Is Nate on the Hot Seat?

Assuming they don’t have another horrific injury year like last year, you’d like to hope they can get out of the first round. And if not, maybe it’s time to move on.

He has done a good job but If we are one and done again we need a less predictable coach who is not so easy to out coach,problem with that is I dont know who it would be

to get to 40 wins with that broken roster last year. Now, we’re talking about a hot seat situation? Damn if that ain’t fickle! This team has seemingly overachieved almost every year Nate has coached them. If they about face and tank it this year, then maybe they might wonder if it’s time, but I just don’t see that happening. This team is poised on the brink…bring on the naysayers! And then spray them down with a fire hose…They’re all wet. Go Blazers!

I think the roster is on the hot seat more than Nate is. I think Nate is viewed as a winner, someone who gets a lot out of what he has.
But I also think there is an expectation of more than this team has achieved yet. If that is not met, Nate could move from the warm seat to the hot seat.

I have tortoises and they run pretty darn fast if strawberries are involved

but the thought of finding a replacement terrifies me.

…probably not so much in the regular season. If he doesn’t make it out of the first round this year though…he’s probably gone. We’ve seen how patient Allen is…right?

That said, I highly disagree with the criticism. I think sometimes Portland fans are hypercritical…too much so. Nate is a very good coach who gets results in ways that others can’t. He’s not perfect, but nobody is. He’s had a young team with a lot of injuries and has still had solid results. His players respect him (except maybe Rudy) and he’s well-thought of in the NBA. He’s an assistant coach on Team USA for a reason. They could take anyone.

  Nate has shown me during his time here, that he can have a strong influence on the development of a young team.

   In my opinion he has guided this team through youthful development and freakish and extreme conditions of unexpected event and happening. And Really? He’s done a masterful job.

   What Nate hasn’t shown me (Yet) is if he can be succesful when NOT dealing with adversity. What can Nate do when The Blazers have the superior line-up? What can he do when we aren’t the younger team, or when it’s teams trying to match-up against US and not US trying to match-up against them.

   He’s shown he can rally the troops and get results BUT can he do more? Can he build chemistry and create roles when we are the favored team?

   I thought Nate played a great game of Chess last year with The Blazers, but he didn’t really get in gear until the adversity struck and almost forced him to give opportunity and in some cases until adversity and absence made line-up choices for him.

   Sure Nate’s on the hot seat. Like most N.B.A. coaches always are, gains are expected to be made and like all coaches they are chained to the expectations of ownership, the rest of management and the fans.

  If The Blazers are perceived or simply do underachieve? Then it will be Nate that get’s blamed disproportionately. Is it fair? No.

   I could be totally wrong, as this is pure speculation. But from what I sense about McMillan and his refusing to sign lengthy and lucrative contract extensions, I think Nate will be the hardest critic of himself. If he perceives he has lost the support of management/ownership and/or the team. If he feels his presence is no longer making the franchise or the team better? Then I think Nate himself will decide enough is enough. I think Nate very well end up in the hot seat, but I conversely don;t think he is going to care too much.

I think Nate could have justifiably got coach of the year last year because we won 50 games with all the injuries,
and because that award is given for regular season performance only (not the playoffs). I also don’t think we would have won in the playoffs against Phoenix regardless of what Nate did or didn’t do. The injuries (particularly to Roy) were just too much to overcome.

That said, I think Nate was out-coached in both the Houston playoff series and the Phoenix playoff series. The regular season is very much about motivating your veteran players and getting the most out of your younger players. Nate seems to do that very well (with the exception of Spaniards).

The playoffs however, are much more about strategy because you play the same team over and over again. In a close series one coach will make a move in one game and the other coach needs to make a counter-move in the next. Nate seems very poor on strategy and making counter-moves. It didn’t happen in the Houston series and it didn’t happen in the Phoenix series. I’m worried that unless Nate has a significant talent advantage, he isn’t going to be winning many playoff series. Maybe the new coaches will help, but if he loses in the first round (without injuries being a prime factor) I think he is gone.

