Hollinger takes isolation offenses to task

Nate likes to exloit mis-matches. Which is logical. Running an ISO is fine as long as you have more than one player on the floor who can do it so they can't double and even tripple the guy.

One of the announcers said Portland has no jump shooters other than Roy (Who at the time was not playing). This is true. We have set shooters. Phoenix has at least two in Nash and Richardson. We need one other guy who can take their man off the dribble. Nothing we have not discussed in length over the years. The ISO would not be a problem for Atlanta either if Roy and Johnson were on the same team. (Or if Johnson was on our team)

Give me one other guy other than Roy who can you can isolate, and two of our set shooters, and one of our Centers, and we are fine.

 

He stayed out of foul trouble in the preseason, and um, it was preseason. Preseason pretty much means nothing.

What's justified is him averaging 15pts/G in his last 7 games. Obviously what they were doing with Greg was working.

 

"They took him from an average of 15ppg to an average of 11"

Preseason stats are pointless.

Padding his stats? Lol, I think he was just getting started and we were going to see more of it. I wouldn't call it padding his stats.

In his last 10 games he was actually averaging 8.3 shots per game, not 7. You're using the Hou game to skew the average, a game he played 4min in. So 8.3 is more than his 7.2 avg for the season.

First game of the season Oden had 7 turnovers and committed 5 fouls. Nate's fault??????

Second and third game he only played 21min each because of foul trouble. I don't see why McMillan should focus the offense around a guy that can't stay on the floor, espepcially when you have options like Aldridge and Roy.

 

I don't put much stock into what you just said because an offensive rebound does not = 1 shot, it equals an offensive rebound that may or may not result in a shot attempt. You also don't point out he also had 8 FTA attempts to go with his 13 FGA attempts in that Miami game. That's a lot of work right there with the ball in his hands.

If you want to keep ignoring the basic fact that he averaged 15pts in his last 7 games and 8 shot attempts the whole month of November, whatever. He was playing the best ball of his career and was coming along great yet it's still someone's fault he wasn't averaging 20pts/G.

 

I didn't read the Hollinger piece, just saw someone post that McMillan didn't know what he was doing with Oden, ignoring the fact that Oden was playing the best ball of his career before he got injured.

 

Hard to work in a guy that doesn't stay on the floor and at times only plays 2-3 minutes a quarter.

If Oden was consistent at staying on the floor and averaged 30 or more minutes a game, I'd have a problem. But his minutes and playing time are so inconsistent that I can't fault Nate much in Oden's perceived lack of shot attempts. Overall the level that Oden was starting to play at was exciting, so I find it hard to start throwing blame out.

As far as Hollinger's iso-heavy offense and playoff success, it's probably apart of why the Hawks and Blazers lost, but there are certainly other factors as well. I think it's a tad unfair to to tie all of the lack of success to iso-heavy offenses. In the end the teams with the best rosters win in the NBA. The Celtics offense is as boring as it can get and they've been a top 5-10 team in the NBA the past 3 years. Doc Rivers always seems to be getting criticized for something. They still won a championship, and they're still really competitive.

 

He's not tying all of the lack of success to just the offenses, he's pointing out what was each team's overwhelming strength in the regular season has been mostly neutered or countered in the playoffs through 31 game in the last two years. It's about those supposedly top tier regular season offenses (by efficiency) turning into mediocre piles of mush when faced with a team that has lots of time to prepare for it; that's what his analysis is getting at ... at least tentatively, he concedes that his hypothesis may need some more data to evaluate it completely.

 

That's the part that confuses me a bit...why is he restricting his sample to the Blazers and Hawks of the past two seasons in evaluating his theory? Is he contending that the Blazers and Hawks of the past two seasons are the only ISO-heavy offensives in post-season history?

 

And what does that prove? This only says that Oden was playing better this time with Nate as his coach than last time with Nate as his coach. It does nothing to suggest that Nate was using him as well as another coach might have.

 

I don't know why he's restricting it ... that said, can you think of a really successful iso heavy team in the past decade or so? (that's not a rhetorical question btw).

 

So Pritchard hasn't brought in such great players after all. I think both he and McMillan are limited. Each has positives and negatives, but after adding them together, each is merely average at his job.

 

Which GM's in the NBA are doing a better job than KP?