And in general, my rabid feelings about Greg's role are that he's a pretty phenomenal passer out of the post to go along with that otherworldly TS%. If all we did was take half of the LMA pick-and-pops that we start the game with and turn them into Oden on the low block with cutter-after-cutter going through the lane, that's a pretty good start to an offense right there. He averaged less than 2 TO's a game--even in his "foul-plagued or whatever" 24 minutes.
I pretty much figured that is how it would be with Oden healthy. The one guy who doesn't match that model is Miller, who isn't a good outside shooter.
Could it possibly be that Oden is so efficient on offense because of how he's been used? You mention his passing, yet he averages less assists/36 than Dwight Howard. You mention TS%, yet Howard is in the same range. Nate was funning post-ups through Oden early in games. The problem was, Greg couldn't stay on the court, usually because of fouls. I'd just like to see Greg get some minutes where fouls aren't an issue. My problem is blaming Nate for Oden's offense, when Oden's PER this year was just below Dwight Howard's. I don't see how that can be considered a failure on the coaching staff.
There are two ways of looking at it, though I only subscribe to one. The first is that Nate had no intention of using Greg in the offense. He didn't work that in the offseason planning, in the training camp offenses (See: Juwan Howard screaming at people to throw Greg the ball) in the preseason offenses, and after his speech on Oct 25 where he said that Greg just needed to focus on D, b/c Nate's offense scored last year and it would score this year. He didn't work it when Blake was starting, when Miller was starting, when both were starting, etc. That's the problem I have...I think (Minstrel said it better than I) that Oden is a force down low, and is under-utilized. Yes, I think he should work on his fouling. But he fouled out of one game, so any minutes he didn't stay on the floor were a product of the coach pulling him out. Maybe that was a great decision, to keep him from having 6 silly fouls in a row and being gone. I think it's a poor one, since he didn't even give his player the opportunity to learn to play through them. The second is that it's the coach's job to prepare the players. If he doesn't like that Oden looks like a handicapped kangaroo on the offensive end, he needs to train him up--seeing as how he's a franchise cornerstone and all. I don't like this theory, b/c for all we have heard Nate's given him assistant coaches that are supposed to develop bigs and still his footwork looks a big fugly.
Fair enough. I'm sure we'll both agree that Oden needs to be healthy for any of our hypotheticals to come into fruition. I'll also add that the coach's primary job is to win games.
