I've seen plenty of wonderings about Nate to get the feeling that a lot of people wonder about how good Nate would be with a team that could play uptempo, and a lot of worrying that he won't let Portland do so because he is so defensive minded.

Check out this link: http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2005.html

McMillan coached the Sonics to a 52 win season, plus a very competitive series against the eventual champion Spurs, with a Sonics team that was 3rd in offense, and 26th in defense (based on points per posession).  In fact, the Sonics were in the top five on offense several times under his guidance.  They were always in the bottom half on defense, and were rated the worst in the league after he left (Points per, again), and had a 17 win drop off.  

Nate can run, and can win, if he has the capable talent.  Last year, we were Zach centered, young, and inexperienced.  I know a lot of people love Sergio, I do too, but we would have had a worse record had we opened things up.  We simply were not capable.  People forget amongst the much deserved accolades to some of the players that there is a coach behind them, and he is a damn good one, who can get wins out of a team where not everybody could (Seattle got worse and Portland got better when he switched, and don't think he had nothing to do with helping both situations develop).  When we are ready to run, and it suits our game, we will, and we will be successful.  

Nate is a competitor first and foremost.  If we are successful scoring 100 points a night, he'll push us to do that.  If we lose when the score starts getting up there, he'll grind it out.

The big question for Nate, is "is he a championship coach?"  That  
question can only be definitively answered by seeing what he does with this team when we reach contender status.  Debate away on that one, but cut the guy some slack for not building something he hasn't yet been given the proper tools for.

Sorry if this post made people here out to be more negative or critical about Nate than they really are (at least on this issue), but I've just never understood the pace-of-game criticism I've heard against him.

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