I was but a boy when Adelman was the coach, and thus I don’t feel like I can intelligently critique him. I really liked him though, and he seemed pretty good. Obviously, Ramsey was mostly before my time of basketball awareness but he was coach for 10 years and that’s pretty impressive. Oh, and he won the title I think, but we’ve won like 7 or 8 of those. Hmm? What? Only One?! Jesus, we suck…

I didn’t like Cheeks the coach, but I also admit that I don’t really know what was going on behind closed doors. I usually defend coaches too, because they can only do so much and players messing up shouldn’t mean the coaching is “bad”. But with Cheeks, it just seemed like… he didn’t know what he is doing.

Since Adelman, the coach I like best has to be Nate. I love this coach. I think he’s smart, tough, has shown a willingness to adapt and change when needed, and cares about his relationship with his players. I am easy on coaches though. It wasn’t Dunleavy’s fault no one could hit a layup in a game 7 fourth quarter.

Nate is Great. I was too young to know what the hell I was talking about for the rest, and hardly can string an intelligible word ‘bout the NBA now as it is.

Coaches get too much credit for better or worse. Cheeks has more experience now, but I doubt he suddenly became a good X’s and O’s guy who outcoaches the other team’s coach just because a bunch of hard playing athletic kids make the playoffs in a weak East. I always felt like he was more a caretaker for NBA players, not really a “coach” in the traditional sense.

With how everyone has improved, how our record has improved, how well we do out of timeouts, how he manages time outs and gets players to come in early before the season and all dat stuff, I think Nate is good. Of course, having Roy and LMA and soon Oden will make most coaches look like good coaches.

Mortimer

This is too hard. I moved to back to Oregon in September of 1996. I only have memories of four coaches and one doesn’t count. So basically I have Ramsay, Dunleavy, Cheeks, and McMillian to answer your questions. Ramsay would not be in consideration, except your first question is a no-brainer, because you have to go with the guy who won a championship.

Dunleavy and Cheeks were thrown under the bus by their players, and I do not have enough experience with McMillan to consider him for the last two questions.

I guess what I’m typing is that I want to answer question two with McMillan, but my heart won’t let me. I would have to say Dunleavy.

Question three I would have to say whichever coach, John Canzano hated the most.

1) Ramsay – won a championship with the prettiest brand of basketball I have yet to see duplicated
2) Ramsay – He had a great basketball mind.
3) Lenny Wilkens – He had to deal with a not quite healthy Walton and not near the talent that Ramsay ended up getting. Probably should have had the chance. But then who knows what might have happened?

I grew up with Adelman at the helm, so he’s my favorite. Dr. Jack Ramsay seems popular, but I never saw him coach.

Dunleavey and PJ were kinda hated on in their time, but don’t know if they deserved it.

Best : Dr. Jack Ramsay. He did benefit from a great player and a terrific team with almost perfect chemistry but he was also succesful at Philly and Buffalo. His tenure came at a time when head coaches had much more influence in direction and personnel and so that team was basically “his baby”. He had a fantastic game-time sense and a horrible fashion sense.

Favorite : Rick Adelman. A former Trailblazer with Northwest connections. Guided the team to some of it’s highest (two finals and one conference final) and lowest (losing two finals and one conference final) moments. A nice guy and good coach in his own right.

Underrated : Mike Dunleavy. His ‘99 COY award testifies to his ability but that dysfunctional, off-court misbehaving, revolving door era wrongly judged him.

Kevin Pritchard. I didn’t know anything about him at the time but for some reason I really liked him. I was hoping he’d continue as coach.

Cheeks did not command respect among his players (duh!) I always hated how the players called him “Cheeks”, not coach Cheeks, or coach, just “Cheeks”. Total lack of respect. I always thought Adleman was a poor X’s and O’s guy but I think he’s probably improved a bunch in that area. He was always a good ‘player’s coach’.

Actually, my picks would mirror Dr. Dave’s to the letter. .

The best coach of Blazer History has to be Jack Ramsay.

I can understand if folks are not old enough to remember him (I was 2 when he won the championship, but Jack was still around by the time I started watching games, so I remember him well). This guy was (is) just a great basketball mind, who understood what it took to win. I credit a lot of the success we had later with Clyde, Terry, Jerome, etc on the way he instilled leadership and discipline into those guys. This is in addition to mentoring another great coach in Adelman.

I have tremendous respect for Dr. Jack. It may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that Ramsay isn’t actually my favorite Blazer coach. That was Rick Adelman.

I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was the way that his voice would be hoarse from yelling at about the 4 minute mark of the first quarter. Or his humble coaching origins coaching at Chemeketa Community College in Salem. Or the fact that he was the Blazer’s first ever team captain back in the bad old days. Whatever it was, he was the right coach, at the right time, for the right team, and I wish we’d never let him go.

