Why would we need an even more offensively minded coach? This current Blazer team has the best offensive rating in Trail Blazer history (so far). That's points per possession. What this team needs to do is develop it's defense more than anything. I like Nate, but all four of his seasons fall under the worst five defensive ratings in our history. Sure, that's still not as bad as a few teams this season, but I have to wonder how a coach with a such a defensive reputation can't get even a somewhat average defensive system going with this lineup. I'm not calling for his head, but I'm not seeing that half of our system work effectively.
Well, duh! We'll just trade Brandon for Steve Nash. All of our problems solved, finals here we come baby!
I don't think McMillan is particularly good at fitting players into an offensive system. Their offensive efficiency is very good, but I think it's a function of the talent. I don't he uses the players optimally. I don't dislike McMillan nor am I saying he's a poor coach, but I think he can be upgraded.
I think our offense looks good because McMillan largely depends on the ISO which we all know Roy is pretty damn spectacular at doing. Unfortunately our pick and roll offense is just really.. disgusting to be honest. We've got a lot of jump shooters on the team which works in the regular season, but I don't see us winning a playoff series (and maybe not even a game) if we don't learn how to run the pick and roll in an effective manner and establish post position.
I think that's a lot of it. I guess what I'd say is that McMillan runs a very basic offense...isolate and kick. The team shoots from the perimeter quite well on average, so this strategy works well on average. However, it does lend itself to streakiness. This isn't a problem in the regular season, which is long enough for good and bad streaks to even out. But the playoffs boil down to a series of "small sample" challenges. If the team goes cold from outside for a few games in the playoffs, that's all she wrote. A more creative and dynamic offensive coach, I feel, could design an offense that has high efficiency almost every game, rather than huge highs (when the threes are falling) and severe lows (when they're not). The talent is certainly there, I think, to build a night-in and night-out offensive powerhouse. Roy, Aldridge, Oden, Outlaw, Rudy and Bayless are a lot of offensive weapons and even Blake is useful as a shooter.
I agree. I think with a more C&D offensive coach we could take advantage of Rudy (and Martell if he stays here and isn't traded/his foot doesn't fall off) and his willingness to just run all over the damn place. LaMarcus doesn't get to showcase it a lot but I think he is an underrated passer, and I think if Rudy (and Martell) did backdoor cuts while he was in the post or cuts down the middle he would find them (and Oden would find them too). Last year LaMarcus had some really crisp and just plain nifty bounce passes to Martell in a few games and it worked quite well as Martell may not be able to handle the ball well but the kid can finish at the rim. I just see that we have so many athletic and young players at the wing position who basically camp at the three point line and I think to myself: this can't be a coincidence that all these small forwards and wings besides Roy sit at the corner these past few years, can it? Why aren't we taking advantage of them on a more consistent basis instead of just maybe once every five or six games if that? Because when Travis plays small forward he camps in the corners a lot as well. It is only really when he's playing PF and ISOing that he creates his own shot. Sometimes at the SF, but not a lot. It is just really unfortunate that we don't take advantage of these things and that is why I would prefer a different coach (not to mention our uh.. defensive schemes).
Michael Curry is the worst coach in the NBA. He seems overmatched for that job, don't know how they favored him and got rid of Flip. As for D'Antoni... ugh, there'd be so many complaints on how we wouldn't be able to stop anyone. If you thought Nate's defense was bad, D'Antoni's would be worse. At least it'd be entertaining basketball offensively, like the good ol' early 90's days.
D'Antoni came out of nowhere. He bounced around as an assistant and blew up as a head coach. Who out there is the next Mike-D?
Of course he runs a very basic offense - the team plays 4 rookies significant minutes, one of them is a PG, 2 of them are starters, their featured scorer of the bench is an athletic guy with questionable BBIQ - what do you expect? Nate has to adjust the game plan to the players he has on offense - you try and be fancy with a team that usually has at least 2 rookies on the court at any minute - and you are going to get some ugly basketball. One hopes that as these kids get experience and adjust to the NBA - the offense will become more creative. I think I heard the NY broadcast before the game in MSG and they talked to D'antoni about Nate and asked him how it was to work in the olympics with Nate being the defensive coach and himself on the offense - and he told them that Nate deals a lot with offense and he can come with some nice offensive sets as well - he just likes to pretend that he is only a defensive coach...
I think we can def. upgrade our coach, but not with D'Antoni... his style won't win titles... and our team isn't really built for playing his style as the roster currently stands, though I think we could form a lineup from our roster that would like running... I'd definitely rather look for a Sloan or Pop type coach, and obviously those are my two favorites, but both are probably impossible to get unless Pop thinks the SA window is closing and he wants a new challenge?
More sophisticated sets in which the coach does a lot of the heavy mental lifting. Each individual player's job can be simpler, but the interactions of each player doing their job can be dynamic. And he has a very smart, heady player in Roy to run it. Roy, I'm quite sure, is capable of more mentally than isolations. My main problem with McMillan is that there's very little motion, so players have to do it all themselves. That actually doesn't seem at all ideal for young players. When Oden gets isolated in the post, McMillan is calling upon him to play like a veteran center and figure out the best way to proceed every time. Oden struggles with that, so McMillan's response is just not to go to Oden. That seems wasteful. It would be much better if he designed sets that put the offense and defense in motion and got Oden rolling to the hoop more and receiving passes in flow to the hoop. Static isolation offenses require the players to make all the opportunities themselves. Only Roy is currently consistently great at that. Outlaw is capable of it when he's playing well and at other times makes mistake after mistake. Oden sometimes dominates his defender and other times looks lost. Aldridge has the talent but not always the assertiveness. I think a static isolation offense is not at all ideal for the team...it looks great when several players are on and terrible when they aren't and Roy is on the bench or not feeling it.
I've been mostly pleased with Nate this year (the team not playing a lick of defense not withstanding), and while a D'Antoni team would probably be a lot of fun to watch, I suspect we'd see a lot of high scoring games, big regular season win totals and then lots of post-season disappointment when we run into the more disciplined defenses of elite teams and the grinding style that usually wins playoff series. I'd definitely be on board with Rick Adelman if he left the Rockets for some reason; he still has an off-season home here, so presumably there would be some motivation to come here beyond the job itself. He's always struck me as a coach who is very good at getting the best out of his players
