I can't help worrying that Chauncey's hire is going to turn out like when Steve Kerr (great coach - bad GM) hired our own Terry Porter to coach the Suns, after Kerr had also traded for Shaq. Terry tried to make it work, slow it down to take advantage of Shaq and all. Terry lasted 51 games, and Nash was miserable the whole time. Turns out, a great offense (putting the ball in Nash's hands and letting him loose) and mediocre defense was the best form of the Phoenix Suns. Trying to fix the "flaws" in D'Antoni's scheme ended up breaking the Suns. The parallels with Chauncey: Kerr hired Terry because he knew him as a teammate and knew that he was an unbelievable guy and an unbelievable leader. Sadly, that didn't make him a great coach. (And it pains me to say that - Terry was my fave player on my fave version of the Blazers.)
Great take and comparison. I will speak for myself and say I’m giving the new coaching staff 30 games to prove to me what they can and can’t do. Preseason is such a shit show good and bad. There is just no normalcy to it. Your rotation, the other teams rotation. Just a beefed up summer league. After 30 games, we’ll see.
It was time to try something different. We were getting nowhere and wasting the talent of the greatest Trail Blazer ever. Stotts is a good coach. But again, it was time to try something different.
I will be ecstatic to be proved wrong, but I also worry that we're going to wish we'd traded Dame in the Summer when all the shit about his trade demands was flying around. I wouldn't mind Chauncey finding his feet with a rebuilding team. In a way, it would be fairer to him: he could shape it from scratch instead of trying to remake a team that has Stotts' system so deeply ingrained.
No, that would be dumb, which I'm not. But you're saying change is good, and that's certainly change. I've said many times that this team has suffered from bad drafting for too many years to be able to surround Dame with a championship-level team. If we were going to compete with Dame it would've required Olshey being replaced years ago. Stotts papered over the cracks by overachieving with inadequate rosters. The idea that he was holding back a championship team is ludicrous, and we're going to see that. (Not saying Stotts is a championship-level coach, but he wasn't THE problem.) I was on board with trying D'Antoni, if you're going to replace the coach. Because if anyone can max out his lead guard's talent...
It's possible that you're right, that the coaching change won't accomplish anything. And if so, another step will be taken: whether that's CJ (or even Dame) being traded, or Neil being fired, we'll have to wait and see. But I'm fully on board with taking the most obvious step first and seeing what happens rather than acting out of panic or assumption.
This is so comical I’m actually laughing. Stotts got 9 years and people kept saying give him some time, he needs more time. Chauncey gets 3 PRESEASON games. Get a fuckin grip of yourself.
You just told somebody to get a grip OF themselves .This post makes me understand why people have you on IGNORE…….
Today -----> Start of Regular Season -----> Two months to get a representative sample of games -----> Time to start thinking about having this conversation.
1. Why was firing the coach the "most obvious step"? 2. Is the most obvious step the right one? 3. Seems like firing Stotts could also count as acting out of panic. Especially as you then go on to improve the roster (I think Stotts would've made very good use out of Nance and Zeller.) I think you can make an argument that Stotts might've been "holding back" Nassir Little. But then trading Nassir is the obvious solution.
jesus, that is a ridiculous comparison and one 5 minute press conference from chauncey would show you that. terry porter was a martinet who let his ego drive him to become one of the worst professional and college coaches in history. do some fucking research before you post this nonsense. they're not remotely alike stylistically or in strategy.
