Dean Demopoulos talks to TrueHoop

by Jumbo on Dec 22, 2007 2:49 PM PST

Henry Abbot's rocking another in his series of interviews with assistant coaches. This time with the Blazers' zone guru, Dean Demopoulos.

Lots of good stuff but my favorite graph was the one about how G.O.'s learning the NBA game while rehabbing:

What kind of teaching-the-game stuff can you do with Greg Oden while he's watching all this?
He gets it through osmosis a little bit. Just being there, feeling it, you know. Making sure that you show him things that are happening on the floor. I know when we were playing bigger, stronger players the Mournings, the Shaqs, Luke was making sure Greg watched how the power players play. And we don't have a power player on our team. There are only a few of them in the world.

Guys always learn better from watching guys. That's how little kids watch and mimic you. They learn better through watching and seeing what players do and stuff like that. You know, being around practice, he's a nice kid, he's a nice guy. Hopefully, he'll come back and get into condition for us and start from there.

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That was a nice find too

Mahalo for sharing. That was a great interview. One of my favorite parts was this quote from someone who made a comment, "I am all in support of this win streak." I am too.

Happy Holidays and Mele Kalikimaka!

by tominhawaii on Dec 22, 2007 4:13 PM PST reply actions

Winning Is Good

Thanks, Tom. That was my comment and I liked it, too. ;)

I was just writing about how I've heard an acquaintance say that he would prefer the Blazers get another high draft pick and get a good point guard rather than win enough this year to sneak into the playoffs and then be in the high picks in the first round.

I get what he's saying, but I really don't agree. Even setting aside how much fun it is to be winning, I just think it's more important to the long term success of the team to become familiar with and comfortable with winning now than to end up with 25 wins and a nice draft pick. We've got great talent now, we've got Oden and Fernandez coming next year . . . I'm willing to see what happens next year with more experience, those two guys coming in and a team that either challenged for a playoff spot this year or maybe even snuck in at the eighth seed and got valuable playoff experience. That sounds much more intriguing and exciting to me than doing poorly this year and getting another high draft pick.

Plus, I'm not completely sold on drafting one of the good point guards in this draft, anyway--even if it's one of the top two. You're looking at a 3-4 year learning curve and you're also ignoring the question of whether or not Brandon Roy takes over as point guard--in which case, would there even be a place for a high point guard pick from next summer's draft? To be honest, I more like the idea of Roy taking over as point or of going for a big splash in free agency.

Anyway, that's a big long tangent from this actual post. It's a great interview with Dean and I loved that part about how much easier it is to teach the young players how to do the right things when they're getting the positive reinforcement of a win streak--rather than yelling at them about doing the wrong things when they're already feeling down.

by jcaris on Dec 22, 2007 4:27 PM PST up reply actions

Agreed

We have all the pieces we need. It's time to start learning to win.

This is Portland. Portland loves the Blazers. Welcome to OUR house.

by ratbastird on Dec 22, 2007 5:11 PM PST up reply actions

We've got 6 good young point guards

Steve Blake, Jarrett Jack, Brandon Roy, Sergio Rodriguez, Taurean Green, Petteri Kopponen. That's a lot of young talent. We don't need any more. Same with small forwards. The draft plan should be to package whatever pick we do get with whomever we don't need or cash in order to move up to where ever we need to be to pick a can't miss big man prospect. Since we've got two guys (greg and lamarcus) who are going to be regular double double guys and two guys (frye and joel) who have the ability to put up a double double any given night, we can gamble on a specialist or quirky big man who doesn't have a complete game. A shot blocker or even an outside shooter. Our plan B should be to pick up a shooting guard.

by Jumbo on Dec 23, 2007 9:55 AM PST up reply actions

Sergio

Is it only McMillan who is down on Sergio. They way Dean talks about him you would think he is a 20 minute a game guy, which he is not.

Who wants to start up the boom tho Sergio movement (besides SergioFTW)

by jonestr on Dec 22, 2007 4:24 PM PST reply actions

he is

a 20 min. guy

by Bruno on Dec 22, 2007 10:17 PM PST up reply actions

That was truly

a magnificant interview. There is so much to be learned about the NBA in it. I don't know that I've seen better. I guess I've never been too much of a Dean Demopolis fan (just seeing him on the sidelines) but I am now. I think he gave us way more insight into this Blazer squad and NBA basketball than Nate is willing/capable of doing. Be sure, I'm not losing track that Nate's the one who's doing it for us and heaps of credit need to be piled on him.

Henry too needs props regarding his role in this informative interview.

Now let's see, who sent this to us ... well, it was Jumbo! Thanks Big J.

P.S. As an afterthought, what coach wouldn't love to be in the position that Nate has been placed in with all the coachable young talent that KP and Paul Allen provided him. I'll bet Dean would thrive in this environment but he'll probably get a head coaching stint for some failing team, without the Paul Allen and KP influence ... which will likely be so challenging that it will be hard to succeed.

by TwoDeep on Dec 22, 2007 7:27 PM PST reply actions