Portland Trail Blazers: Hire a big man coach

The lack of a proven big man coach on a team that has a roster full of young big men is baffling to me.

The coaching staff has done a great job developing guards, but all of our young big men, recent and present, have struggled to develop - especially on the offensive end.

Can you imagine how good this team would be if our bigs developed to the same level as our guards?

Meyers, Vonleh and Collins were all lottery picks. We've seen what happened to the first two. I'm really trepidatious about Collins' future without the kind of coaching he needs to meet his full potential.

Even Nurk still needs work on the offensive end. He was better when he arrived out of shape from DEN than he was after our staff got a hold of him. He went from the Bosnian Beast we saw during Nurk fever to tossing up weak, off balance, low percentage flip shots.

Jeezus Paul, pry open your wallet and hire the best available big man coach on the planet. Your spending hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries on these young big men. For less than 1% of that amount, you could actually maximize your return on that investment - unless, of course you're happy with the way Meyers Leonard and Noah Vonleh turned out.

And if Neil still has his panties in a wad over Kim Hughes talking to the media before Neil could put his spin on losing Aldridge for nothing, tell him he either hires a proven big man coach or his ass is fired. This is fucking ridiculous. In the 3 years since Neil fired Kim Hughes, not one single POR big man has improved on the offensive end. In fact, Meyers and Nurk have both regressed. Meyers is a lost cause. You had to pay CHI cash money to take Vonleh off your hands. You spent three first round picks in a deep draft on two more young bigs - both who are struggling mightily on the offensive end. Yet, still no big man coach. How can you possibly be this stupid????

This team will only go as far as our young big men take us. Dame and C.J. are great, but they are what they are. They, alone, cannot make this team a contender in the stacked Western Conference. Given Neil's inability to attract even average free agents, the development of Nurk and Collins is our only hope to ever be more than first round fodder for the real contenders in the West. You need to pour every penny you can into developing our young big men, because if they don't reach their full potential, this team has reached it's peak. Again, that's ok - if you're happy with how they performed in the playoffs against NOP. If not, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Neil talks and talks and talks about trying to get Dame help, but he has failed miserably at attracting the kind of two-way players this team needs in supporting roles. Well, guess what, you have two potential great 2-way players on your roster already. But, unless you do something, that potential, and Damian Lillard's career, will be wasted. Maybe you're happy with that, but I doubt if Dame is.