Not sure what you are referring to, please be specific - as you might mean something else than what I infer. What player, what year?
Dame was hobbled when we made the WCF...that was CJ, Hoodie and Turner that made that happen..Dame did not have it going that playoff series....CJ beat Denver in the 4 OTsemi finals.
and last season Chauncey...a defensive minded champion benched Roco for gambling on defense and leaving Nurk on an island.....sometimes players drop off and refuse to buy into string defense...Roco is a good example of a guy who did that.....he had glimpses of his old self but he wasn't a rebounding rim protector like Chief was next to Nurk. Norm wasn't impressing me either on that side of the ball. We're so much better now that both those guys are gone in my view.
I'm curious how you determine when the player gets credit for their own success/failure and when the coach is responsible.
There were rumblings that RoCo was very much a malcontent last year. Plus, he was phoning it in the majority of time he was a Blazer.
So, a single player is responsible for that. How, in that case, do we factor the fact that Covington's DRTG was better on the Portland roster under TS than under Chauncy (and a shit ton better offensively)? Please, the argument is that if you give TS a proper roster with multiple, long, athletic defensive wings, he can coach defense. Substituting ET, Harkless and Aminu with Covington/Ariza, Melo and a post injury Rodney Hood is not the same kind of roster, and if you disagree with that assessment on the defensive prowess of the roster, I really don't know what to tell you. Covington is a good team / help defender on a roster that includes multiple good options. He is not the answer to anything if he is the only and best wing defender. I am willing to bet that if you substitute either one of Harkless, ET or Aminu with Covington on that 2018-19 team and the defense would still have been good enough. I am also willing to bet that you put either one of Harkless, ET or Aminu next to Melo and Rodney Hood post injury as your athletic wing defenders, and the defense would suck.
So could any other coach, it's not really saying much. And in the 4 years he had Chief and Moe on the wings, they only finished top 15 in defense once.
Players ARE, who they are. Harkless & Aminu were inconsistent performers at their former stops before coming to Portland. Many in here were clamoring for RoCo for years before he finally was acquired. He was inconsistent in Philly, Minny, and Houston. What bolds well for acquiring Jerami Grant is he has been a consistent defender, and decent shooter at all stops. He was very good role player in OKC, and did his role in Denver at a high quality. Detroit he was a primary scorer, and did a pretty nice job putting up some really good stats on a nightly basis. As a 3rd/4th option he should bring quality nightly performances here in rip city. Before we get excited in the future about acquiring a player, we should ask our selves. Is he a consistent player? If not, pass, because he probably won't turn into what he's not. OG is a consistently, inconsistent player. Why do you think Ujiri went after Barnes.
So, your argument is that any NBA level coach could get a decent defensive production from a roster headed by 2 undersized, defensive deficient back-court with long wings and a good, if not especially mobile defensive center and any coach can create a multiple-years offensive juggernaut if they have Dame. That's possible, I would like to point out that when TS had these combinations (2018-2019, 2017-2018) he coached a team to have a top-10 net-rating in the league - I am not sure every NBA level coach can, but maybe. (He also had a top-ten net-rating in 2013-2014, but we had Wes at the time, so the 2, undersized, defensively deficient backcourt does not apply) I think you are probably underselling TS a little bit, but we will not know for a while, I can't think off the top of my head of another team that had this roster construction and achieved as much as TS has, but I am sure there are some arguments that can be made. But, if the arguments are that TS is really what held Portland back, this year's roster with Dame + Ant and a roster with some defensive flexibility with GP2 (a lot more of a defensive all-nba team than Covington), Grant, Winslow and Hart - will give us an indication. You must be super pumped for this season, because you apparently believe every NBA coach can get a top-10 in the league net-rating with this kind of roster construction. I hope you are right and that TS really was what held Portland back, but I suspect it was not. He is certainly not the best NBA coach ever, but he is more than capable at the NBA level - and is certainly not the dunce people seem to paint him as.
Forget defense, I think he also refused to evolve with the game offensively. Multiple players openly complained about how they were utilized under him, guys that aren't even known to air out their laundry in public (Powell) And yeah I believe with the current roster AND a coach who values defense they can be a top 15 squad on that end, maybe even higher.
You are now moving the discussion from what I wrote. I have made no claims about what he or did not do to players, all I said is that given a proper roster, he could coach defense, which the numbers prove. For the record, I am not sure what Powell thought could be done, he played out of position because the roster had Dame and CJ and with all due respect to Powell, he is certainly not one you should favor on offense over either one of them. I mean, do you think he would have been happier with Terry if he was coming of the bench to backup CJ? This is again, an indication of a job Terry had to do given the poor roster he got, it is not an indication of how good/bad Terry is. Arguments about his unwillingness to adjust, I am accepting. Arguments about use on offense given the roster construction? Not so much, frankly. Portland was elite on offense with Powell under Terry. Top 15 on defense while being elite on offense (as in top 5, often top 3 or 2). I sure hope so, because this is our roster this year - and if we can replicate what Terry did with this kind of roster in 2017-2018 (49 wins) or 2018-2019 (53 wins), we are going to kick ass this year.
Aminu was a very good free agent addition and role player for the Blazers on a reasonable contract. Yes it would've been ideal to have an average starting forward ahead of him, but that wasn't his fault or a cause of the team acquiring him. Aminu would've been great as just a bench player and emergency starter. Instead he was often filling the role as one of the primary forwards. If Evan Turner was signed for a contract similar to Boston he would've been fine as a 7th man off the bench. He earner 3.3 and 3.4 million over two years in Boston. For some delusional reason Neil gave him a $70 million contract, when there were no reports of him getting anything close to that level. His friends yelled at him to accept the offer ASAP as it was an insane amount. Traded away to the Twolves in 2019 and out of a job within a year. Neil deserved to be fired for that 2016 offseason.
You know i watched that team a number of times live at games in the Moda. There is no question there is something to this. That team played and responded to things he did and said in a way like no other player on the court.
I like the way you pose your questions. I seems to me that Stotts and Dame were both working to the same end. I'm pretty sure Dame would say Stotts had a bunch to do with all the success the team had.
I feel like we have been down this road before…. The death-knell for Stotts was the league shifting towards the three point shot. Our three point defense was god awful. As the number of attempted threes around the league grew and grew, our defensive rating plummeted. Largely because of his scheme and because Dame and CJ were horrible on defense. And Terry has nobody to blame but himself. He coached both those players since they were rookies and he never held them accountable for poor defense. Terry pretty much let you do whatever you wanted as long as you were helping him continue to get paid.
