Mediocre Man (And Many Others) Will Absolutely LOVE This Piece...

Oden was not a new player. He played 61 games the previous season - and Nate also had the whole 2007-08 season to dream up one or two set plays to get the ball into him on the block. After Oden led the team in scoring in the preseason, Nate's response was not to figure out how to better integrate him into the offense, it was to tell Oden not to worry about scoring. Prior to his injury, Oden had the highest PER and highest FG% (by far) on the team, yet was only averaging 7.2 FGA/G. That's a big fat waste of a dominant inside presence.

But what was even more disturbing were Roy's comments about how Oden's "increased" role was interfering with his play. Nate needs to design an offense where his best players work together, not compete against each other for shots. Why is that so hard for him to do? And if he hasn't figured out a way to do it by the start of next season, he's no longer the right coach for this team.

BNM

 

I've had five years to watch Nate and I've gone from a pretty strong supporter (especially for a rebuilding team that was low on professionalism) to lukewarm, to tepid, to cool. He's not the worst coach in the world, he's not a bad guy (probably a great guy in fact) but I've seen enough to know that he's probably always going to struggle blending a lot of talent together.

Not all of the blame falls on Nate, because KP created some of the logjams that lead to breakdowns in chemistry early in the season, but it goes beyond that, Nate has shown himself to be a very slow at making in-game adjustments, very poor at creating a system that generates high percentage points (points in the paint, fastbreak points, etc.) and has instead built a system that relies on lots of jump shots, trips to the free throw line and lots of second chance points which are all likely to dry up in the playoffs because, jumpers don't always fall (especially against a committed defense) playoff opponents usually don't allow a lot of offensive rebounds if they are worth a damn and refs swallow their whistles and let people play -- the bottom line is that the team still has one of the most predictable offenses in the league and thus remains highly vulnerable in a seven game series when it's all about adjustments and exploiting mismatches.

I'm sure Nate will get at least one more year to prove or disprove that he should be the head coach of this team, but if this team comes back healthy and starts off another season struggling the way it did this November then I'd expect his seat to get a little hot.