blazers 2010-11 NBA CHAMPS

I love Nate McMillan as a coach, he does many things right.  He strongly emphasizes fundamentals, tough defense and has gained respect of his players, staff, and others around the league.  However, I believe our offense is stagnant in part to his style of coaching.  Good defense doesn't necessarily create solid offense. I cant blame Roy for his love of the iso play, as he is the best player on the team and excels with the ball in his hands.  But, the iso sets should be saved for the fourth quarter or when our offense is totally stagnant.  Having no true inside post threat, no knock on LA, our team needs to strongly emphasize ball movement on the offensive end.  This means backdoor cuts, multiple screens on and off the ball to create easy looks.  It will also make teams more honest on the defensive end and have to guard every player on the floor.  As much as I dislike the Utah Jazz(LOL, diehard blazer fan) i would love to see a similiar offense to Jerry Sloans implemented, atleast until Oden, our primary post threat returns.  Our team could be extremely lethal with such an offense.  It would be impossible to guard Roy, Batum, Matthews, Bayless, and Rudy if they are constantly running off picks and then looking for the next pass.

This season I would like to see the blazers expand from their ultra-conservative offensive approach.  I dont want our team to become a run-and-gun phoenix suns prototype, although, if we did implement such an offense, with our roster we could achieve decent success doing so.  Batum is a great player that needs to be unleashed, not sitting in the deep corner waiting for threes.  He has the ability to be a lethal scorer if plays are called with him cutting to the hoop against smaller players as well as bigger and slower ones.  I know I am largely harping on the same points but our offense needs some sort of a jumpstart.  Miller is a very solid PG in terms of running an offense, and will look to get everyone involved.  BRoy should have the ball more, but not always in iso sets, as the isolation play is one of the most predictable and easily defended plays in the game. 

I think McMillan should worry less about catering to his players offensive tendencies and force them to do things that are not the norm.  LA and Roy do not need constant isolation plays called for them to score, they can score at will, and I would argue that a more fluid offense with multiple screens on each position, (yes LA and BRoy would be running and screening as well) would create better opportunities for our stars to score by creating mismatches and forcing the defense to scramble to them.  The defense would have a much harder time defending than in an iso set, which I saw so many times last year and the result was a stifled offense.  Roy and LA can still get the same large amount of touches in each game. But putting them in different positions, unfamiliar to the defense, would create huge chances for our role players to excel, and I could see many games this season where someone other than Roy and La would lead the team in scoring and our team would still win. 

I am done with this unorganized rant, just really needed to get some thoughts/hopes out for some offensive changes this season.  GOOOOOOOO BLAZERS!