I know now it’s not just me this bothers. I was in a room with several other people watching last night’s game when that fourth-quarter play happened, the one when Denver missed a shot and Nene held two Trail Blazers right in the middle of the lane while a teammate grabbed the rebound and scored.

It was right in front of the Portland bench but the camera shifted to Coach Nate McMillan and he stood stoic, arms folded and mouth closed.

Man, say SOMETHING. I guess he must subscribe to that old idea that if you don’t yell at referees, in the long run you come out better for it. I’ve heard the  concept but never have heard it from a basketball coach who has done any long-term winning.

There are times when you just have to say something — if nothing else but to show your players you have their backs. But often, you also have to show the officials you’re tired of having the calls go against you and you want to make a statement.

And that’s a statement that McMillan very, very seldom makes. There were a couple of plays last night that you just must rage about — just to show the officials you saw them, if nothing else.

It’s pretty frustrating when a coach does not do that.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Nate McMillan, Portland Trail Blazers, Referees

I’ve been asked that a couple of times over the last 24 hours. And I’m not so sure how to answer. I think he has unlimited potential, but on the other hand I’m not sure how he’ll develop in Portland.

Not when the coach is talking about him like this:

“We feel that’s the starting forward for the future,” McMillan said Saturday. “You look at all your championship teams and they’ve had that kind of guy: the Bruce Bowen, Dennis Rodman … last year it was Trevor Ariza. A couple of years ago it was James Posey. You have to have that kind of guy, and that’s what he does. It fits his game.”

Sorry, but Batum doesn’t in any way remind me of any of those guys — and it bothers me that he may get pigeonholed in some way here. You want to make him Bruce Bowen? Hey, Bowen was a fine defender but extremely limited. On offense he did one thing — go to the corner and make threes. Rodman was a rebounder and defender who ran from shots. The rest of those guys? Not even close to Batum’s potential.

But it bothers me that in an offense that features isolations and two-man games all the time, Batum could get left out. I’m not sure he’s going to get a chance to blossom. I wasn’t as excited about all the points Batum scored in Minnesota Saturday night as I was all the other stuff.

A lot of players can get hot and knock down a bunch of shots on a given night. Batum does so many other things. Kid can facilitate for other players, he can defend, he can rebound, he can steal, he can block — he’s going to fill a stat sheet a lot of nights given half a chance.

I just hope he gets a chance to be all the player he has the potential to be. And that’s a lot more than Bruce Bowen.

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Tags: Bruce Bowen, Dwight Jaynes, Nate McMillan, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers

Nobody said it was. And whenever I criticize Nate McMillan it always seems to fuel emotions, as it did yesterday.

A couple points I want to make: First, when I find fault with things McMillan does, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m advocating he be fired. It’s just that it’s only fair to criticize things he does that I disagree with or think he’s wrong about — just as we all criticize players when they do something wrong. It’s part of the job.

But at the same time, there are a lot of people who don’t understand that coaches are always going to be graded on a curve. At a certain point, how many games you win means nothing. It’s how many you should win, given the talent level of your team. It’s how your team plays, given its talent level.

Every time people talk about McMillan, they find an easy defense of him with his win total over the last couple of seasons and the team’s improvement. But folks, the talent level has gone way up, too. He was supposed to win with these players, wasn’t he?

And it’s time to point out that this is big-boy basketball here. The expectations are high and that’s just the way it’s going to be. And it’s the way it’s always been for NBA coaches. That’s life in the big city.

Look, Doug Collins, who was a pretty good coach, jumped his win total in Chicago from 40 in 1986 to 50 in 1987. Then he won 47 in 1988, followed by nine playoff wins that year — and was fired. Del Harris won 61 games as head coach of the Lakers in 1997-98 and was canned 12 games into the following season.

That’s the way it is, folks. As they say, it’s a man’s game.

