Hollinger moved us up to 4! He was at the game yesterday, maybe he liked what he saw. http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/powerrankings
We outplayed the Hawks for 3 qrts and then ran out of gas in the 4th. I don't see what everyone is freaking out about.
I agree that was part of it. I also felt like Nate took his foot off the gas in the third quarter with questionable substitutions. He also could have played Oden a bit more in the 1st half while he was hot.
People aren't freaking out. There is a difference between freaking out and recognizing when a situation could be handled better. Can the Blazers improve? Yes. Can fans give their own ideas on how to improve the team? Yes. That is not freaking out.
One of my biggest beefs with Nate as a coach is he fails to recognize the hot hand and ride it. Other coaches do it all the time. A guy will get hot, and Nate blindly sticks to his rotations. This guy in and this guy out at this specific time mark. Over and over and over.
I personally think a lot of the rigid substitution patterns have to do with managing the egos and locker room dynamics of such a deep roster. Guys get pissed when they miss out on their court time... I don't think it's nearly as easy to manage as posters here believe to just "stick with the hot hand".
Winning can solve a lot of locker room issues. It can also settle some arguments about the rotation, if a guy comes in and produces and out plays his competition, there is not much they can say. Allowing the hot hand to play allows those separations to happen naturally.
The way I see it the Blazers just went 4-1 on a road trip and almost 5-0. It's not a shock the Blazers ran out of gas last night. IMO they lost not because of any substitutions or anything Nate did, but because they couldn't rebound, which I attribute to being tired since they're usually pretty good at it.
Now that I know what you do (besides Beerboy's wife), I'm actually pretty impressed. Good job "Johnny" now FREEZE IT!