I'm with you. Finally. I've been a Stotts backer this whole time, but the atrocity we witnessed in the playoffs put me over the edge. Blazers will not get better without a better head coach.
holy fuck that was depressing. if you could slap someone via tcp/ip - i'd slap him. hard. talking about how good the pels are, yet nothing around how woefully we adapted and how poorly we fucked out when it mattered. nor any mention of fucked up sub patterns or 2 games in a row with the wins on the line, and running 2's instead of 3's. ugh, just get the fuck out already.
You mean the coach whose team improved dramatically and became NBA champions right after he was fired ?
I like Terry, but his use of Nurkic was mindboggling . Nurkic doesn't always get it going early, and to leave him on the bench in multiple games this series ,was dumb. Yesterday he finally pulled his head out, and played Nurk in crunch time, and Nurk was dominant. You have to ride your horses. Watching Ed, with no explosion on either end, was painful in the games he played. Nurk needed to play no less than 30 minutes a game this series. That has to change. I think Stotts will be replaced. I'm torn on this because Terry is a good coach, and likable. With more talent infused into the lineup this offseason, could Terry have better results, probably. We will see. Neil must figure a way, if he keeps his job, to hack off the dead weight. I think Nurkic is a must re-sign. He's a developing talent. But whoever is coach, he/she will have to know how to develop, and get the most return out of Jusaf.
Injuries happen... we had them as well. Everybody deals with them. During that streak we beat the Warriors at full strength. Who cares? We weren't supposed to win a title this year. This stability has given us the playoffs on a regular basis. We're now a couple pieces away with a very young team and people are begging to blow it up? I'm sorry, but how freaking stupid can you be?
That's narrow-minded thinking. Brad Stevens never coached in the NBA. Spo was never a head coach in the NBA.
Spoelstra was already in the NBA when he got the HC job, he doesn’t count. Wanting guys with some experience in the league isn’t narrow minded to me. If we were starting fresh I’d be more open to it, but we need to take that next step.
Stotts may have been managing fouls. It seemed like Nurkic had 3 fouls at every halftime (I haven't checked). With Ed Davis playing like he was hurt, and the 3rd center being rookie Collins.
They are about to enter cap hell, there are no pieces coming -- what you see is what you get, minus a late first round pick. Secondly "young" is a relative term. Damian is 28 and will be 29 next season. That's not young for a small guard, he's got maybe two? Three? more years of being able to play at his current level, after that it may be a slow decline, or a rapid decline, but it will definitely be a decline and then they are really fucked. Beyond that we just saw an object lesson about why our two best players really shouldn't be starting together in the backcourt. They're definitely good enough to rack up wins during the regular season when half of the teams you play aren't very good, but come playoff-time, they haven't held up against teams that have all of their energy and focus on game-planning a single opponent, and they got murdered on the defensive end because Holiday was too big to handle, and the only defensive-minded guy who might have been able to handle him (Aminu) was busy trying to bail water against Anthony Davis. Here's the truth: Anthony Davis is younger and he ain't going anywhere. The Blazers couldn't do shit to the Rockets, they ain't going anywhere for the next couple of years either. The Dubs were beat up all year with injuries and seemed like they were going through the motions, you can't count on that in future seasons. So let's say you can get past any of those other teams and actually get to the finals, what then? Well for the foreseeable future it's guys like Simmons, Embid, Giannis, LeBron, Taytum, etc. standing in your way, almost all of whom are much younger than the Blazers tandem of star guards. This team is too unsuccessful to justify going into repeater tax hell, yet they are loaded down with some of the most undesirable contracts in the NBA, which makes conducting trades for the things you want or need nearly impossible, without putting guys like CJ or Damian on the block. This team will not get better if all they are offering other team's is Turner, MeyLe, Harkless, et al. As for firing Terry? Replacing Stotts isn't going to fix the glaring roster issues, but nobody can convince me he was getting the very best out of this team either in playoff situations. Poor use of timeouts, and little to no adjustments in-game or between games. A new voice won't get this team to championship contention, but it probably won't hurt.
This has has to be the best post of the year... you explained everything wonderfully. I don’t understand how some people think there is still a path forward without trading Dame or CJ.
I think a lot of people are content with just winning enough games to make the playoffs for some reason and just being a decent regular season team.
Yes that is fans in general. The ones that don't post on message boards. And there are more of those then us.
I’m still torn on what direction to go coach wise and while I think NO needs to go back to the land of valet parking, I’d like to point out what happened the last time we went looking for a new GM and head coach.......my memory may suck but as I recall, “quality” or “name” candidates weren’t exactly lining up for the jobs 6 years ago. So in the end we got (at least what I would call) “second tier” guys. This time around there are more “first tier” candidates available, but just like top tier free agents, how many of them are going to want to come here? While I personally (trying to be as objective as a native Oregonian can be) feel that Portland would be a premium job (location, obscenely rich owner, diehard fans, a decent core to build on) I’m just not seeing the heavy hitters looking our way unless they see it as a short term stepping stone to the brighter lights elsewhere. I hope I’m wrong and that I’m just succumbing to the “poor old Portland, woe is us”mentality that had grown so prevalent the past 2 decades. But I have to thing that PA is going to have to throw out some serious bank for both positions if he wants the real talent.......
No salary cap for coaches or GMs. If Paul could offer LeBron, and other top free agents $1 billion contracts, we'd have no trouble attracting tier 1 players. You want a top tier GM and coach? Just open the wallet and pay what it takes to get them. BNM
Or the last Big East coach with no prior NBA experience the Blazers hired. Seriously, I think the P.J. experiment has soured Paul Allen on looking to the college ranks for an NBA coach. BNM
Pretty much what I said. But if past reports are to be believed, PA has always been willing to pay the money when he really wants something. It’s not his fault that those offers have been rejected (restricted free agents not included).
