For making the playoffs with injuries of his team and himself. I blame him for preparing his team against the Mavs, Heat, Celtics, Bulls, Spurs, Nuggets and Magic. I blame him for being yet again one of the best free-throw shooting teams in the league. It's all Nate's fault! GO BLAZERS!
Sometimes it just bothers me how some people, not really in here, harp on how terrible Nate is as a coach. Yeah man, I disagree with a lot of his decisions; but we are a winning team now. The dude gets praise by every professional in the league; yet some of our fan base just blames him for everything. P.S., I still think Portland holds the #1 from execution after a timeout. That says a lot about a coach as well. I'm gonna root for him to end this season and have a career winning percentage in Portland. I think he only needs 3 more wins.
It's easy to blame the coach for losses. Nate has been great and I don't think will be truly appretiated for everything he did here til he is gone.
He needs to be a COY candidate. Thibideau has done a nice job and so has Monty and Doug Collins, but Nate has been right up there. In fact, he should have gotten it last year.
Portland, in the era of ESPN, might as well be fuckin' Timbuktu. Nate isn't winning anything anytime soon.
I'd like Jerry Sloan to win it as a lifetime achievement award. Besides, look at the Jazz since he left. It'll never happen though.
I hadn't thought about COY at all until the TNT crew brought it up the other day. I agree, it's Thibideau's award, and rightfully so. Still, Nate should finish top 3 or 5.
Could someone please inform Nate that Golden State has consistently embarrassed him during his Blazer tenure? Then maybe he would get his team as psyched up for them as he does against top teams. A pattern is NOT "just another loss, these things happen, ho hum" when it keeps happening. He's the last person in Portland to know they're our nemesis. They own us because he hasn't figured out that they have figured us out. Posters have noted this for several years. It's especially galling that he doesn't know about his own humiliation right now, when 2 of our last 5 games are against them. Could someone shake his shoulders and wake him up? GET PREPARED FOR GOLDEN STATE LIKE YOU DO THE LAKERS. BEAT THEM FROM NOW ON, IGNORAMUS.
It seems we play well against teams that are similarly well disciplined and structured, and just suck descending to team's that play unorthodox, helter skelter. Warriors, Denver, Knicks, and Sixers have been our nemesis for years. Yet we play well against the Spurs, Jazz, and Lakers for the most part year in and year out. I think it's because it's partly because you have to have a formidable offense to out-offense those teams, and we don't have that.
McMillan's record 7-14 Warriors 8-16 Denver 8-4 Knicks 5-7 Sixers Unlike the others, the Warriors have been both mediocre and in the West. In McMillan's 6 years, we have gone 7-14 against the Warriors. (Our average league record is .500 and theirs is .435.) In the 5 years before McMillan we were 14-6 against them. (We averaged .529 against the league and they were .358.) boxscores http://www.hoopsstats.com/basketball/fantasy/nba/portland-trail-blazers/team/matchups/11/25/1-9
No need for the extraordinary method of looking at lifetime. Sloan should win it for this season, just like it's usually awarded. If a coach can take over a team after the season starts, and win the award for greatly improving the team... then why can't a coach... who quits after the season starts, win the award for how much worse the team got after he left? Seems perfectly consistent with how it's been awarded in the past...
Clearly that means Mo Cheeks is a better coach than Nate, after seeing such stats its not even debatable!
