NateBall Is Again Winning Games With Lesser Talent

This guy has it right. The playoffs hardly repudiated McMillan's chosen style. Roy was easily the best player on the team and McMillan built the offense to take advantage of Roy's strengths. That's what all teams do when they have a franchise player. The fact that he's changed the style with Roy lost as franchise player shows that "Nateball" simply means leveraging your best player. Now it's Aldridge.

 

The problem with the Roy-iso offense was that it was soooo predictable, and over the last two seasons teams have figured out how to defend it.

 

I don't agree that they figured out how to defend it. The Spurs and Jazz are predictable generally too. The offense was working fine with a healthy Roy. In the playoffs, the team basically didn't have Roy (or Oden).

Now, with no Roy, McMillan has changed styles to one that maximizes Aldridge. Isn't that exactly the kind of adjustment you'd like a coach to make?

 

There are 2 theories. 1) Nate changed his way of thinking this season. 2) Some other influence changed the system.

I say it was the new assistant coaches and the ascendancy of Andre Miller who modified McMillan's weird former system with conventional thinking. Replacing selfish Bayless with Rudy greatly helped the passing game. Sergio would look better in this system than he did being Roy's little butler.

 

I'm a skeptic. I don't think Nate is at the heart of this. I don't have any evidence that he didn't make the adjustment, just as you don't have any evidence that he did.

But comparing the Roy-iso to the Jazz or Spurs in terms of predictability is false. The Jazz run a pick and roll with a lot of movement. The Roy-iso was simply Brandon Roy at the top of the key with a clear-out and maybe a screen to free him up. It was extremely easy to defend if teams figured out that they could just double Roy instead of switching on the screen. I saw Washington do it. I saw Houston do it.

 

The default is that the coach determines how the team plays. It's silly to say "You have no evidence that the style that team is playing has anything to do with the coach." Tin foil hat theories that the team has mutinied and does whatever it wants need evidence, not the default assumption that the coach makes the decisions.

Considering Roy is an excellent passer, that's not all that defenses had to do, as Roy could beat double teams with passes. Whenever Roy was healthy, the team rolled. After he came back from his injury last year, the team looked great down the stretch. Then he got hurt again and the team looked bad in the playoffs.

I've seen the Lakers, Spurs and Jazz shut down. Clearly, they're predictable and easy to shut down.

 

Nate had been saying for years that they wanted to run, but they never did run until now. So is that Nate lying about what he wanted to do or the team ignoring him?

 

In my opinion, neither. I think what used to happen was that McMillan liked the idea of running, but placed an even greater emphasis on not making mistakes or turning the ball over. Since these tend to be somewhat opposing desires, the stronger one is the one that ended being guiding. If your coach wants you to run but also wants you to take care of the ball, and it's the turnovers get you benched, which one are you going to do?

Now, I assume that McMillan realizes that a conservative half-court offense won't work without a great half-court player (as Roy was), so he's changed the weighting of the different priorities. He's probably more willing to accept turnovers, because he knows that an extremely careful, methodical offense won't work as well with the current personnel.

Do I know all of this for a fact? No, but it seems a lot more likely to me than that the players have taken over and are running the show themselves. Unless some evidence to the contrary comes to light, I default to the coach determining how the team plays. And the fact that the team is playing differently now, reflecting the changed roster dynamic, is a mark in McMillan's favor to me.

 

He's lying. He knows he should install such a system, but he knows he doesn't know how. So the filthy rat blames his players.

 

Last season I had a line in my sig that said: "Miller > Nate." What I meant was, Miller ball was superior to Nate ball, and I'd rather have had Miller calling the offense than Nate. I will probably never forget the report of Nate yelling at Miller in practice: "You don't play the way we play!" Now, they play the way Miller plays. Thank god for that.

I have given Nate props this season for apparently listening to his new assistants and adjusting "the way we play" to take advantage of the non-Roy personnel on the team. I would not dispute that, in the past, setting up Brandon in the 4th quarter of games won us a lot of games. I do dispute the argument that because we won 50+ games playing "Roy-ball" it proves that was a superior system at the time to the system we run now. It proves nothing. There is simply no way to conclude they'd have been worse playing this way, with Roy on the team.

I'm happy with the way the team is playing and with the offense that they are using. If we could get a reasonably healthy Brandon Roy to buy into that system it would be even better.

 

McMillan's system is similar to last year's in that once the opponent gets used to our system by the 4th quarter, we can't score anymore. Last year, Roy would bail us out. This year, we just go ahead and lose the game. But other things aren't under the control of the filthy rat. Camby and Miller force some alley oops that didn't happen before their arrivals. Players look to pass to players other than just Roy, only because Roy isn't on the floor. It's clear that McMillan didn't change, so we should look elsewhere for the causes.

 

That's pretty much how I feel. I don't think McMillan has anything to do with it.

 

the players have filled the gaps and finally we need to play to our team strengths vs. the preference of our premier player.

 

Sorry, but I agree with you also. I am sorry because now a lot of people will attack this theaory because of my supposed blind hatred for Mr Sonic

 

Oh the memories

http://ripcityproject.com/2010/01/07/andre-miller-nate-mcmillan-argue-at-practice/

LOL sure Nate changed.

 

Despite whatever you think about Nate McMillan, he's by far the most accomplished, most professional, most honest member of the Blazers management team, and apparently the only one who knows much about basketball.

I expect him to leave this naively inept gaggle of geeks the next chance he gets.

 

The sad thing is, I could agree with every word you just typed....and still believe Nate is just an average coach who is poorly suited to coaching this current team.

 

This

 

I used "filthy rat" in place of McMillan twice in this thread to get a rise out of someone, anyone. I don't really think he's a filthy rat. I should stop trying to provoke people.

I'm sure he showers.

 

Yet, the Blazers averaged 24 points in the 4th quarter last season while giving up 23.5.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/average-4th-quarter-margin

Conversely, this season, the "improved" non-NateBall Blazers are averaging 22.8 points in the 4th quarter, and giving up 23.3.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nba/stat/4th-quarter-points-per-game

So ... what were you saying?