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Tags: Del Harris, Doug Collins, Dwight Jaynes, Nate McMillan, NBA coaches, Portland Trail Blazers

For me, it all came down Sunday night to that play — and I really shouldn’t call it a “play” because it wasn’t one — where Portland needed a three-point field goal to tie the game in overtime.

The inbounds pass went directly to Brandon Roy, who stood one-on-one against Deron Williams with really no chance of getting off an uncontested three pointer. Yes, he can make threes under duress. He’d even made one to begin the overtime.

But man, if you’re the coach you owe him more than that. Do you realize how difficult it is to get a good three in that situation? Unless your name is Kobe or Lebron, it’s pretty much impossible. Man, there are several things you can do there but the worst is to just inbound directly to Roy.

See, you have only such a small portion of the court to work with when you need a three. And penetration and kicking out to a shooter for a three isn’t going to work — the defense isn’t going to leave someone open.

Run Roy off a pick. And most likely, the Jazz will switch every pick, which would make it even harder to get him open. Put him on the baseline and run him up the lane — at least he can get a defender running at him hard, enabling a ball fake and a possible foul, or at least a more wide-open shot than he got. Better yet, inbound to someone else and let Roy run a little off the ball — if you get a switch from an off-ball screen, at least you probably have a better chance of him getting open against a lesser defender.

My point is, this team continues to use “We need another guy who can get his own shot in the fourth quarter” as a convenient excuse for not coaching. Man, watch the Jazz and see how often they just hand the ball to a player and ask him to beat the defense by himself. It just doesn’t happen.

And watch how easy it is for the good defensive teams — like Boston and Utah in the last two games — to lock in on Portland’s stagnant offense. You’ve got to move the ball and move bodies, which the Blazers so infrequently do, to get good shots.

My goodness, the Jazz had 50 points in the paint. It’s not because they’re handing it to one guy and letting him create his own shot, either. It’s because they pass, cut and move the ball.

Blowing a 25-point lead in the third quarter? It can’t happen unless a lot of things go wrong. Portland made only four of its last 27 shots over the fourth quarter and overtime. The Blazers, including Roy, missed a lot of big free throws.

And Nate McMillan continues to be so stubborn in regard to putting Nic Batum in the starting lineup. What is he waiting for? Batum had 14 points and seven rebounds in the first half. But by the time he made it on the court at the very end of the third quarter, McMillan had managed to cool him off. What kind of crazy stuff is going on here?

It’s already pretty much established that this is a developmental season — the team’s not going to the NBA Finals. So let’s get the kid in the starting lineup, playing with the best players, as much as possible — and get Martell Webster in his likely future role as a sixth man, shooter off the bench.

But at certain times this season I just shake my head. McMillan spent an NBA career as a bench player and he seems so overly concerned with his “second unit.” Man, it seems like a PE class out there some nights as he uses 10 players before the second quarter is over. Is he trying to make sure these guys get their varsity letter?

Seriously, trim that rotation. This season is getting down to the serious games and your team has already lost more home games than any other Western Conference playoff team.

Man, those McMillan-Jerry Sloan matchups are starting to remind me of the McMillan-Rick Adelman matchup we saw in the playoffs last season. And that’s not a pretty sight.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Jerry Sloan, Nate McMillan, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

It’s an interesting dynamic going on with Roy and the Trail Blazers. It seems as if Brandon isn’t really sure about whether he should be playing or not. He’s still in pain. And Nate McMillan has admitted he gave Roy a push to play Tuesday against the Los Angeles Clippers.

It is not very common these days for athletes to be pressured into playing with injuries. It used to be at one time. And that old macho mentality of players used to mean they played frequently when they probably shouldn’t have played.

But nowdays, with the huge investment teams have in their players, they don’t risk such things. But it almost seems to an outsider as if the Blazers believe Roy needs to move past some imagined mental hurdle, or that he needs to just push himself a little harder.

I’m not in a position to know anything about Roy’s medical situation or his mindset. But I do know this, if he goes out there and tears that hamstring, whoever gave the OK for him to play, whoever encouraged him to play, whoever pushed him to play — whether we’re talking about a team doctor, a trainer or a coach —  is in danger of losing his job. At the very least.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Nate McMillan, Portland Trail Blazer

Finally, there is no other choice.

