Is it too soon to talk about defensive rating?

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The problem with Terry is that he didn't have schemes, he had A scheme.
 
RR7 said:
Disagree. Just because Chauncey isn't the answer doesn't mean that stotts, then, was the answer. Both could be not ideal choices.
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Might want to try putting either in an "Ideal" situation before making any decision? What is obvious to me is that Stotts would get more from this current team than Billups is currently getting. Now I'll add a qualifier. Billups is IMO a rookie coach at this point. He may very well get better. Even much better.
 
THE HCP said:
But there was TONS of ,”Anyone is better than Stotts!” Which is an absolutely foolish take.
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This was the exact response by some to those who pushed back on that lazy take, questioning the teams ability to identify and obtain a better replacement. There are three types of "anyone is better..." folks:
  1. Those who are now blaming Billups
  2. Those who totally disappeared.
  3. (and the worst of them all) Those who are double and tripling down that what's going on now is in fact better.
I suppose if we wait long enough, the we will have a better season than we had under the previous coaching staff. However, given the lack of success to start last season with a comparable roster to the end of the 2020-21 season, and now a second subpar season, I think there is enough evidence that the "anyone is better..." crowd was flat out wrong.
 
HailBlazers said:
The problem with Terry is that he didn't have schemes, he had A scheme.
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Not true at all. He played to the strengths of his roster. When you have a ball dominant PG and a pound the rock SG and a Lumbering Center that won't dunk and can't make a simple layup matched with endless amounts of patchwork players that can't shoot to fill in around them you go with what they can do best.
At times they had players that could defend but could not shoot. A couple times they had backup centers that could score and not defend. Sometimes they had just bad players?
You give Terry mobile length and better athletes he would coach to their talents. I still doubt Lillard would push the ball any faster than he currently does.
 
HailBlazers said:
The problem with Terry is that he didn't have schemes, he had A scheme.
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Despite being repeated often, this is a false narrative.

Stotts had a core philosophy that he operated under, but we certainly ran more than one scheme on defense; the problem was the most aggressive schemes didn't work. What should be noted the most was that Stotts attempted to play to the strength of the roster. At the start of last season, we saw what it looked like to ask Nurk to play defense out a 30ft. Blaming a coach for not being more multiple, despite having clunky centers (Nurk, Kanter, Whiteside), would be like blaming McMillan for not running enough 3pt plays for Andre Miller, who didn't have that range.
 
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Fairly-Hard said:
Not true at all. He played to the strengths of his roster. When you have a ball dominant PG and a pound the rock SG and a Lumbering Center that won't dunk and can't make a simple layup matched with endless amounts of patchwork players that can't shoot to fill in around them you go with what they can do best.
At times they had players that could defend but could not shoot. A couple times they had backup centers that could score and not defend. Sometimes they had just bad players?
You give Terry mobile length and better athletes he would coach to their talents. I still doubt Lillard would push the ball any faster than he currently does.
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Bingo! Note we were 11th in defensive rating with Plumlee and Ed Davis on the roster.
 
HailBlazers said:
The problem with Terry is that he didn't have schemes, he had A scheme.
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I have no issues with people saying Terry was not the best coach in the NBA or close to it, but he was more than competent and clearly not the biggest or even in the top 3 problems with the team during his tenure.
 
HailBlazers said:
Terry was immune to adjustments. Case in point: Steph Curry.
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I can't believe how much weight was put on this one game. I know everyone wanted Nurk out there challenging Steph to get around him, so he could pass the ball to Green, who was one of the best in the league in the 4:3 advantage. Of course, we saw that later in the series, when adustments were made.
 
HailBlazers said:
Thankfully.

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The problem with this arguement is that he got some teams that never should've made it to the playoffs. I'm not sure how you think what has happened this season and last is an improvement.
 
Fairly-Hard said:
This conversation has been had.
Terry is gone.
Billups is here.
I'm going to support Billups and hope he continues to improve.
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Agreed. While I thought Billups was a downgrade, I've always wanted him to succeed, and understood that his major lack of experience is not his fault; he was put in a tough position with an imperfect roster. I truly wanted him to come in, make us a top 10 defense and get few wins in the WCF.

When he gets fired down the road, I'm certain many will think I'm an apologist of his as well.
 
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THE HCP said:
But there was TONS of ,”Anyone is better than Stotts!” Which is an absolutely foolish take.
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I never thought that anyone would be better than Stotts, I just thought that Stotts had run his course with the organization, he was by a season and a half the longest tenured coach in the history of the league to have never won a game in the conference finals with his team. I think you only give a guy so many shots at reaching greatness and there are a lot of guys around the NBA coaching world that can keep a team in a holding pattern of first round playoff exits, when they have a guy like Dame and some other competent pieces.

I don't think Terry was the problem, it was Olshey and his dogged determination to prove to everyone that Dame and CJ were great together. That being said he had been the team's coach for so long it was time to find a replacement.
 
blazerkor said:
I never thought that anyone would be better than Stotts, I just thought that Stotts had run his course with the organization, he was by a season and a half the longest tenured coach in the history of the league to have never won a game in the conference finals with his team. I think you only give a guy so many shots at reaching greatness and there are a lot of guys around the NBA coaching world that can keep a team in a holding pattern of first round playoff exits, when they have a guy like Dame and some other competent pieces.

