With questions swirling around Nate McMillan's offensive schemes and substitution patterns involving Greg Oden - and to some extent Joel Przybilla - I was wondering about Nate's experience coaching a dominant big man, like the team and fans envision Oden to become. (He arguably played alongside one in Shawn Kemp.) Has he ever had a center good enough to warrant an inside-outside offensive approach going over the big man on many plays? A guy who won games for him on the defensive end? Or is he a proponent of small-ball playing even without a true center for stretches because that's what he had to do in the past for lack of better options?

Is Nate maybe just learning how to use Oden effectively while we are observing him, right now before our eyes?

Here is a review of the centers Nate was able to work with so far in his career as a head coach:

2000-01 season, Seattle:

Mr. Sonics first head coaching job taking over after a few games from Paul Westphal, and maybe the best big man he ever had right at the start: Patrick Ewing. But at this time, Ewing was 38. And while he did appear in 79 games that season and played 26 minutes per game putting up some respectable numbers, he was a shadow of his former self and would retire a season later in Orlando. The other big guys on that team: The notorious forward-center Vin Baker (6'11") at the beginning of his decline, recording his lowest point and rebounding totals per game so far in his career while appearing in 76 games. And the not very talented youngsters Jelani McCoy (70 games, starting 44) and Olumide Oyedeji (he stars in 1 game), both 6'10". The team missed the playoffs that season.

2001-02 season, Seattle:

Vin Baker and Olumide Oyedeji are still there. Ewing and McCoy are gone. There is a new big man in town: 7'0" Jerome James, in his sophomore NBA season. At age 26. They got him straight from European powerhouse club KK Buducnost, after he failed to stick with the Sacramento Kings and the Harlem Globetrotters two years earlier. Well, yeah, most of you know how that turned out. More on him later. The team had 3 more players capable of playing center: The Montenegrin sensation Pedrag Drobniak (6'11"), a 26 year old "rookie". Journeyman Calvin Booth, who appeared in 15 games. And F-C Antonio Harvey (6'11), coming straight from Portland to the deep but not very good big men bench in Seattle towards the end of his playing career. He would appear in 5 games, and record almost as many fouls (8) as rebounds and points (9). Gary Payton, forward Rashard Lewis and a few others willed the team into the playoffs without much help from their pivot men, where they lost in the first round to the San Antonio Spurs.

2002-03 season, Seattle:

Jerome James, Calvin Booth, Pedrag Drobniak returned. They were joined by Vitali Potapenko (6'10") coming from Boston in his 8th NBA season, which turned out to be one of his 3 worst. And journeyman Elden "Big E/Easy E" Campbell (6'10") came to the team for the second part of the season. That's right, I'm counting 5 centers on the depth chart again. None of them good. They finished 5th in the Pacific Division and missed the playoffs.

2003-04 season, Seattle:

More James and a lot more Booth and Potapenko in a shortened rotation. Drobniak and Campbell were gone. Sophomore Leon Smith (6'10") would appear very briefly in the last 4 minutes of his career. The San Antonio Spurs had used a 29th pick on him in 1999 before instantly trading his rights to Dallas, who signed him to a 3 year deal at $1.4 million before realizing he was a dud and never played him before shipping him along to the Hawks (100 minutes) and Bucks (0). Almost 30 picks later in the 99 draft the Spurs lucked into Manu Ginobili. Where were we? Ah, Seattle had no good big men and missed the playoffs again.

2004-05 season, Seattle:

Jerome James' "breakout season". He appeared in 80 games, scored 395 points, grabbed 241 rebounds, and weighed 300 pounds. Still his career high. Well, maybe he has gained weight. Patrick Ewing was still able to do more at 38 - and in all prior years. Never mind that backup power forward Reggie Evans (736 boards!) out-rebounded and a young Nick Collision even out-scored him thoroughly (not to speak of fellow forwards Rashard Lewis and Vladimir Radmanovic). But thanks to Isiah Thomas falling in love with his play, James' agent managed to parlay a good stretch at the end of the season and a short playoff-run into a multi-year $30 million contract from the Knicks. From which he is living to this day. Now in Chicago. Likely not playing for 1 minute. Vitaly Potapenko was still in Seattle in a reduced role. Oh, and the Sonics also drafted a 19 years old center talent named Robert Swift with the 12th pick that year. Nate didn't seem to like the rookie all that much in training, so he played him in just 16 games averaging 5 minutes, thus giving Robert a lot of time to plan how to decorate his body in the future while he was sitting on the bench.

