My story? I believe it is pretty well known that Nate calls a large number of plays from the bench during games. Not as much as Dunleavy, for example, but a fairly significant number. I honestly could care less what pace the team plays at as long as they win. The point of the post was if I thought they would run more. My answer? Nope, because Nate likes to control the offense and he always has. What evidence do you have that I am wrong? What teams of Nate's in his whole coaching career have been fast paced? Actions speak louder then words. Nate can say he wants to play faster, but his actions claim otherwise.
You are stuck too much of the Don Nelson mindset. D'Antoni used to run all the time with a very big PF. His name is Amare Stoudemire you might have heard of him. If you want to play small ball that is one thing. But if you want to run, that is another. They are not the same.
I'm excited that you managed to fit 4 different forms of punctuation in one sentence. Out of curiosity, which evaluation metric were you using to get the 8th and 13th in efficiency? Almost everything I've seen says we were #2 or so in offensive efficiency.
It would be nice if Nate could teach all the young players here how to be a good fast breaking team like the Drexler days. But the fact of the matter is that he's had a bunch of young players that he's had to teach the basics of the game to for the past 5 years. Young players that don't have the court awareness to run effective fast breaks, or the defense to get the steals and the rebounds that lead to fast breaks. I chalk up Nate's slow pace to having a bunch of youths that are best playing a structured game and learning the right way to execute and I expect over time as this group gets more experienced he will losen the reigns and not be afraid to let them take more risks.
Yup... most of his PG's lacked the sort of handle and athleticism to really excel on the break and his SF options also have had very poor ball skills. Nic can dribble some which should help them get out on the break a bit more as (presumably) he starts to make the position his this season and of course Andre is vastly superior on the break to any PG Nate has had in Portland before. Combined with their rebounding prowess, I'm expecting the club to fastbreak a lot more then in years past. STOMP
Let's see, the Blazers were 54-28 last season, they've improved by at least 9 wins over their previous year's record every year since Nate became coach, and I'm supposed to get my knickers in a bunch over the fact that they don't play like a D'Antoni team?
wow just wow... I mean this in a non personal attack way mods.. but your lack of basketball knowledge disturbs me.
+1 The Blazers will not be a "running team", but they will get more opportunistic fastbreaks than in the past, simply because they have been adding some players that can actually *do* that.
