This is a bit off topic, but I've come into an argument with someone over here claiming McMillan was one of the BEST defensive coaches in the NBA. I disagree and he's losing it.
There is no evidence that Nate was a good defensive coach. There is plenty of evidence that he was a poor defensive coach.
In Nate's defense, how many really good defensive players has he had to work with in Portland? Batum, Wes, Crash, Przybilla and a few months of Oden. That's about it, isn't it? He was a little hamstrung by being forced to play Randolph and a gimpy Roy so many minutes, and of course all the young players who didn't know what the hell they were doing. And then there was that brutal injury-plagued season. He was brought in as an assistant coach for the national team for defense in 2006, and was then brought back in 2008. He got the most out of defensively limited guys like Outlaw, Sergio, Blake and Dixon. Pendergraph and Cunningham are still in the league despite being drafted so low, and he had some part in their development. So he can't be a total fuckup. I'm not here to say I want him back. I do think his defensive genius was highly overrated. But it's a little more complicated than just saying he sucked at coaching defense. He got a lot of players who were a combination of young, injured and/or indifferent to buy into the "scrap/hustle" shtick for a while. More than a lot of coaches could do. It doesn't make him a great defensive coach, and maybe not even a "good defensive coach," but I'd put him at least above average.
Nate also had Ruben Patterson and Theo Ratliff, who played some pretty good defense on his teams, but I don't think this had much to do with coaching. They may have fit his style though. I think that Ime Udoka and Khryappa played much better defense than expected on his teams, and maybe that is due to Nate's influence. It is kind of a chicken-egg thing though. We will never know whether these same players would have played better defense under a different coach. It's impossible to know. He certainly reduced possessions though, so it had the look of good defense on paper at times.
Well here's the question....I think we can all agree that Nate wasn't an offensive type coach. So if his defense sucks so bad then why did players and coaches want him back coaching USA basketball? Now your going to tell me that you basketball knowledge is better than players like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony? How about coaches like Gregg Popovich, Mike Krzyzewski and Mike D'Antoni? They all praised Nate for his defensive minded skills.
Nate's defensive philosophy (heavily reliant on switching) only really works when you have superior athletes at every position who are capable of covering multiple positions. In the context of the Olympics, with a roster full of all-star caliber players (many with superior individual defensive skills) he was able to pull it off. Beyond that, his teams here were disorganized, soft, and lacked fundamentals. That's on Nate.
And this is really at the heart of the problem. Nate would not, could not, adjust his strategy in a timely manner (if at all). He was one of the most rigid coaches I've ever seen. His rotation sucked, he couldn't make adjustments from one game to the next, and he was incapable of seeing the big picture. This is what made him a bad head coach.
He used the word "defense" a lot more than Stotts does. He wanted players to will their way into playing defense. That was his system.
A poor head coach who has made the playoffs 5 times, as opposed to Terry Stotts, who has made the playoffs once in 6 seasons as a head coach (for a 40-42 team), and lost 4-1 in that series 8 years ago.
Who was the waterboy? He must be the best one in the NBA. Who was the popcorn clerk? He must be the best one in the NBA. Let's hire the whole Olympic staff. Why stop at McMillan? Paul Allen can afford Coach K, D'Antoni, the waterboy, and the popcorn popper.
He was way overrated. But I suppose if you ask other head coaches league wide like Gregg Popavich, they would say he was a 'helluva coach' who was hit with a stretch bad luck. A healthy Roy, Aldridge and Oden probably would have turned him into a genius on that side of the court. Even if offensively, they were lousy to look at.
Ugh. Thanks for reminding me. Nate had no friggin idea how to use his players, other than Roy. Watching Andre Miller disregard McMillan and run that team was a thing of beauty, on the few occasions we got to see it. Remove McMillan and the injuries from that team, and let Miller run the show, and Miller would have turned Oden and LaMarcus into the most dominant twin towers in a decade, and we would have had a top three SG for the icing on the cake. Christ. I'm going back to bed.
Nice strawman. What does Stotts have to do with the fact Nate was a poor (and highly overrated) defensive coach? You do realize, he had a losing record while he was in Portland, both regular season and, of course playoffs, where he lost twice as many games as he won. His coaching in the playoffs was some of the worst I have ever seen. The guy stubbornly stuck to HIS game plan, even when it clearly wasn't working and was simply incapable of making in game, or even in series, adjustments. BNM
That Phoenix series a couple years back made me want to throw a shoe through my TV at Sarge. Arrrghhh!
