I never said that and I was also never one of the people calling for Stotts to be fired I think it would have been justified to fire him after the Blazers were swept by the lower seeded Pelicans in 2018. And, I don't believe Stotts could have made the Blazers the team they were in 1997 or taken them to the title and even though Stotts didn't have the roster talent that Ramsay and Adelman had, at times, I can look at the quality of coaching and say that Ramsay was better. Adelman...probably; although I think Adelman made the biggest coaching blunder in Blazer history against the Lakers in the 1991 WCF as far as Stotts being fired when he was....I think two things are true: Olshey was allowed to make Stotts the scapegoat for Olshey's failed rosters. And, it was time to move on from Stotts anyway
Everyone is trying to identify "the mistake" when it comes to the Stotts firing and I think identifying that is easy. Neil Olshey should not have been allowed to fire Terry Stotts. Stotts was much better at his job (even though I think his time was up) than Olshey was at his. The team should have fired Neil. The team should have done a comprehensive search for Neil's replacement and replaced Neil with someone from outside of the organization with new ideas about how to build a contender around Dame or move on and rebuild post Dame. That new President of basketball ops should have then been able to make a decision about Terry and if needs be (and I think they would) choose Terry's replacement.
You don’t consider the level of talent on a roster a determining factor on how much a coach wins or loses?
If we had somebody with potential to be better I was okay with moving on from Stotts. But he is still a great guy. And a credit to the Portland Trail Blazers. We should have looked at keeping him with the team long-term. That's what a quality franchise would have done. I wish we were a quality franchise...
And you said this hundreds of times but the you tube guys had their head set. They knew how to coach and Stotts didn't have a clue.
There are a couple that are very good. Not sure Jody wants to spend the kind of money it takes to get one?
Look at the rosters though. I think the closest thing Stotts had to those Adelman teams was maybe 13-14? Even then, that team was really young. Now Billups has had a really young team also, but his teams have had zero direction
Hey....anyone miss Kersey? Anyone miss Williams? Anyone miss Ramsay? What is the point of pining about this?
We could still hire Stotts and be better off than we are now... Probably can't get the other guys... Also, people who said "anybody" would be better than Stotts were very clearly wrong.
Stotts is a top offensive assistant coach. He is a bottomfeeder head coach because of promoting offense at the expense of defense. He has no experience in advising in talent evaluation, and would be a mediocre assistant GM. As for the revisionist history: Everyone was bored with the team struggling to keep its head above water for 20 years since the Oregonian had forced out Whitsitt. A few nervy ones like me wanted both/either Stotts/Olshey gone, and felt we couldn't control the order...just replace one and later we'll advocate to fire the other. The opposition (e.g. Tince) wanted no change, ever. For them, any Blazer job is a lifelong appointment. When the writing was on the wall that a new coach would be hired, suddenly every poster claimed to have wanted a coaching change all along. Actually, they started waffling only when it was obvious that that was going to happen. (The no-change posters later claimed the same about themselves when Olshey was about to be fired.) A new small faction (e.g. MediocreMan) said, don't hire a "retread." I disagreed and wanted an experienced head coach (admitting that the few available had losing records, but still would balance defense with offense, unlike Stotts). Olshey hired a guy who was as rookie as you can get. But in the storm from the competing message board over Billups's sexual past, most became busy defending him from that distraction, and couldn't criticize the choice for lack of experience. History is a fucking mess to record, but that's what I did for a job, and still do daily in retirement. (I inherited a lot of paperwork, and damn it, it's going on spreadsheets before I die.)
Singling out @Tince on this is just plain wrong. He as well as most opposition were steadfast in saying change for the sake of change is wrong. He specifically said find a better coach first and keep Stotts in the Blazer system because winning is what was important.
Wouldn't have to be an assistant GM. Could have been on the business side. There are plenty of places in the organization for a great ambassador like Stotts who also has an incredible offensive mind. And when he was given defensive talent he had a top eight defensive team. So I'm not even really sure that the knock against his "defense" is all that legitimate. After being here that long I would have expected a quality organization to retain the quality guy like that when they were ready to move on from him as coach. Again, this is just my desire for this to be a quality organization. The losing was going to happen no matter what once we had to trade Dame. I don't even hold the losing against Billups.
that looks a lot like a straw man...., there may have been a few saying 'change for change sake'....I'm skeptical there were more than a few there were a lot of criticisms of Stotts and many were legitimate. The 2018 Pels series; his defensive issues; his over-reliance on hero-ball now, there is no doubt that Olshey saddled Stotts with a lot of bad roster balance and a lack of length at critical positions. Olshey was a dumpster diver looking for hidden gems in the trash, but mostly, he just found trash and tried to pawn it off as bargain talent. And then tasked Stotts with fixing the roster dysfunction in-season while overcoming talent deficits
Each faction had a core of about 3 posters. When any posted, several softer faction members agreed, but not as strongly. I remember Tince (no changes) and MediocreMan (no retreads) as being at the head of each faction, but yes, when they posted, others would then agree. We were no longer winning. Lillard heroball, not Stotts' anti-defense system, alternated us above/below .500 for a few years. After Olshey stupidly dumped our best defender Ed Davis, and defender Aminu passed his career peak, Olshey didn't have the talent to find forwards. So we stopped alternating above/below .500. We were no longer winning. I'm the one here who first said the phrase, change for change's sake. I said that it's good after a team goes in circles for many years. Climb from a rut, and you might be in a worse situation, but restarting allows you a new chance to figure out what to do. If you then fall into a new rut, climb out again repeatedly until you randomly choose a better direction. Then stop the change for change's sake. So I said that in our situation, change for change's sake was good. This phrase is semantically repulsive to those who go by feeling instead of thinking. Yet most who feel repelled from that strategy have climbed aboard its corollary strategy, tanking for years.
