game changing stretch of the 2nd quarter

http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20091120&game=PORGSW

miller-rudy-webster-howard-pryz -2

miller-rudy-roy-howard-pryz -4

miller-blake-roy-howard-pryz +1

blake-rudy-roy-howard-pryz -7

blake-rudy-webster-howard-pyrz -3

against

curry-ellis-morrow-radmanovic-randolph +15

-Pryzbilla played 15 of the last 16 minutes of the 1st half. At some point you have to guess that he was getting very tired against a faster smaller frontcourt of morrow-radmanovic-randolph.

-Howard got a 10 minute stretch of playing time in the 2nd quarter. He is even slower than pryzbilla. i think it's still a small possibility that all the little mistakes he's been making is due to unfamiliarity and not yet being comfortable. But i doubt it. He probably can't handle the speed of the game anymore.

-You cannot play howard and pryzbilla together. You especially cannot play miller howard and pryz together.

-Rudy and roy don't play well together because roy just watches when rudy goes to work instead of thinking about where he should go to be in a more advantageous situation if rudy isn't able to create. And roy never looks for rudy when roy makes his moves so rudy stops even trying to be open.

-I don't see how nate could leave howard and pryzbilla out there for a full 10 minutes. All of his adjustments were related to the line of thinking "if i change the people playing 1-2-3 then the 4 and 5 will improve their play." ok. That’s fine to think that and let it run for 4 or 5 minutes, but at a certain point you have to start thinking that howard and pryz are the problems. And that they are the ones hampering our 1-2-3 from being productive offensively. The first adjustment he made during that game changing stretch of the 2nd quarter was to sub roy in for webster. He was probably thinking, "howard/pryz/miller/webster not enough fire-power to make up for howard/pryz so let me get roy back in there." Like i mentioned before, rudy and roy do not seem to play well together the way blake and roy do. It seems like blake plays even better since he's been moved to the 2 and roy to the 3 which damages the idea that rudy can take over blake's spot at the 2 because blake gets so many better looks via roy than rudy seems to. Our 4 best lineups all contain blake:  http://www.82games.com/0910/0910POR2.HTM and blake has the highest +/- per 48 minutes on our team: http://www.82games.com/0910/0910POR1.HTM

Nate's next adjustment was to bring in blake for rudy and during that stretch we were +1. Then the killer stretch was when nate brought back rudy for miller. This was the one single defining moment of stupidity that cannot be forgiven. Rudy is the "fastest" player on our team (meaning he can be very effective with the game moving up and down quickly) and roy-blake-howard-pyrzbilla are probably our four slowest players (especially if blake is playing the 1 as opposed to the 2 where he seems to be able to play faster). It’s hard to be able to play collectively fast and slow at the same time unless it's the miller-blake-roy-aldridge-oden lineup. At this point if you're going to bring rudy back in you have to bring aldridge back in with him. Or if you want to leave miller in then bring oden back in to counter the warriors small lineup that had been playing for 7 straight minutes. If anybody should know his team well it's nate; and the series of moves he made late in the 2nd quarter clearly showed that he cannot think in real time on the sideline. I call it the "doug collins syndrome". I have a lot of respect for doug collins and he is an absolutely brilliant analyst. He is well studied and he has a great ability to read the game as it moves along. Often he can predict the plays that opposing teams will run. BUT, once you put him on the sidelines he cannot do anything right. With all the pressure on he cannot keep up with the pace of the game. This is what i think happens to nate. The game moves too fast for him and often when his team is hit with a series of quick blows he is too startled to think about what the right moves will be.

I can go on and on about all the different things that he could've done to adapt the situation but bringing in rudy into a lineup of blake-roy-howard-pryzbilla was truly dumb. You can't figure out your mistake too late and try to put a "too-late" fix on it. In the 2nd half aldridge played for about 19 minutes straight. So it's ok to play aldridge for 19 minutes straight to start the 2nd half but it's not ok to bring aldridge back in with 4 minutes left in the 1st half in the midst of a game-changing 17-2 run when howard travels on a routine pass and bounces the ball off his foot and pryzbilla looks gassed trying to keep up with anthony randolph. what is nate doing to his players' heads? Is it that important to massage the egos of his players by giving juwan howard 3 or 4 games to prove that he's wack? To punish aldridge-oden if they get 2 fouls? To play a really weird starting lineup of miller-blake-roy-aldridge-oden? I'm beginning to believe the only reason he thought of that starting lineup was because he thought to himself "miller and oden play well together, but roy and blake play well together. Ah shucks just play them all together." then how about rudy and aldridge? They play arguably better together than oden/miller and blake/roy.

I can feel for nate too… because given those 3 pairs of players that play well together it's pretty much impossible to keep all three pairs happy and it's clear that nate has decided that blake/roy is his best go-to pair. Pretty unfortunate that our five best players can't play together because they play awfully with roy: miller-rudy-roy-aldridge-oden. I think the only lineups that have a chance with roy at the end of games are miller-rudy-roy-aldridge-pryzbilla, blake-rudy-roy,alridge-pryzbilla, and miller-blake-roy-aldridge-oden. But in each of those scenarios one of miller, rudy, or oden will be disappointed. So nate does have a difficult job, but i wish he wasn't so over-protective of roy versus aldridge and oden. How many times do you see nate irate that roy didn't get a call and how you never see nate flinch when oden or aldridge get something ridiculous called against them.

Cunningham, being an under-sized 4 would've been perfect fit to give a trial run against the warriors. Where's bayless on a night where something fresh and different might have come in handy? This season is going to be so philosophically difficult and complicated with all the different options...

It’s still possible that Nate is an evil genius: http://www.blazersedge.com/2009/11/21/1167941/nate-mcmillan-mediocre-coach-or