The one thing that truly dissapointed me from last night's game against Denver was the glimpse of Nate's speech to the team. Now I understand that we only heard a small portion and that the rest of the speech may have been entirely different. However, he was actually saying (and I'm trying to paraphrase since I don't have the game recorded): "We're only down 9. That's pretty good. We're doing pretty well.." He seemed to almost be begging the team to feel good about themselves. The fact is that they were terrible in the first half (they were definitely lucky to be down 9 if that's what he meant). They were completely out of position on defense and they just flat looked scared to me (no different than every other big road game this year). I'm not suggesting that these are games this team should be expected to win yet. I am, however, suggesting that THEIR expectations should be higher. Competitors simply believe in themselves more than that. Nate's manner of addressing the team means one of two things to me:

1)这team has SERIOUS confidence issues and he feels the need to constantly baby them (this is consistent with how they seem to treat Oden).

OR

2) Nate just doesn't truly believe they are ready to compete (in other words, he can't yell at them or be upset because they are just meeting his expectations)

Either of these are troublesome. As I mentioned before, competitors (especially great competitors) have an almost overconfidence. More importantly, if Nate doesn't believe in this team, is there any reason to think that he will believe in them next year, just with growth? Either way, I just found his words to be discouraging.

***UPDATE*** Once again the irrational lovers just took this as hating on Nate. Please someone, anyone respond to the crux of the question. What does it mean that he was more or less complimenting them on the first half? I'm just submitting that he feels the need to build up their confidence and it concerns me that he has to do that. It's amazing that everyone immediately read into this post that I was bashing Nate. Do you people even read the post?