Agreed. That's the best that can be said of him. I would say that he is bad, but because most of his peers are also bad, he's rendered meh by their collective incompetence.
"Bad" isn't quite the right word. Most coaches just aren't noticeable difference makers. A very few are fucking awful, or great, with about 90% in the mushy middle. I think part of it, is that so much of success in the NBA comes down to the five guys that are out there on the court succeeding or failing for a lot of other reasons that don't have anything to do with the guy yelling at them from the bench.
Outside of Harkless, who's came here and gotten better? How has he coached will this year? He got a lot of projects? That should be no problem because I thought he made players better? When has he proven that he can take talent and "put them in the mix"?
Non-Blazer rookies/youngins who have had career years under Terry. Aldridge/Rolo/Wes/Nic/Aminu/Harkless/Plumlee That's a damn good list.
I'd leave Aldridge, Matthews, and especially Batum off of that list. Batum got worse. Harkless was going to improve no matter where he went.
Aldridge hit his prime and was force fed the ball. Rolo wasnt much better than he was before, he was just note appreciated. Also hitting his prime. Wesleys stats only looked better because we went more up tempo. Nic got better just because McMillan always parked him in the corner and Stotts didn't. Aminu had a fluke year last year. Plumlee got a bigger role and was featured more heavily. No where do I see players skills developing (except maybe Moe) Lillard and McCollum have made no improvement on defense. Leonard's gotten worse. Crabbe is still just a spot up shooter with overrated defense. Vonleh hasn't made any strides. Layman's development is being stunted for a baseball player with no upside. Stotts sucks at developing players.
and his amazing run in the playoffs the previous year with Dallas was also a fluke? not buying it...you should just go with a simple....you don't like Stotts stance because he's developed a lot of players over a long career..he's good at it in my view...you've never liked him...sometimes taking an entire game thread to talk about it...I like him.
In 2014-15, when the Blazers were in the argument for second- or third-best team in the NBA, prior to Matthews going down. I don't think Stotts was great that year. He did okay, took a talented team to success. Right now, he's taking an un-talented team nowhere. Just as it would be with most coaches in the NBA.
My To-Keep list is: Dame, CJ, Harkless, Nurkic. The rest are trade fodder. Of the rest, I'd be most likely to hang onto Crabbe (despite his contract) unless the right deal came along, of course.
Stotts is a Horrible in game manager ,and is not very good at developing players. Most of our players look lost at what to do when other teams force us off of our script, and the team makes rookie mistakes and then re-makes them again, and again. . . The Turncoat, Matthews, Batum team overachieved despite Stotts, because they had sufficient skill and experience going into the Stotts era. If the Blazers were re-tooling with some veterans, then maybe Stotts would be ok (though I feel the team needs a change anyway), but, with a rebuild in progress it's time for a fresh approach and to get a coaching staff who will really extract the most out of our new young players.
Terry won a championship in Dallas. JVG never won anything. That said, if we have to fire Stotts, JVG would be my first choice to replace him.
I wouldn't be at all enthusiastic about hiring a re-tread who's been out of the (coaching) game for a decade. If the team fired Stotts, I'd hope that it was because they had a young up-and-coming coach lined up. Someone who's been coaching during this era of the NBA and has fresh ideas about where the game goes from here.
I think we need a change regardless. The team has been playing with a nihilistic attitude for long enough that, on most other teams, we wouldn't even be having this conversation - the coach would have been canned. We've already seen the invigorating inclusion of the Nurkinator. Now we need to complete the refresh. The stank of this years dysfunctional team needs to be eradicated. . .
I dunno, there's a little more to it than that. A lot of the credit should go to the guys with the clipboards on the sidelines who are whispering in the head coaches ear. Scouts as well. The Lawrence Franks of the NBA. But when the opposite team has a Lebron or a Steph Curry, its all moot.
You mean the guy who couldn't win with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson? Jackson is one of those ten-percenter coaches that makes their roster worse.