It is most likely that Nate is in the hot seat.
Is that fair? IMO, it is too early to tell.
Can he go from developing promise talent to championship talent? again to early to tell because of injury.
We don’t know what Nate is capable of because like the team he is learning as he goes. He often coaches game to game whether then season to season. Meaning just because he played the Sun’s at a slow pace doesn’t mean he will play a team that is in the second game of a back to back at a slow pace.

I personally would like to see Nate go the distance with this team. That does not mean he is the best coach for the team, it just means that he started this team when they were infant’s and I think he should have the chance to help them grow.

Any father good or bad has to start from scratch with no experience. If he is a good father he will admit that it came from learning as you go and father each situation and seek advise on how to handle situations. That is also true with coaching and I feel Nate is doing that. Nate getting new assistant coaches shows that he is seeking help to advance his team. But FIRST, lets get them healthy and through one year as a team before we start asking for heads.

Dave, in general I agree with your philosophy that too much blame is being placed on coaching. I think Nate takes an unfair amount of criticism for individual games. I say that having done some of the heaping of unfair criticism over the last 3 years but you’ve evolved me from that state with posts like this one.

The question to me is deeper than individual games. Moneyball gets thrown around a lot with Pritchard and now Cho’s penchant for advanced stats. The system in Oakland was built around players who could get on base. The West Coast offense was a system built around players who could throw and handle short passes.

In Portland, the draft picks and rosters seem to be built around a system. I don’t know what that is (but would love to find out). But Nate seems to be coaching a different system than how the players were selected. With the exception of Roy our superstar—which should be the exception—it seems as if Nate didn’t quite know how to use the players he was provided. This was particularly egregious with the PGs but I think the same can be said for LMA to Frye and even to Webster and Batum.

Yes, they’re good players. Yes, the team is winning. But I always get the feeling that the team is winning playing a system that is ill-suited to their talents. Like Bill Walsh 49ers playing Chicago-style smash-mouth football. Or the As doing a lot of stealing and base management. Or pick your metaphor.

This is now my main complaint with Nate: I’m not upset with his coaching necessarily but I am uncertain that he is adaptable enough to coach within the system that seemed to be the Pritchard vision (and presumably Cho’s).

This is a common sort of sentiment—how many times have we read about Rudy or Sergio or Bayless or X playing in a better system (typically D’Antoni’s). Where I agree the coach may not matter much, the system matters a lot.

I want a coach and a GM who are on the same system.

The fact that he’s still here is remarkable.
Clearly, someone up top (maybe Nate himself) recognized the need for major changes, hence the assistant coach shuffle.
This team is entering a different phase. The players are maturing into veterans. These changes are like parenting changes, more freedoms, yet more responsibilities as well, for the players.
Can Nate still command the respect of the players once they’ve grown up? Can he extract their best efforts, while resisting the urge to micro manage them? Will the players enjoy the strategies he brings to the table? Brandon Roy will let us know.

Nate’s reputation is very blue collar. One would surmise by the changes this off season that he is planning for this new phase, perhaps a new and improved aggression, There are so many reasons to be excited for the upcoming season, and the transformation of the coaching staff is not the least of them.

Nate was a guard and Phil was a forward (big man). I think it influence’s their coaching. Phil likes big men in spite of having two of the greatest guards ever. His defense is predicated on on the guards moving the opponent to the big men rather than have them switch. Offensively, even though Phil has had to coach mostly guard oriented offense, he’s always had the center’s contribute to the offensive sets and Oneal was a gift—an answer to his predelictions.

Nate coaches like he played. Guards are the defensive heart of the team and the big men are there only to clean up the mistakes. Nate’s offenses are solely guard oriented and any post play is to augment the accessibility of the basket to the guards.

Perhaps the coaching change is an effort on his part to counter his predilictions. We’ll see.

IMHO, yes. Nate is on a very hot seat right now, and I think he has been on a hot seat ever since the Phoenix series, where we wasted a wave of unbelievable momentum after thriving through a breathtaking series of injuries to make the playoffs AND steal game 1. We had a very very good chance to win that series, and I think Nate blew it. Phoenix got punched in the mouth, adjusted their game to us (mainly Andre Miller), and punched back. I did not see Nate adjust the game plan.

