That was a talented offensive team. Roy was still healthy and great, Aldridge had made the jump to very good player, Oden actually played half the season and was a good offensive player, Fernandez and Outlaw were at their peak and Batum was a promising young player. But you'll see their awful pace (last again) work the other direction--they were #1 in Offensive Rating that year, but only #14 in PPG. Because of pace. It made their defense look better but made their offense look worse.
Aldridge averaged 18 and oden averaged 9 ppg. I don't think that team was more talented than this one, offensively. Dame is better than Roy was, and CJ is at roys level. Obviously not at finishing, but he makes up for that with 3pt shooting. Both Fernandez and outlaws peaks were nothing great. I understand the pace thing, my point is that idk how I feel about it. I'm not sure that equation is the end-all-be-all for judging a teams performance. It makes bad offensive coaches look good? And I'm not sure that having a slow pace is a bad thing, if you're outscoring your opponents.
So maybe the equation is flawed? It made a bad offensive coach have the highest OffRtg in the league. I think league history? Maybe just trailblazers history.
If a bad DefRtg makes a coach/team bad at defense. Then a good OffRtg should mean that the coach/team was good, no?
Nobody's saying that a slow pace is bad. Simply that the slow pace makes the raw defensive stats look better than they actually are. If the quality of a team's defense is being discussed, then pace has to be considered for the sake of intellectual honesty.
Not necessarily re: the coach. A hugely talented offensive player can make an offense look highly efficient without good coaching. The Brandon Roy 1-4-flat offense was efficient in 2009, but not because of great coaching; just because he was individually one of the most talented offensive players in the league. Also should be noted that offensive rebounding plays into ORtg, and IIRC, we were an excellent offensive rebounding team that year as well. I wouldn't attribute that to coaching either.
Life isn't just about points scored, there's efficiency also. Oden didn't score a ton, but he scored very efficiently and was a great offensive rebounder. Roy, Aldridge, Oden, Fernandez, Outlaw all had great Offensive Ratings...their scoring, rebounding and passing ability led to excellent offensive efficiency. I don't agree at all, but that's not really the point here. The point is that points per game is hugely affected by the pace you play at. If you play at a slow pace, your points allowed will look better and your points scored will look worse. McMillan's Portland teams didn't allow many points per game because there weren't a lot of possessions to score on in the game. On a per-possession basis, they were either mediocre or bad on defense during his tenure. I also didn't say slow pace is good or bad. In general, playing at a slower pace is good if you're less talented because more possessions increases the chances for a better team to separate themselves (though, it's not entirely that simple--the personnel you have also matters for what style of game you play). The Blazers weren't the most or least talented team in the league, so low pace probably didn't matter much one way or the other.
I figured he meant it was bad when he said "awful" but maybe he just meant in ranking. I just think it weird that our high OffRtg kind of means nothing because of the equation, but our middle of the pack DefRtf is a dead-on representation of our defense. Idk, I feel like if the DefRtf means McMillan was a bad defensive coach, then the OffRtg must mean that he was a great offensive coach right? Even though it's generally accepted that McMillan was/is a bad offensive coach.
So it's mainly just our players that are the problem defensively? I haven't been too hot on Stotts, I really wanted Thibs, but idk maybe it's not his fault? God I want us to play better defense...
The way I view Nate (the coach, not the poster) is thusly: He got credit for being a good defensive coach, but the good defensive numbers were more a function of pace than defensive strategy; He had excellent tools on offense, but limited their effectiveness by catering to an isolation-heavy style preferred by Roy; Nate had an incredibly strong aversion to turnovers, which contributed significantly both to the slow pace and the offensive efficiency; An individually great player can singularly affect offensive efficiency more than defensive efficiency, and Nate's Roy-led Blazer teams benefited from that.
I think you're reading in some arguments I'm not making. I didn't say that Portland's high Offensive Rating meant nothing. I pointed out that just as slow pace made Portland's defense look better (by points scored), slow pace made Portland's offense look worse (by points scored). Portland was legitimately a great offensive team back then, but points scored made them look middle of the pack. I also never said McMillan was a bad defensive coach. I said that Portland's defense was never good under McMillan. That's a very different thing and I even pointed out that a similar issue was at play back then--that the team's best players weren't good defenders. Even if you're a good defensive coach, it's difficult to impossible to build a strong defense when your best players, the ones you count on to play the most minutes, aren't good at defense. Also, yes, when I said "awful pace," I was referring to ranking. I can see why you read a value judgment into that.