I don't think Terry was the problem, it was Olshey and his dogged determination to prove to everyone that Dame and CJ were great together. That being said he had been the team's coach for so long it was time to find a replacement.
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My engineer brain thinks this approach is very inefficient. If there is a set of problems with a product I am working on, we identify the biggest problem we can fix and concentrate on fixing it before we waste time on other issues, because maybe these other problems would not be an issue if the main problem is fixed.

Replacing a part because it has been around for a long time and allowed a flawed product to achieve more than it should have seems like a counter-productive method. It does not mean that part would not be replaced later, but replacing the working part because the other parts are not working and it was time is akin to looking for the lost wallet under the street light because it is easy to see there instead of searching for it in the likely places it was dropped.
 
andalusian said:
My engineer brain thinks this approach is very inefficient. If there is a set of problems with a product I am working on, we identify the biggest problem we can fix and concentrate on fixing it before we waste time on other issues, because maybe these other problems would not be an issue if the main problem is fixed.

Replacing a part because it has been around for a long time and allowed a flawed product to achieve more than it should have seems like a counter-productive method. It does not mean that part would not be replaced later, but replacing the working part because the other parts are not working and it was time is akin to looking for the lost wallet under the street light because it is easy to see there instead of searching for it in the likely places it was dropped.
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I really don't care so much about the engineering aspect of it. Just the fact that Stotts had been here for so long, the player seemed to have been coaching themselves in many ways for the last couple of seasons and it's just a terrible message to send to your fans that you are willing to keep a coach on longer than any other team has with such little success. A post above stated that Stotts had the second worst playoff record in league history. Personnel is not engineering and it is often results oriented despite multiple changing variables.

I think Olshey should have been fired first but those of you who think we should have kept Stotts confuse me.
 
Tince said:
The problem with this arguement is that he got some teams that never should've made it to the playoffs. I'm not sure how you think what has happened this season and last is an improvement.
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actually, the problem with your argument of the problem with the other argument seems to be the assumption that Stotts was the only coach that led pretenders into the playoffs

Mike Schuler, PJ Carlesimo, and Mike Dunleavy combined to coach the Blazers for 9 full seasons. And Portland made the playoffs in all 9 seasons

Dunleavy had a .500 record in the playoffs in Portland compared to Stotts at .355. And IMO, Dunleavy was a mediocre coach

another unsupported assertion I'll make: if Olshey hadn't been the GM for 10 years, Stotts wouldn't have coached the Blazers for 9
 
wizenheimer said:
actually, the problem with your argument of the problem with the other argument seems to be the assumption that Stotts was the only coach that led pretenders into the playoffs

Mike Schuler, PJ Carlesimo, and Mike Dunleavy combined to coach the Blazers for 9 full seasons. And Portland made the playoffs in all 9 seasons

Dunleavy had a .500 record in the playoffs in Portland compared to Stotts at .355. And IMO, Dunleavy was a mediocre coach

another unsupported assertion I'll make: if Olshey hadn't been the GM for 10 years, Stotts wouldn't have coached the Blazers for 9
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Sounds like you're going off the assumption that the team, say, coached by Mike Dunleavy in 99-00 was equally as talented (in comparison to the league at that time) as the team that Stotts coached to the WCF in 18-19. While there is no way to prove this to be true or not, I would die on the hill that the 99-00 roster was far more talented. So if Dunleavy had a vastly superior roster, it would only be appropriate he had a better playoff record.

I do agree with your assertion that had Olshey been let go after 5-6 years, Stotts would've been less likely to make it 9 years. I'm not sure that proves Stotts was the reason the Blazers defense was bad though.

Again, my original statance a couple years ago was that the roster, not the drop scheme PnR coverage was the main reason the defense was so bad, and that if we got a new coach, we were unlikely to see a significant improvement with a similar roster. We only had about 2 months of apples to apples comparison from the 20-21 season to the 21-22 season. Though I think it's fair to say that even the 22-23 roster is similar (if not better) in defensive talent to the 20-21 roster, yet the team still is bottom 5 in the league right now in defensive rating. To me, that's not a significant improvement.
 
Tince said:
Sounds like you're going off the assumption that the team, say, coached by Mike Dunleavy in 99-00 was equally as talented (in comparison to the league at that time) as the team that Stotts coached to the WCF in 18-19. While there is no way to prove this to be true or not, I would die on the hill that the 99-00 roster was far more talented. So if Dunleavy had a vastly superior roster, it would only be appropriate he had a better playoff record.

I do agree with your assertion that had Olshey been let go after 5-6 years, Stotts would've been less likely to make it 9 years. I'm not sure that proves Stotts was the reason the Blazers defense was bad though.

Again, my original statance a couple years ago was that the roster, not the drop scheme PnR coverage was the main reason the defense was so bad, and that if we got a new coach, we were unlikely to see a significant improvement with a similar roster. We only had about 2 months of apples to apples comparison from the 20-21 season to the 21-22 season. Though I think it's fair to say that even the 22-23 roster is similar (if not better) in defensive talent to the 20-21 roster, yet the team still is bottom 5 in the league right now in defensive rating. To me, that's not a significant improvement.
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Dunleavy had a lot of talent on his last Blazer team

but he took this team to the playoffs too:

upload_2023-2-7_14-56-33.png

pretty comparable to some of the better Stotts teams

and of course, the was PJ and Schuler going 5 for 5 in playoff seeding

I was never a big "fire Stotts!" guy, I was a fire Olshey guy, but the last 2 or 3 years of the Stotts tenure in Portland I thought were 2 or 3 years too long
 
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