This is the way many playoff series go. Each team adjusts to the others strengths until the series is over. I haven’t seen Nate do that at all except for guarding Yao in the Houston series, which was a no-brainer. A monkey could have seen that guarding Yao one-on-one for the entire series was not going to work.

I think this one glaring weakness is going to ultimately be the downfall of Nate i Portland. We’ve seen him be unbelievably frustrating and obtuse before; Miller vs. Blake anyone? More than the stagnant offense, or riding the coattails of his star in crunchtime, or his inept defensive strategy of always switching, I think his record in the playoffs will be the ultimate barometer that PA and the vulcans use when deciding to keep him or not. As of right now Nate is 4-8 in the playoffs as blazers head coach…not good.

Furthermore have we outgrown Nate’s style? Nate’s strengths appear to be teaching the fundamentals of the game to young players, and getting them to play as a whole that is greater than the sum of their parts. While this has helped us get out of the fire and into playoff basketball, is it what we need to take the next step? Nate’s system has glaring weaknesses, mainly the predictable offense with little to no ball movement or off the ball player movement. Like Nate or not, this is a trademark of Nate-ball; give the ball to your best player, put shooters in the corners, send a big to set a pick (or not), and let said best player take his man in ISO to either draw defenders to kick out to the shooters or take it to the whole himself. This is how Nate prefers to run his offense, and it seems that other coaches are learning how to stop it with more ease.

Nate did completely re-vamp his coaching staff, so I think he feels the heat, and sees the hammer hanging above his head should he fail to advance in the post-season again. Whether Bernie Bickerstaff and co. can save his job is yet to be seen. I for one believe we will not see radical changes, and that Nate will not be head coach next year.

Otherwise, he can just take another freebie like last year.

But IMHO, he and his old team of assistants were out coached by Houston & Phoenix. It’s his assistant coaches that will make or break him this year.

I now consider Nate the worst thing to every have happened to the Trailblazers. Worse that Wit-zit, worse the the Jail Blazers era, worse than not getting Sabas here earlier, worse than not keeping Moses, worse than not drafting M.J. Yep, worse than that even. Nate has taken a dynasty caliber team and made it a perrenial also ran and had done such irrepitable damage to the growth of the players we have from Roy to Nick and chased away what could have been the best most deadly bench ever by chasing off quality weapon after quality weapon.

Nate can’t coach. I liken him to a WW2 general. He attacks all out and takes ground but at what cost the men and to the war? Pat Riley got his players to play all out in Miami for years and they got knocked out of the playoffs in the first round (mostly) every year despite earning the #1 seed in a then tough East. It didn’t work then, it won’t work now.

This season is lost as long as he’s here. I worry about the long term damage that he is doing to the remaining players both mentally and health wise.

Nate is a few months of regular-season games away from passing Rick Adelman as the second-longest tenured coach in team history (Ramsay = 10 seasons)

Paul Allen has run through coaches and GMs in roughly 3 year cycles, during his 22 years of ownership (Whitsitt was the lone exception, until Nate) Paul is not a patient man, he demands results. Local writers and fans disagreed with Allen’s decision to replace Adelman, but Paul made the change back then because…he’s the boss. Today, some of the same writers and fans are suggesting that Nate be replaced, but “Mr. Sonic” has survived longer than all of Paul’s previous coaches, and there’s been no signal from team management that McMillian is on thin ice.

However

Post season success is where the rubber hits the road. Whatever system Nate prefers, and whatever style his teams play, if they can’t advance in the playoffs and there isn’t an obvious “out” (like injuries, last year) then it’s likely that Paul Allen will be impatient with the team’s lack of progress and replace Nate, as he just did with KP.

I’m rooting for the team to do well, this April/May, although I certainly understand the criticims re: McMillian as a head coach. Just remember, there is no effective exit mechanism for the head coach as long as the owner is satisfied with his performance.

that you make be correct Dave. It should not be so. The injuries to Roy and Oden should allow those years to be added to the time Nate gets to succeed.
Sadly that is probably not the case, the world/fans want quick satisfaction.

