When Olshey hired Stotts, I looked up what his previous teams said about Stotts. They said he's good at offense and bad at defense, so he got fired from a couple of NBA head coaching jobs.
When Stotts started here, I saw that his reputation was accurate. But it was fun to watch games now. We moved twice as fast as opponents, who were surprised and lost to our hyper-effort. But by his second season, they caught on, got psyched up for us, and played us with equal energy. Then they started playing that way against other teams. By his third season here, the whole league had copied him, gotten good at it, changed the whole NBA style, and we had no energy advantage anymore.
We are shorter than average at every position except maybe SF, but at least we were underpaid, which motivated lean players on contract years. Now we're the most overpaid team, so mentally we're fat. As for physical fat, the coaches had Plumlee and Ed Davis gain weight over the summer. Davis' rebounds per minute dropped from brilliant to only excellent. Plumlee started getting into foul trouble in the first quarter (Phoenix was an exception). The big pay raises of McCollum and Crabbe still live on future potential, not current dependability. Olshey should have let Crabbe and Leonard go. McCollum is no Lillard.
Lillard changed for the better. Last season he kept going for layups (actually he was going for just the foul) when he knew he'd be knocked down (but lacked a Chris Paul-like BBIQ to get the foul). This season, he drives to the basket to get 2 points (not the unobtainable foul), so he now chooses his drives for when he actually sees an open lane (amazing concept--allowed me to stop yelling at the TV over those hopeless missed layups/same as turnovers). He has also decreased his hopeless missed 3-pointers, pointless early in the clock, shot because he thinks that making circus shots will psyche up his team and get the crowd into it (that's how he explained them last season).
Lillard's posture has become more spider-like. Muggsy Bogues (almost rhymes with "hugs the rugs"), 5 foot 3, used to dribble down the floor looking like a vacuum cleaner. His dribbling fingers were about 4 inches from the floor. No one could dream of stealing the ball. Last season, Tim Frazier played that low on defense. I think that Lillard learned from it. Now Lillard does the same on defense, though not dribbling on offense like Bogues. (Other clinging spiders on defense were Gary Payton and Jamal Wilkes, but they did it upright, not stooping close to the floor like Frazier and now Lillard.) Lillard turns on a dime better, now that he has 3 legs (2 feet plus the fingers touching the floor while he pivots). He doesn't do this all game long, but I hope he will. For now, it's an inconsistent little bonus feature, an occasional sweet treat to see.
Every coach and GM eventually gets fired, but change is hard for some posters. Stotts will not live eternally. With Cheeks and McMillan, after some years, I called for them to go, and got the usual comments. ("Who would you replace him with? No list? Alright then. We should keep him forever.") (E-blazer and Shilly, I'm looking at you.) This thread's criticisms are based upon patterns we all saw in both preseason and regular season (predictable objections: "We've only played 4 games." vs. "Oh, you're including preseason? That doesn't count.") I'm nowhere near ready for Stotts to leave, but in a couple of years the process may start, and it will be a big board struggle lasting 2-3 years to finally hustle him out.