He is also the coach who, IMO, got the rawest deal. Rick is, and has been for the 15 years since we let him go, a viable head coach in the NBA. And one who consistently makes the playoffs. He gets his teams to play above themselves. No, he’s never won it all. A lot of very good coaches (Jerry Sloan, Don Nelson, Larry Brown, et al) can say the same. The way he was shown the door in Portland, after basically one down season (“down” being a team that made the playoffs, but got outed in the first round), really rankled me at the time, and still bothers me.

Now, while I like Nate on the current squad, I would have just as happily skipped PJ, Mike Dunleavey, and even Mo Cheeks, if we could have just kept Rick around. He could have been our Jerry Sloan.

Best coach: Kevin Pritchard. I mean, look what he’s done for us! He got Roy and Aldridge, and has built an amazing team. What? He did that as General Manager? There’s a difference?! Nevertheless, on those things alone, definitely the best.

Favorite Coach:Rolland Todd. Sure, I wasn’t even born yet when he was coach, but something about the name makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And that’s the complete opposite of what I felt hearing Stu Inman’s name.

Rawest Deal: Jack Ramsey. You win a championship in your first year, and suddenly everyone expects you to win another one. And he never did live up to those unbearable expectations. He probably died in anonymity a week after he got fired, or something like that, and was never seen again.

Moral of the Story: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

to Mike Schuler falling off the chair the day they made him coach.
Other than that, I loved the way P.J. worked the refs.
Loved how Cheeks sang the National Anthem.
loved Dr. Jack’s pants!
Hey! K.P. got the most out of D. Miles than anybody ever had before.
Props to Mike Dunleavy to wanting to through down with Sheed.
But at the end of the day it’s Sarge. Open, Honest, a true profesional. He will evolve as a coach as this team evolves as a group.

The best Blazer Coach ever?-I think you have to go with Ramsay. He’s H.O.F., legendary. Fantastic basketball mind and supreme competitor. Implemented much of the fast break style of play that has become part and parcel of what the entire N.B.A. is all about today.

Favorite Blazer Coach-Well in my personal case, it is the same-Ramsay.

Most underrated/rawest deal- I always thought Mike Dunleavy did an excellent job as coach. The teams handed him by Blazer Management at the time admittedly were assembled with no eye towards chemistry and yet he guided them to the very pinnacle of success. He balanced diverse and conflicting ego’s on supremely talented but volatile rosters. We ultimately did not win a championship so he is not remembered, I think, by most as one of our best coaches, but I always have thought he was.
I always liked Dunleavy, about the only mistake I would attach to his tenure would be the miss evaluation of Jermaine O’ Neal. Which was a mistake, but overall Dunleavy was a great coach IMO.

Fav=Rick Adleman
Raw= Tie between Rick and Dunleavy

They shouldn’t have fired either. I would have loved to have tried to continue the Drexler era with a reload at the center position

I can’t say for certain who was great or who was worse for anyone from before 1995, but I would just like to give some love to the coach who surely has the rawest deal – Mike Dunleavy. This guy had a powder keg of egos to work with his entire time in Portland and was able to turn it into something. He’s the guy that was able to have Rasheed come off the bench with minimal whining. That achievement alone was reason enough for his coach of the year award. Since he left the Blazers he’s had reasonable success with the Clippers, with the failures recently due more to injury than any coaching decision.

Jack is the man, alway always will be #1 or 1A in my book. He’s like your first love, you never forget that one, special till the end.

Jack and Rick with Mike D, Lenny and Mo’ rounding out my fav 5

Underrated has got to be Nate (McMillian?), but that will soon change….in a very good way..

Best PTB coach ever—- Jack Ramsay. You cant argue with success and Dr Jack reached the pinnacle of it. Ramsay was also a winning coach at St Josephs, and probably the most successful coach they ever had either. Ramsay related to everybody, and unquestionably had the respect of all of his players.

My favorite Coach was Rick Adelman. He had plenty of talent to work with and I loved how he would do mass substitutions for the starters, with guys like Coop, Abdelnaby, Danny Young, Drazen, and Uncle Cliffy. Adelman made the game fun to behold. And it was back when we had all quality characters playing so well together.

At the time alot of people moaned to learn Adelman was let go. He was a darn good coach for the PTB, and the fans related to Adelman. At the time, Adelmans idea of an up-tempo Drexler-Porter-Kersey-Williams-Chris Dudley starting 5 went for not when Dud’s went down with that terrible injury. The team wained and as too often happens, the coach takes the blame. Its a pleasure to see Adelman doing so well without his own teams big man out.

Jack Ramsay/Kevin Pritchard

I started going to the Rose Garden right after Cheeks got fired. KP is my boy. I saw every home game he coached. Nate might be the guy teaching the players how to run the offense, but KP is the guy who taught the whole Blazers organization how to be awesome again.