Let's be realistic about Nate!

over the top talent. I am an ambassador for the Sixers site, and visit there a good bit. Seeing them go through thier coaching search, it’s not pretty. We’re fortunate and if for some crazy reason the Blazers let go of Nate, we take a huge step backwards. If you’re not sld on him yet, you probably never will be. The guy works miracles, and if you can see better than him the ins and outs of coaching, that begs the question why aren’t you out there?

Batum has no plays designed for him because he’s not a great ball handler. He’s not good at creating his own shot.

I disagree with this scouting report. Batum has above average ball-handling skills for a 22 year old NBA SF and has shown great improvement re: getting his own shot, thanks to the coaching ability of Monty Williams

I don’t think it’s worth any time or effort speculating about Nate’s future, because Paul Allen and the Vulcans hold him in high regard from his days up in Seattle. But the thing that McMillian will have to prove to his critics is his ability to take a team deep into the NBA playoffs. Until he can do that, he’ll just be a roster-rebuilding coach, not a championship-caliber master of the sidelines like Pop or P-Jack

Everyone there complained that Doc Rivers didn’t posses the it factor to win the big games in the NBA

Doc wasn’t winning big games until Tom Thibodeau (and KG) came along and took care of his team’s defense. Would that Nate had such a high-quality assistant coach, in Portland, then he might have similar success as Rivers

Rudy T did win 2 championships elsewhere, with an incredibly talented Houston squad and an unstoppable player in Olajuwon. Those Houston teams are proof that supremely talented teams win championships. I don’t think Rudy T was a great coach

I’m well aware of Rudy T’s track record at Houston, and so were the L*kers when they hired him in ’04. As we both know, he was fired after going 24-19 with a team that had reached the finals the year before, which of course prompted Jerry Buss to rehire Jackson the next year and eventually Phil led them back to the finals.

Perhaps you think that Del Harris would be a better comparison to Nate? He had a young Bry*nt and Shaq in ’97-98 and was swept in the WC finals by Utah, then was let go after the team started out 6-6 the following November. Of course everybody remembers what happened in 1999-2000 when Phil came onboard.

Same talent…three straight rings.

A coach can’t win without talent, but the wrong coach can also prevent young talent from ever reaching their potential. The truth is in the middle: it takes both to win, no one can assemble a star-studded roster and win a championship by simply rolling the ball out on the floor. Gene Shue found that out firsthand, back in 1977.

championships in the mid-‘90s. So yeah, that’s indeed an instance wherein a medicore coach rode a supremely talented player to the promise land. Yet, Tomjanovich was the last so-so head coach to win it all — although Avery Johnson almost accomplished that in 2006, while I consider Doc Rivers to have improved starting in 2007 ‘cause of his ability to step back and delegate responsibilities to more intelligent individuals like Tom Thibodeau — thus, there’s plenty of reason to argue that Nate McMillan should’ve been fired as of yesterday.

Nate was promised by Paul Allen that he could build up a team from scratch the right way and he has done that

I’m not so sure that Nate was ever given that much autonomy by Paul Allen. As we learned from Millsap’s agent last July, the Blazers don’t always consider “positions” when acquiring talent. KP has created logjams in the past by stockpiling talent and Nate has tried to make them all fit. I also take exception to the drafting of players like Sergio and Patty Mills, who don’t appear to fit the mold of “McMillian-type” defenders.

I’m not arguing against Nate’s regular-season success, he’s taken some dis-jointed roster parts and kept the ship afloat, despite a lot of adversity. What we need to see is the kind of coaching strategies that will win playoff series. Team defense that leads to easy baskets. A half-court offense that isn’t so predictable and easy to defend. Exploiting mis-matches and “riding” the hot hand. Working the referees. Above-average NBA pick and roll offense, and defense.

I’m not saying that Nate has to do all the coaching, either. He should be open to new ideas as well as acquiring assistant coaches who can improve the team at both ends of the court. Of course, we can expect McMillan to be loyal to Dean and the other long-time members of his coaching staff, but if the team hits a plateau in their development then “someone” at Blazer’s HQ needs to suggest some systemic changes. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Nate has to go, but if he’s resistant to change his staff (or system) and the team fails to advance in the post season (again) then could be asked to step down.

Is it possible that the Sonic’s front office was trying to get Nate to make changes to his system leading up to the time that he was offered the Blazer’s job? I remember Nate was feeling unwanted by the Seattle management (or they had “philosophical differences”) and this made him receptive to joining the Blazers—perhaps so he could rebuild Portland and continue teaching his system to a new team—without any opposition from the front office?