I was somewhat critical of Nate, mostly due to the defense. Should have given the credit/blame more to Steve Blake’s defensive ability. Nate won me over after the unbelievable job he did last year, changing the team’s offense every two weeks due to injury and still finding a way to win.

If Nate is let go the team will need another year or two to jell and say goodby finals chance, by then Roy will be used up.

Aside from “his closet”

Nate has done an incredible job at bringing this team back to the playoffs. He is probably one of the better coaches out there and in my mind could very well lead this team to a championship. Having said that he needs to show some sort of upside this season, meaning he needs to get alittle more involved in the games kinda like a Popavich esque and really get on the refs.

This could well be the hot seat season for Nate, only because this team needs to see an improvement in the post season. At the conclusion of this season it should be very clear at what the Blazers need for the next season, weather thats a new coach or possibly another superstar along Roy. One more thing to mention about Nate is that none of the injuries are his fault what so ever, so everyone should stop blaming him for everything.

An improvement on the offense would solidifye his spot as head coach without a doubt, although there wont be a new head coach in Portland for atleast 4 years.

The talent dictates results far more than coaching. But hte coach does play a key role in 3 areas:

1. Game planning and general scheme desing, they set the direction.
2. In game substitution patterns.
3. maximizing talent.

My problem with Nate comes in particular on bullet 3, too many players on this team are marginalized. I agree that you build around two or three key guys, but we are built around 1.

Nate’s substitution patterns are baffling, face it he stinks at that. It may only cost us a handful of games, but it has cost us more in player inconsistency and dissatisfaction.

It amazes me that we run the P&R something like 30% of the time and we only hit the roller around 20% of thos plays. So if we run 100 plays 30 of them are P&R’s. of those 30 times the roller receives the ball only 6 times. That problem goes back directly to coaching.

Outside of Oden, the national media could care less about us and they definitely don’t bother to follow anything going on here. They literally heard about all of our injuries, then looked at out record, and from that came to the conclusion that Nate must be doing an amazing job. They have no idea about all the problems Nate was having at the start of the season before the flood gate of injuries made his coaching decisions much easier. They don’t see how much Nate’s simple and slow offense holds back our team. They don’t look at his stubborn and detrimental lack of adjustments. And most of all, they don’t really think we’re as good as we honestly could be. So to them Nate’s done a stand up job.

I’ve said many times that you can be the best coach in the league, but if you don’t have good players you cannot be expected to win. When you do have reasonably good players, the coaching tactics should be scrutinized more heavily..however most coaches get fired because they don’t have good players and the ones in Nate’s realm are respected enough to get the benefit of the doubt.
   It is rare to get coaches and enough players together to compliment entirely. Team chemistry has to be mixed and revised to come up with the best ingredients for success. This is the reason Nate and most other coaches will end up in the hot seat either after a poor season or a disturbing trend.
    Nate is the type of coach that wants his players to fit his style (he rarely adapts to the player).. This will have to prove itself over the long haul and IMO will need to be modified some to get him better results (the next level). I actually think he may be doing that some this next season. However at some point the executive branch of this organization will need to make some of the tougher decisions if they want to continue moving forward. It will all come down to how much they feel that they have solid players and how well the coach can organize them into a well rounded and consistent team.
   So, although the organization appears to be satisfied with Nate, they should never overlook the most important part….what is the best options for improving this team and if the coach is a problem, be prepared to make the move. This season will go a long way towards proving any points made on Nate’s ability as a coach. His seat gets hotter with every season of early playoff exits.
  One other note; Basketball is entertainment, and often, if you have an entertaining team, it keeps enough interest to fill the stands with energy.(a much needed ingredient for the home court advantage) Nate’s style of play is just plain boring (to me) and the half court-slow down game always needs to be re energized with every possession. It is this style of Nate’s that gets many local fans in a ruff. I simply think we see things differently when we watch a game. So it may come down to the scrutiny of fans at some point…after all, filling the stands during the season cannot be that detrimental to the bottom line and each playoff win then becomes the dividend for the future..
       

1 out of 3 Nate haters simply and misguidedly believe we can do better.

Look at AK’s Mike Fratello playoff result post above…. Not sure all “nate haters” are misguided