Mistakes made by Management and Nate

You don't get to be in the position that we are in if HUGE mistakes weren't made. I can't name all of them as they are just to many to remember so I'll start it of and let you all finsh it.

1) Oden vs. Durant draft.

All though I don't consider this to be mistake by KP since most teams would have taken Oden before Durant and the fact that we needed a dominat Center to take us forward in the Playoffs. I know that we all wished that we had taken Durant instead but it doesn't change the facts mentioned above. If KP and co. got all the medical information on Greg and it was not evident that his carreer would be spent rehabbing instead of playing games then there was no way for them to know.  A MISTAKE (but one that can be forgiven)

2) Nate's coaching, offense.

a) Tempo

 I believe that he started playing his slow-paced offense because we had a young team with athletes that could only play in a fast-paced offense and he wanted them to learn to play Playoff basketball. That was the right thing to do at that time. What was not right was to continue playing a slow tempo just because one player was not capable of running up and down the court. What was not right was making us a jump shooting team. What was not right was not teaching the bigs to set proper screens. What was not right was not being flexiable with the talent at his disposal, like Bayless.

b) Subs.

 Nate can't be flexiable when it comes to his substitutions. Why continue to stick with Dante when he can't hit his shots? Its not like he's that much of a better rebounder than Babbitt, but at least Luke can stretch the floor better than Dante can. At least if the bench scoring is in trouble than put in Luke but if defense is need than Dante but how about giving players a chance? The problem seems to be that Nate has his favourites and will stick with them even if they don't deserve it. As a player that isn't one of his favs, it must be real fustrating trying to covince him that they too deserve playing time perhaps even more than the guys that they are competing with.

c) Defense

 For a defensive coach, we haven't exacting been one of the top defensive teams for the past few seasons, now have we? Don't say that we haven't had the players cause they are teams/coaches that have managed to play good defense without the defenders. We have always been just o.k when it comes to playing defense, not what you would expect from a defensive coach right? The biggest problem though is that we only play defense when the offense is working. When the shots stop falling, the defense stops working. Not exactly good coaching from a respectable defensive coach like Nate now is it?

d) Guards.

 For a man that used to be a combo type guard in the NBA he sure knows nothing about coaching them. He prefers his PGs to be very traditional which is very unlike what he used to do with the Sonics. Can't say that I was ever a fan of his offense as a player, it was all Payton as I remember. Allowing Management to trade Bayless without demading another veteran PG was all on Nate or at least they have allowed us to think that way. Nate should have thrown a fit if they refused, maybe he did but we don't know what they were all thinking. When most coaches would have started Miller right away, Nate did not. A proven starting play-maker was allowed to sit on the bench while a carreer backup started over him.  Then we get to Armon Johnson getting the backup PG job ahead of a more experienced(slightly yes, but still) player in Mills. Who is their right minds decides to start the season with 2 extremely inexperienced PGs as the only backups? There are so many teams that have at least 3 experienced PGs on the books, none of them were stupid enough to allow their GMs to trade them for luxury tax relief. This mistake has to be shared from the top, Paul Allen on down(Nate).

c) 4th Quarter.

The biggest mistake I have is the treatment of Aldridge. Not making him a bigger part of the 4th quarter offense in the past few seasons is the reason for his inability to make shots down the stretch this season. I haven't clue as to his actual percentages by season shooting in the 4th quarter but it must be down alot this year. This leads us to the dreaded Roy ISOs. Because Nate seems to love calling ISOs for his lone All-Star means that everyone just stands around waiting for Brandon to do something with the ball. That leads to everyone watching him and since the floor needs to be spaced for him, no one moves to get open well because they aren't supposed to touch the ball, its Roy's after all. The 4th quarter is usually the best time to attack the paint but then again there really isn't a quarter when we shouldn't. ISOs for just the one player doesn't allow for the other players to stay involved and committed to the cause. Its not like we have poor free throw shooters so there isn't a valid reason to just have Roy taking the shots int he 4th. I know its not what we all think but I firmly believe that LMA can do alot more than he is being allowed to do thus far. Had he been given the kind of responsibility that Roy got, we might well be seeing a much different player to the one we have today. I understand building this team around Roy but I can't understand relying on him so much that when we end up losing him to injury, the other players haven't a clue of what to do in the 4th quarter. Another thing that I don't understand is not trying to attack teams MORE in the 4th instead of settleing for jumpshots.

3) Management.

We still don't know the reason why KP was fired. I can only guess is that he failed to trade Roy. If that was not the reason then it seems that it should have been. How they can just give him a max contract when they knew about the situation with his knees I'll never know. Just how is that a good business decision, tell me. No player should be given a max contract for past accomplishments but only for potential future ones that the payer's past suggests he should be able to do. Then we come to the backup PG problem again, just how did they think that carrying 2 rookie PGs, Wall already has more minutes played than him so Mills is like a rookie, was going to be fine is just mindboggleing. Then we have all those European picks that were stashed while we wait for them to develop and none of them have yet to be worth it, except Rudy. I know its not a huge mistake but when you take in account the fact that we had other options that are better like either trading the picks that we didn't need or drafting the conventional way.

Well that was long, now let's hear the mistakes that I haven't mentioned.