Nate McMillan has interview with Hawks for HC position

Post #1 » by **ATL Boy** » Thu May 16, 2013 2:15 am

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/22 ... With-Hawks

Looks like McMillan is also emerging as a possible HC candidate. He did some good in Portland but was ALWAYS unlucky when it came to injuries, who knows what he could've done with that team if they had been relatively healthy. Thoughts?

Post #2 » by **Jamaaliver** » Thu May 16, 2013 3:33 am

He had a HELL of a year his last season in Seattle. They won the division and were one of the top teams in the league. He walked away as they suffered through rebuilding, trading Ray Allen, relocation rumors...etc.

He's a good defensive coach, but limited in Xs and Os (from the limited amount of what I've seen).

I consider him somewhere between Woodson and Drew. Better at adjustments than Woody. Better manager of players and egos than Drew.

Honestly, I don't know if he's a substantial upgrade over L Drew.

He's respected amongst players, though.

McMillan, 48, coached 12 seasons for the SuperSonics and Trailblazers with a 478-452 record. He was fired after seven seasons with the Trailblazers in 2012. He led the team to three straight playoff appearances from 2009-11, all first-round losses

Not overly impressive numbers.

D21 · Post #3 » by **D21** » Thu May 16, 2013 12:08 pm

That's right that McMillan is better at adjustments than ATL last coaches.
I remind a regular season game in POR some years ago, with Mcillan finding plays that killed ATL. I've made a video of the end of the game, but don't have it anymore.

Now, I have to say it was the first time I saw McMillan finding things like that. Most of the time, I saw lots of ISO with Roy, exactly like Woodson was doing with Joe.

That's why I'd prefer another coach than McMillan.

parson · Post #4 » by **parson** » Thu May 16, 2013 3:25 pm

I'm not terribly impressed with McMillan. He may only be attractive because of the "anybody's got to be better than ...." mindset.

azuresou1 · Post #5 » by **azuresou1** » Thu May 16, 2013 6:01 pm

parson wrote:I'm not terribly impressed with McMillan. He may only be attractive because of the "anybody's got to be better than ...." mindset.

Well said.

T-Blazin1995 · Post #6 » by **T-Blazin1995** » Fri May 17, 2013 7:30 am

Portland fan here and I must say I truly dislike Nate and I hope they don't hire Nate. I actually can stand the hawks unlike most of the other teams in the NBA and I'd hate to see you guys get stuck with him as a coach. There were a few reason some people seem to praise Nate.

1) he gots tons of praise from the media for how he dealt with the many many many injuries we had, but most seem to neglect how deep Portland was during the prime of the Roy era... Our benched was stacked and made it an easy transition when someone went down. Don't get me wrong he deserved some props for it it was just overblown IMO.

2) Nate also received too much credit for his "good" defense... The only reason it seemed like good defense was due to the fact that the opponent's score was very low. The real reason behind this was how painfully slow he made games through not fast breaking at all with an young athletic team that had plenty of ability to run. Another reason the game was soo slow is because he had maybe 3 plays they ran and they took a long time to set up and were meant to waste the shot clock and end up with either a contested jump shot or the play breaking down and someone being forced to attack the rim last second and usually kick out for a contested jumpshot. This made games dreadful to watch for the most part and it forced Portland to rely merely on skill and his gameplan rarely ended in a blow out and too often we had to rely on Roy to come up with an amazing finish and luckily he was one of the best in the clutch, otherwise the team would've been screwed.

My last complaint about Nate was that he was extremely hard on young players and really messed with their progression an example of this would be jerrid bayless, whenever he made a mistake he would be immediately benched and most likely not play the next 3 games.

Just thought I'd give my perspective to you guys since I watch the majority of games during the seven years he was there and this is just my opinion, many portland fans liked Nate for the most part for some reason.

Post #7 » by **Jamaaliver** » Fri May 17, 2013 7:10 pm

T-Blazin1995 wrote:Just thought I'd give my perspective to you guys since I watch the majority of games during the seven years he was there.

Greatly appreciated, Blazin. Obviously we haven't seen too many Blazers games over the years being on the opposite side of the country.

He sounds very much like another defensive minded coach we had a few years back. (Mike Woodson)

His tenure didn't end particularly well, either.

T-Blazin1995 · Post #8 » by **T-Blazin1995** » Sat May 18, 2013 8:19 pm

No problem... I personally think SVG would a perfect fit for Atlanta. I mean look what he did for Howard in Orlando I can only imagine how he would use Horford he could possibly turn him into a 20&10 guy.

D21 · Post #9 » by **D21** » Fri May 24, 2013 2:07 pm

T-Blazin1995 wrote:My last complaint about Nate was that he was extremely hard on young players and really messed with their progression an example of this would be jerrid bayless...

Forgot about that point in my first post, but McMillan (I know he wanted to win with the veterans...) was also the coach who was telling Batum to play defense and stay in the corner on offense... with a guy able to get double-digit in assist :roll: