Nate MacMillan is just terrible. Absolutely horrible coach. His rotation is terrible and he holds the responsibility for their loss almost solely on his shoulders.
Okay, so Oden bonked two free throws. WHY WAS GREG ODEN EVEN ON THE COURT? They have ten seconds they're down one. Why, then, does he leave arguably their most offensively inept player on the court? They're not going to run a play for him. In fact Nate is so bad that they don't even run a play at all. They just give it to Roy and watch him go one on five. The Mike Brown Special. But that isn't it. What about earlier in the fourth? Rudy Fernandez goes on a rampage. Scores 14 points in just over four minutes. Single handedly puts Denver in the penalty with over six minutes left in the quarter. Nate's solution? To bring Roy back in the game (why?) and run everything through him. Roy could have kept his rest. Either that or Roy could have at least kept feeding Rudy. But I put the blame on Nate. It was a pointless substitution. He did what the Nuggets couldn't do: he made Rudy go cold. "Nice" coaching there.
And if that isn't stupid enough, there are his random 'in/out' patterns. Why sub Miller and Oden out, with four minutes left, only to bring them back a minute later? He takes out two of their better defenders for an ice cold Steve Blake and Joel Przybilla, who had 5 fouls. Why not just leave Oden in? He had 5, too, but at least he was in rhythm. It's like he's doing his best to kill his own players' rhythms. Either that or he thinks he's playing NBA 2k10 and making sure they get their promised minutes.
Nate is in over his head. Not only is he singlehandedly killing Bayless' confidence and hindering his development (like he hindered Oden's last year), but his offensive ineptitude is what cost Portland the game. Playing with the lead, he decides to stop their most electric scorers run (Rudy is a better scorer than Roy. I stick by this). He decides to take out his two best positional defenders (for no reason, for only a minute or two...long enough for Nuggets to start a run). He gets a legitimate chance to win the game, and instead of drawing up a play, he has four guys standing around watching Roy pointlessly waste time. He tried to go for the hero win. It failed. And it's his fault. He should have gone small--Roy, Rudy, Miller, Webster, Aldridge. He didn't. Now the Blazers are 1-1.
In short (long), Nate MacMillan is terrible. Don't care if I spelled his name wrong, either. He's not worth the effort.