Winning 2 games gave us a legitimate chance to win the series, though we lacked the talent to do so. I don’t see how any other coach would’ve made us better off.

Not to mention I don’t know why you’re being so critical of PT decisions when I don’t think any elite coach would have done any different. Do you really think Phil Jackson would’ve played Cunningham or Pendergraph either? They were basically drafted as rookie roster filler. Finally, all the offensive plays in the world won’t help when you simply don’t have enough proven scorers who can get their shot on demand. When you are depending on Andre Miller, who’s not even a top tier scoring PG, as your primary shot creator, your offense is probably not going to function well. I thought Nate did as good a job as any playing to our strengths with what we had by the end of the season. We took advantage of our length and athleticism to crash the offensive glass, creating more opportunities for open shots, and I very much appreciate that Nate seems to understand the value of offensive rebounding. I don’t think it’s an accident that our teams have ranked highly in that category the last few years.

The main point I’ve been trying to make is that coaches are largely overrated. I think some are bad enough to hurt the team, but most are probably good enough to win a championship given talented enough players. I think Nate falls in the latter category given his track record and what he’s been given to work with.

For a major part of the season I though Nate was awesome for keeping this team going — then I realized that it had nothing to do with him.

Wow, if you don’t think coaching had anything to do with keeping the team together then you must be blinded by a strong dislike for Nate. Keeping a team together and playing hard is a coaches most important job. You should read Visionary2’s posts. I disagree with him but he is at least willing to give Nate credit for keeping the team together and gives solid reasons for wanting Nate gone.

Basically, the injuries forced Nate to make every move he made this season. If there were no injuries we’d never have seen Cunningham or Pendergraph — Nate would never have played them in his limited, absolutely timed players rotations.

So having to play 2 2nd round rookies and a 37 year old insurance policy made Nate’s job easier. I really don’t follow that logic.

injuries forced Nate to make every move he made this season

There’s no doubt about this, starting with Nic Batum before game 1. Nate started Webster for the first 5 games and the team went 2-3. Then he put Miller in the starting lineup (3 guards) and they went 7-2.

I’d say the biggest beneficiary of the injuries was Bayless. Jerryd didn’t play a minute in the first 5 games. Then Rex came off the bench in game 6 and had his first ROWR! of the season against the Spurs. If Nic had been healthy, when would Bayless have been given a chance?

We’re talking about a lottery pick now, not a 2nd round draft choice

Nate’s going to be outcoached by the upper echelon coaches forever. I just didn’t realize he’d be expose by middle of the pack coaches like Alvin Gentry

I would add that defense is mostly about having a couple of elite defenders on your team

Sorry, but we don’t agree. One of the reasons the Celtics are so good is that Tibs has gotten all of the players to buy into playing intense team defense. It takes everybody selling out and being on the same page re: rotations. I don’t think Nate can get Roy and LMA to do this consistently, but a new defensive assistant coach might be able to, which is why I’ve been harping on going after Tibs for the last 2 years.

Scott Brooks and Scott Skiles are other examples of NBA coaches who have gotten better-that-expected defensive effort out of their rosters

managed to take a collection of inferior individual defenders in Houston and turn them into a top-six defense — and that’s according to defensive rating, which accounts for efficiency — for four straight seasons from 2003-2004 to 2006-2007. Suffice it to say, Nate McMillan and Dean Demopoulos’ mix of the outdated SOS pressure defense with the occasional matchup zone — or George Karl and Tim Grgurich’s mix of aggressive trapping defense with the occasional amoeba zone — is piddling crap compared to Van Gundy and Thibodeau’s coaching of old-fashioned, staunch man-to-man defense.

Oden’s a big 5, LMA’s a tall 4, Roy is a big 2, and Miller is a big 1. When we were playing Outlaw at the 3, we were a huge team. I don’t think we’re built at present to run at will, especially with our star scorer being at his most efficient in the half court.

I’d like to see us push the pace, but most of that comes from getting stops on D. We are not a good team when we force a fast tempo.

But there’s so much more to it than that. The Coaching staff had to keep the players motivated to keep moving while the wheels were falling off, they had to find a healthy mix of zone and man to man to to cover up the lack of center’s, they had to get 2 2nd round rookies up to speed and ready to play in far shorter time than expected, at one point they didn’t even have enough players to have a proper practice (and the coach injured himself trying to provide an extra body). Whatever aspect of Nate’s job was made easier by the tighter rotation was made up for ten fold by the difficulties our coaching staff faced this season.