I've always loved Rick, felt he never should have got fired, and don't think he is appreciated around the league like he should. He out-coached Nate tonight, but hopefully Nate will come with a good counter tomorrow.
He's not appreciated because we've all seen how his teams fold come crunch time. In his case, WAY too many times.
he outcoached nate by a loooooooong shot...i wouldnt mind him coming back to portland thats for sure.
Yet no coach could duplicate the level he was able to take us to since then, so I can look past a few poor 4th quarters. I'd rather be in the finals and be unsure of our 4th quarter play, than be losing in the first round or not making the playoffs at all, but be "clutch" down the stretch of close games.
One game. I give credit to Rick, but I know we have one of the best coaches in the NBA and we are lucky to have Nate.
Yet no coach since then has had that talent level, specifically a superstar. I do not believe I can handle anymore fourth quarter choke jobs. I remain hopeful about this series knowing that Adelman's teams have stolen HCA before and ending up going home nonetheless.
Thats tough to prove. Clyde, Terry, Buck, Duck, and Kersey all had their best years under Rick. You could easily say that Rick got the most out of them, and that is good coaching. I'll stand by Rick, you can take PJ or Mo.
No, but I certainly won't take Rick. There's nothing hard to prove - we have not had a player of Drexler's caliber under any coach to follow Adelman. We may have one now, but he's very young.
I'm starting to think he purposely lost to Dallas so he could play the blazers....I was wondering why the hell he put scola on dirk and let a 14 point lead dwindle away....brilliant!
I'm not knocking Clyde, all I'm saying is that Rick might have contributed to his greatness, and instead of shorting him for, he should be given some credit.
Well seeing as how Drexler was notorious for not showing up on time or at all for practice, I'm thinking it wasn't so much the coaching in his case. I do not disagree that Rick is a very good coach, but he is a flawed one that has shown repeatedly that he can't win the big one.
I'm generally a pro-Nate guy......but he got his ass kicked by Adelman tonight. Worse yet, I saw nothing over the course of the game to indicate Nate had figured out how to turn it around. If anything, the Blazers played *worse* as the night wore on.
Great, great coach. Example: It seems that Artest can only play for Rick. He took the crowd out of it, established Yao early, stole home court, muffled LMA...
Nate demonstrated that he's slow to adapt to what Rick has thrown at him all season. It's not like there weren't warning signs in the 3 regular season games against Houston. Seems like he though the Blazers would just coast off the home court to an easy win. I just hope this is the game that wakes him up.
The Rockets game plan seemed to be to let Roy go a bit more than other teams have been doing lately. The Rockets perimeter players weren't constantly leaving their man to double Brandon, but instead denied the Blazers their usual perimeter rotation for open looks at 3's. I guess when you've got a 7'6" guy back in the middle, you feel a bit safer letting him try to deal with blocking Brandon's stuff around the hoop...especially when the refs aren't going to call much in the middle. I don't think we've seen that strategy anywhere else and it really seemed to throw the Blazers off of their offensive game. I'd expect Nate to counter with more drives to the basket and kicking it back out to the perimeter.
Explain that again. The Rockets aren't helping off perimeter players so we should drive and kick more? How is that going to work if their perimeter players are defending ours??
