed.

 

I just hate the idea that Dame's whole career in Portland will be tied to Terry Stotts. This isn't a coach who should have the tenure that guys like Spoelstra/Pop/Carlisle do, but he does. We made that bed last summer when we gave Terry that extension.

 

They should have made a lot of changes after the New Orleans series. Last year was one of the more fun years I remember as a Blazer fan, but all it really did was reinforce continuing to run Terry out there with little changes. I realize there were some injuries this year and if healthy they're better, but it's still obvious they aren't that close...

 

So much this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yes. The whole "it could be worse" shouldn't be an excuse for not trying to make it better.

 

I get playing the 'low-risk' game. I have done risk-analysis a lot, but at some point by not taking any risks you're taking even bigger risks. Like paying CJ a superstar level salary when he's not even really all that close to an Allstar level player. Constantly having a high payroll and no flexibility. Never being willing to move on from a coach just extending him further and further. It's a business, and there's a lot of moving parts but they seem to be so 'risk-averse' and comfortable that the franchise is just happy being an ok team that's not bad enough to get elite talent in the draft, not good enough to truly be a championship contender. It's weird...

 

He hardly played all season...he was out with a foot injury

 

You can afford to be more risk-averse if Dame is 28 than you can be when he's 31.

 

Here's a great article on how you can beat the aggressive high trap of Dame near midcourt. Of course Stotts isn't able to figure this out himself. This is something a coach should be able to recognize and adjust and coach his player. And the fact that the NBA is such a copycat league, it is even more egregious that Stotts hasn't tried this at all.

https://theathletic.com/2020741/202...llard-and-steph-curry-against-elite-defenses/

For those that don't have access to the article, the premise is both Dame and Steph Curry get trapped high out at midcourt. Both players do the right thing by passing the ball. However, the difference is what happens after the pass. Dame will usually just stand around and watch or isn't involved while the play unfolds. While Curry, continues to move without the ball, relocating to an open spot. He knows that once he get rids of the ball, it is a natural instinct for his defender to relax and watch. He'll pass the ball and relocate for an open jumper.





In one of the plays, to beat the trap, all Curry does is a simple give-and-go. A play you learn in elementary school. He gets trapped, releases the ball to Draymond Green and cuts to get it back with momentum to the bucket. That's it. While in Portland, Dame will pass out of the double and just stand 30ft from the bucket, taking himself out of the play.

Here you see the same situation with Dame. Instead of continuing the play and dashing to the corner, Dame stands under the bucket, clogging the paint. He allows McGee to guard both him and Whiteside. If he simply dashes to the corner with McGee's head turned, he will have a wide open corner 3. Also, guys are just standing around. If Melo simply sets a pick for CJ with Danny Green's head turned, he would have a open shot from top of the key.



This video shows the impact of how movement without the ball applies pressure on an opposing defense. Toronto's defense is really good. They are aware of Curry's ability to move and relocate to open spots. But here Gasol is so focused on denying Curry, he leaves Looney open for an easy dunk.

 

And how do you know this is a Stotts thing, rather than a Lillard thing? I mentioned the same thing in the "Why can't we beat the trap" thread and I find it extremely unlikely that many of us thought of this but Stotts never has. I think it's far more likely that Dame just doesn't choose to play that way.