Outcoached... Once Again

A depleted San Antonio Spurs team going into a back-to-back missing two of their "Big 3" players of the great Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, the Blazers had their best shot in two decades to escape the Alamo Dome, errr, I mean the AT&T Center with a dubya... And with the Blazers depth, that should have made the task more reasonable to accomplish....



BUT... their is a thing called an "x-factor" that I factor in and that my blog followers is COACHING! In one corner, the Spurs arguably have the best coach in the game today in 4-time champion Greg Popovich. And in the Blazer's corner, you probably have the MOST OVERRATED coach today in Nate McMillan, errr, I mean McMuffin. A man before last season had one great season and that was his CONTRACT season in Seattle where he miraculously and somehow led the Sonics into the 2nd round of the Playoffs.

McMuffin said the game plan was to stop Tony Parker (uh... duh when Duncan and Ginobili are missing), yet he couldn't figure out how. Parker only finished with 39 points on 17 of 27 FGs (63%), 9 dimes, and 5 boards. Parker played last night too, but that didn't stop him from dissecting Nate's incompetent scheme. Nate left Blake and Sergio to guard Parker for most of the game in whom the All-Star blew by them both with relative ease.

Oh, did I mention Blake went an incredible 0-9 tonight and only managed 1 assist, which was worthy of 24 minutes according to Nate...

As the 4th quarter ticked down, Nate ended up in desperation and tried putting Travis Outlaw on Parker. Every Blazer fan watching this game on TV was probably yelling at their TVs to put Batum back in... Unfortunately, we have a coach that is a blithering idiot.

The best options IMO for stopping or at least slowing Parker down were probably Nic Batum and Bayless. I recall the few times that the Frenchman guarded his fellow Frenchman, Nic was effective in slowing Tony down... BUT then there's Nate's motto of "If it works, ignore it" went into effect as Batum would get his commonly (1st quarter) 3rd quarter sub out and not return in the (2nd qtr) 4th quarter. For the 2nd night in a row, Batum was very efficient in 8 points on 3-7 FGs (2-3 from distance) and of course, the intangibles on the defense, yet McMuffin somehow inexplicably thought he was only worthy of 16 minutes, which was the least amount of minutes for any Blazer that did not have a DNP by his name...

J-bay, on the other hand, didn't see a second on the floor...

I still am mind-boggled in what Kevin Pritchard sees in Mr. Sonic...