So we draft a rookie so he has no other choice than to give Bayless a fair shot. Works for me. I thnk you're wrong, BTW. Oden, Rudy, and Nic all got plenty of chances last season. You can't suddenly equate Nate with Larry Brown just because he didn't like Bayless.
Except there are several problems with your statement. Who else would have Nate played at SF? He had no choice but to play Batum because Travis was not good starting. Oden played almost completely off the bench, so he was treated no different than Bayless. Bayless started some too, remember. There is a big difference between being forced to play somebody and having a choice and time to be patient. Now that being said, I still think I would have rather gone through last season with Bayless thrown into the fire, because by end of season, you would either have a good idea he wasn't going to cut it, or he would have been a hell of a lot better by the time the playoffs came along and then you actually have a defender besides Roy.
Nate doesn't get the ball to Oden. Nate doesn't run enough. The disconnect of these two arguments against Nate is humorous to me.
I think last year was the last straw for Nate. I never said Nate has historically done the same thing. I just think he may be at the end of his rope and willing to do something desperate to get the team to give him a vet or two.
Can someone please tell me a starting-caliber point guard Nate's had that would allow him to move to an uptempo style of play? Sergio doesn't count. He didn't do other things well, such as defend and shoot. He's not trustworthy enough to start ... yet.
I'm not arguing he doesn't run enough. I'm arguing with those who claim (and are using the same arguments for Nate since back to when he was in Seattle) that Nate WANTS to run, but his players are incapable of executing his gameplan. Ed O.
Ridnour. He started 82 games in 2004-05, along with Rashard Lewis and Ray Allen and Reggie Evans and Jerome James for the vast majority of the time. Their pace? 27th out of 30 teams. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2005.html The team DID win 52 games, so again I'm not arguing how effective running would be... just that some people seem to ignore that Nate's teams have almost always been right at the bottom of the NBA in terms of pace. Ed O.
I must be completely misremembering that season, but I thought the Sonics played a pretty up-tempo game. I remember a Seattle-Phoenix game being hyped up as the battle between the fast paced offenses.
It's the most telling to me. One or the other is a good game plan. Shooting jumpers is a poor one. Our absolute superior offensive rebounding saves that offense though. Getting the ball up the court and scoring quick and easy is great. Getting the ball into a low post player to draw fouls and possibly score easy is great. Passing the ball around the perimeter and settling for a shot against the clock is not great.
Ridnour's best years were under Nate in slow-pace. When they went faster after Nate left and elsewhere - his production was way worse than it was under Nate... All this proves is that Nate knows how to get the most from his roster - not that he does not want to run. Ridnour's PER in the faster pace after Nate left was a whole 2.3 points lower... This is a bad idea for someone that is good in a fast pace in the NBA...
I'm guessing most teams would be happy if the Blazers tried to play up tempo against them. 54 wins this year . . . should fans really be complaining about the style of ball they are playing?
