While I like the over-all job Stotts has done, his stubbornness makes me a little crazy at times. Some of you other old farts may remember football coach Tom Landry. He had a lot of success in his career, but he had one big achilles heel. Once he had decided on a game plan, nothing that happened on the field would make him change it. I guess he thought making adjustments on the fly was an admission of weakness and would undermine the players' confidence or something.
Because you don't know if you're going to have the car for a long term. You're gonna get different pieces over the next couple of years.. Besides, if Stotts was doing this long term, wouldn't he have a system in place to work with anyone about 3 years ago? He has to adapt to what he has, yes, but some of these players are also not going to be here. Some of the 'pieces'. So, his "long term" should have started a long time ago, and the diagnostics should be able to adapt to this change. What I'm saying is is that we don't know what "long term" looks like for this team. It could look different than here, and we'd have to switch out the parts. But for this year, in game 84... we should have something by the playoffs, no? I hope we have most of these players long term... but you just never know. Free Agency is a bitch. Regardless, Stotts is our coach for at least the next 5 years. I agreed with you, damnit.
All good, Your proving my point now though. Not all the pieces will be here. All that much more important for him to try all types of things.. Mix and match to se what works best. Who to keep. Who is more valuable playing with who. Maybe Crabbe is REALLY good playing with Harkless, but not sure about anyone else. We want to trade Harkless. SO now we need to play Crabbe with a bunch of different guys to determine his true worth playing with the remaining members. To close the gap on the car analogy. We don't have a used car that we've driven and know what works and what doesn't. we are at the car lot shopping for new cars. Need to test everything. Not just make sure the gas mileage and the color scheme is good. I would say, MAYBE Stott's should have a decent picture if all the parts ran the same from start to finish, but Hendo wasn't here at the beginning due to injury. Leonard went down a couple times with injuries.. These delay the tests. Its okay though, still love ya!
Back on subject (I know, how dare I): there is a continuum on defense that goes from "conservative" to "passive" to just "lazy." The Blazers too often slide down the scale. Stotts has to take part of the heat for that. If our big men aren't doing the blue collar work (eg defense, rebounding, and chasing loose balls) they don't really contribute at all.