2005-06 season, Portland:

Driving down I-5 to take his new coaching job, Nate was now tasked working with center-forward Theo Ratliff (6'10"), Korean standout Ha Seung-Jin (7'3"), and Joel Przybilla (7'0"). None of them was a polished offensive player to carry any scoring load, or terribly healthy this season for that matter. Joel and Theo both missed about 25 games, Ha only appeared in 27. And the team had bigger issues than creating plays for center domination anyway.

2006-07 season, Portland:

Ratliff was moved, so the newly acquired Jamaal Magloire (6'11") in his one season with the team, F-C Raef LaFrentz (6'11"), Joel (in just 43 games), a bit of 7'1"  Luke Schenscher (11 games) and another F-C with rookie LaMarcus Aldridge (6'11") had to man the 5 position. Portland again missed the playoffs, and the talk of the town was rookie of the year Brandon Roy.

2007-08 season, Portland:

Everything was supposed to become different with the #1 pick 7'0" rookie center prodigy Greg Oden, only he had to undergo knee surgery before the season as we all remember all too painfully and was sidelined the whole year. So coach Nate had to make do with another year of Joel (playing in 77 games and starting in all but 10 of them), Raef LaFrentz in his last healthy season, and some relief from 6'11" non-traditional forward-center Channing Frye just acquired in the draft day deal for shipped out high-scoring power forward Zach Randolph.

2008-09 season, Portland:

Finally Greg Oden was healthy, and his belated rookie season was about to begin. Nate and everybody in the organization marveled about how great Greg looked in training. And then, another injury a few minutes into the season stepping on the foot of fellow center prospect Andrew Bynum. Nice. A slow start into the year, foul trouble limiting his minutes, Channing also not completely healthy at the start of the season, so a lot of Joel and some LaMarcus on center. When Greg seemed to find his rhythm just before the All-Star break he was sidelined again for a month. Then some solid play in the return to the playoffs fronting the gigantic Yao Ming by both centers, but ultimately they were mostly used as defensive weapons. You know the result.

Other experience:

But wait, Nate was was also the defensive coordinator of the US Senior Men's Team in the Olypmics and World Championships, right? He must have picked up something there working for a few weeks with some of the top big men and coaches of the nation. Well, probably quite a bit, and new experiences and long discussions with some very good coaches and players definitely can't hurt. But in international ball most big men the US team encounters aren't that big by NBA standards. There is an advantage to having some more mobile players who can shoot from further outside and set moving picks, though of course a monster in the paint gobbling up rebounds also is nice. Here are the statistics from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Power forward Chris Bosh (138) got the same minutes as the best young center currently in the NBA in Dwight Howard (130). And a number of those came at center since he turned out to be the better defender against international competiton, with Carmelo Anthony or LeBron James playing power forward.

Similar at the 2006 World Championships in Japan, when the big guys besides Howard (121 minutes) and Bosh (109) where the mobile big men Brad Miller (50) and Elton Brand (157) to go alongside LeBron or Anthony.

Nate's coaching colleagues wouldn't mind. Coach K also isn't exactly known to have or play plenty of dominant real big men in his career at Duke (Boozer, Laettner, ...), and Mike D'Antoni had no problems to pass off players like Amare Stoudemire, Boris Diaw (6'8"), and now David Lee (6'9") as centers in his system.

2009-10 season, Portland:

And that brings us to the current season, again with reports of Greg Oden looking very good in training after his first full summer workout regimen and improvements in pre-season play, but still in foul trouble in the early going and with debatable involvement into the offensive schemes. With his time likely split about in half with Joel, and some occasional small-ball with LaMarcus at center.

Now I'm not really in favor of hiring a specialist to fix a weakness on the coaching staff, often causing big names to be thrown around who don't have to be better than who is currently working with Greg. Yes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a great player and did teach Andrew Bynum some tricks for a while, but he also taught the amazing Michael "Kandi Man" Olowokandi as a special assistant for the Clippers, Kwame Brown, Chris Mihm, ... to not much effect. Hakeem Olajuwon can't make Yao's foot healthy or even a healthy Yao spin around like he did. Patrick Ewing couldn't yet teach Howard his bread-and-butter baseline jumper. The players ultimately have to figure out what works for them on their own, while being trusted by the coach and involved in the team.

I'm also not saying Nate has to be a sub-par big man coach or doesn't know how to design plays for a center. At all. Just that he doesn't yet have much experience with a center on his team tasked and able to dominate either side of the court. So naturally, one might assume his strategies have been focused on other positions so far with the center as an also-ran on the floor. It will be interesting to see how that evolves while Nate and his staff try to make Oden into the Oden it hoped to get when drafting him.