Yet it’s still taking some measure of agony, apparently, to get that starting lineup changed. Martell Webster to shooting guard, Nic Batum sliding in at small forward, right? What other choice is there with Brandon Roy out?

Yet, here we are again, with Coach Nate McMillan doing the same old waltz when it comes to an obvious lineup change. Just do it, man. What’s the delay? What are we waiting for?

This should have been done a couple of weeks ago, but hey — what do you expect. Lineup changes around here come hard. At the start of the season, if Andre Miller had just been put into the starting lineup alongside Brandon Roy — one point guard, not two — the team would have probably picked up three to five more wins by this point of the season.

Instead, we were subjected to all the hand-wringing involving Steve Blake and the problems of the “second unit” and who Brandon Roy could play with best. All of it was silly. The best point guard was Miller — from Day One. But it sure took a long time to get there.

Batum was the starter all last season and his improvement this season is obvious. Man, he’s needed at both ends of the court and he needs to get a lion’s share of his minutes alongside Miller — who will reward all his off-the-ball movement.

Just do it, Coach.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Martell Webster, Nate McMillan, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers, Steve Blake

I’m hearing from all over that this may be Nate McMillan’s best coaching job. You know with the injuries and all that maybe he ought to be the Coach of the Year. But there are those who disagree and it seems many of them comment on this blog.

And I can kind of see where they’re going with their arguments. I mean, at the start of the season, this team had two big tasks — to integrate Greg Oden into the offense, thus moving to more of an inside-outside attack AND to somehow decide on a proper player rotation with all the talent on this roster.

I’m not sure either problem was ever appropriately dealt with. And in fact, the injuries eliminated them as problems. Rather than go inside-outside or really change their style of play at all, the Trail Blazers are now back to playing the way they’ve always played.

You could also make the case that McMillan’s stubbornness in regard to starting Andre Miller hurt the effort early in the season. In fact, the thing that seemed to get Miller straightened out was confronting the coach. I mean, if Miller doesn’t go off on McMillan, does that thing ever really going to get straightened out?

So you give McMillan credit for that?

Again, I’m not sure. You could say that in the face of all the injuries, he kept the team together, but really? Really? It seems to me that if you say that, you’re saying that the character of this team somehow was so weak that these guys wouldn’t have played hard if not for the coach. I don’t buy that.

I think it’s more the case that even though Portland has been hurt by an absolute avalanche of injuries, what’s left is still pretty good. In fact, it’s real good. And by lowering expectations, thus the pressure, they’ve prospered in an environment where they knew they had guaranteed minutes.

Martell Webster, for instance. This is a guy whose minutes always seemed to be jerked around. Often, when he made a mistake or two he was pulled out of the game in a hurry. Now, given the situation, he’s playing no matter what — because they have nobody else. And he’s been sensational.

It’s been one interesting season. And any coaching evaluations would probably be best delayed until the end. Let’s see how it all works out.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Greg Oden, Martell Webster, Nate McMillan, Portland Trail Blazers

I was talking to a friend of mine in the NBA the other day and asked him about the possibility of his team making a deal with the Portland Trail Blazers.

“They aren’t easy to deal with,” he said. “They have a pretty high opinion of their own players. I think they think they have 15 all-stars over there. But take a look back, they don’t make a lot of trades. And I think that’s because they just can’t bring themselves to let go of their guys. And they can’t find what they think is value in a trade because they’ve overvalued their own guys so much.”

Maybe so. Or maybe they’re paralyzed with fear that they’re going to prematurely give up on the wrong young player. The specter of Jermaine O’Neal is still hanging over this franchise. You move the wrong young player and he goes somewhere else and becomes a star, well, you pay for that wrong move for seasons to come.

