Rhino?

Who has really been playing like they want to win?

Its a revolt against Nates sloppy, meaningless game coaching. There is absolutely no game plan. It’s whatever Nate is feeling that night. Get a system in place and utilize players strengths.

The reasons are not clear to me. I don’t think, for instance, it’s a lack of ability of our players compared to other team’s players. It just seems like they are not reaching down very deeply and they are getting pushed away from the rim by every team they play. Maybe they are just too weak. Maybe they don’t care enough. Last week I accused them of not playing at a fully professional level and I still think that’s true, even if I’m not sure what that means.

Make sure the only guy we have that can shoot consistently gets less than 20 shots.

Make sure Nate knows to pull anyone that hits 2 or more shots in a row.

Make sure the other team always has a double digit lead going into the 4th.

Above all make sure that absolutely nothing comes easy.

I appreciate the message coming out of this one. This is a team that likes to encourage each other and high-five and be supportive. That’s great for players that don’t respond well to getting their butts chewed. But other guys need a kick in the pants. I think Ray is one of those guys. He came out of a game early in the season and told Camby to yell at him but of course no one did. It’s about time someone did some yelling.

Also I thought LMA had an excellent game. He shot the ball well and kicked the ball out leading to several WIDE open 3s. The best teams in the NBA typically shoot a lot of 3s and make a lot of 3s. We’ve got half of that equation down. 2 more made 3s in this game would bring the Blazers 3pt percentage up to 37% and possibly win the game.

On another topic, this is the 2nd time in 2 games that a stupid meaningless bucket at the end of the game cost me 10 pts in the Jersey contest. Jack for the Hornets with 2 FTs and Jamal with that layin at the buzzer tonight. Still it’s cool to have the Jersey contest results to sweat in a loss. Makes it a little more exciting for me.

just look at how many games that we’ve either won or were in at the end where we only played well for a quarter or less.

That being said, they’ve been lacking something. I don’t know if its cohesion, or “fire”, or what. But whatever it is, I hope this meeting has an effect and gets us back to being the team we were at the beginning of the season.

Seemed like earlier in the year the team tried to play inside out more. LA did not really have his legs and they have gradually moved the offense farther and farther away from the hoop. Many teams take outside shots, but we take them with a hand in our face too often. The guards are playing a little selfish right now. Work the ball and you will get it back for an open shot. Felton is too short to make shots under duress.

You cant say you are an uptempo team and expect to win when you are simply not ready to play to start the game. Our intensity level for us to be a uptempo team is just way too low to start games .

As i said after the 3-0 start

Home games will insure we make the playoffs but road games will tell us how far this team can actually go.

Our starters who should be setting the tone have actually not come out and established any sort of consistency in anything really . Some of these teams would be folding if we came out sharp but we simply havent . Weve had the advantage in terms of rest and have basically squandered it .

Right now Felton should focus solely on defense , Pushing the tempo and setting his teammates up. Too much is made of a him scoring when we have others scorers.

In the starting lineup GW needs to go back to utility man and we should focus our offensive sets early on getting LA established on the block and Wes going off screens everyone elses offenses comes from how the defense adjusts to those things