But I’ll tell you something else. To blame Kevin Pritchard for all this may not be correct. I’m just not sure how much authority he has. Certainly he’s authorized to take the blame from everyone when something goes wrong — that’s what comes with being general manager. He also gets credit for what goes well, of course.

But on a franchise where an owner, Paul Allen, loves the game and considers himself an expert, an owner, by the way, who loves his coach, Mr. Sonic, Nate McMillan — I’m not sure Pritchard always gets his way. I think there have been times when McMillan, with the support of his owner, has been able to kill deals. There have been times when Allen has killed deals — or made draft choices. We know that, don’t we?

It’s not just the Blazers, either. There are a whole lot of teams constructed this way. Owners write the checks and have their say. Coaches often carry a lot of weight with owners. It’s the way it works.

I ask you to remember that the next time you’re tempted to blame Pritchard for anything and everything that happens to this franchise. He’s not the only decision maker — he’s just the one out front taking the heat for it.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Nate McMillan, Paul Allen, Portland Trail Blazers

Andre Miller and Nate McMillan got into a heated shouting match during Blazer practice today, according to Jason Quick.

I found Kevin Pritchard’s reaction interesting:

“I encourage open and honest dialogue, I think that is always good,” Pritchard said. “I think it can be (healthy). We have the ability to take it one of two ways and I believe in the character of this team, and you know, I think we can come together.’

Man, that’s some real nice spinning there. Turning this into a positive wasn’t easy. All I can say is that I hope they didn’t keep Miller around so long that they have ruined any trade value he may have. He’s going to have to go and now, after this, the team is surely going to be dealing from weakness, rather than strength.

It was obvious a month ago that the dislike for Miller, whether it originates from Brandon Roy, Nate McMillan, the entire team or whomever, is going to inhibit his ability to fit into this organization. At that point, there was no reason to delay his exit, once Dec. 15 came and went.

UPDATE FOR COMMENTERS: Folks, his trade value is not diminished because people will suddenly think he’s a bad guy. It’s diminished because everyone is going to know that the team now MUST trade him. When you’re trying to move a guy you have to move, you’re going to get low-balled. It’s a fact in any sport.

Now, of course, they’re going to say all is fine and they don’t have any plans of trading him. I doubt it and so will everyone else around the league.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Kevin Pritchard, Nate McMillan, Portland Trail Blazers

Oh, it gets real different now. Way different.

The Portland Trail Blazers without Joel Przybilla are going to have rebounding problems, second-chance points problems and some serious defensive problems.

But if approached correctly, I still believe the Trail Blazers have a legitimate shot at making the playoffs. But they have to modify how they play at the defensive end.

Przybilla, and Oden before him, were intimidating forces on the inside. It was the backbone of the Portland defense. I would expect teams now to attack the Blazer basket relentlessly, without that big shotblocker inside.

For Portland to survive this, there has to be a change in the style of defense. I think the Blazers have the talent to play small ball, though. Throw all those guards out there with LaMarcus Aldridge and see what happens. And really, Przybilla won’t be missed on offense. He didn’t offer much other than a stiff pick-and-roll once in a while.

The big question, though, is whether Nate McMillan is willing and able to convert his style over to a faster-paced, uptempo, small-ball game. Certainly, we haven’t seen that sort of flexibility out of him.

I’d advocate telling the players at this point to have some fun — run it up and down, pressure the ball, double-team and help each other. Uptempo the game to try to take other teams’ big people out of the game. Spread the floor and attack the basket — then kick to open three-point shooters.

My goodness, Golden State — not nearly as talented as Portland — has hammered the Trail Blazers with that style of play enough over the last few years and so it should be no mystery how it can be done. It would provide a fun element to the second half of the season for the players and the fans — and really, everyone could use a little fun at this point, after all the injury sadness.

Can it happen? Yes, it could. Will it happen? Hmm. It would require a real sea change here and I’m not sure Nate McMillan is ready or willing to make that happen.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Golden State Warriors, Greg Oden, Joel Przybilla, Nate McMillan, Portland Trail Blazers