Q & A with Nate McMillan

When you're winning, everybody wants a piece of you. And the Blazers are winning, so the interview requests for Nate McMillan are coming in thick and fast. It's a good problem to have.

Case in point: This great question and answer piece on NBA.com between John Hareas and McMillan. Some of the highlights.

On Greg Oden's season-ending surgery:

Losing Greg Oden was a setback in a sense. He doesn’t have the opportunity to grow with this core from the start. We have to put that off for another year, but we look at it as we should be better when he comes and joins the team next year.

On Monty Williams tutelage of Travis Outlaw and Martell Webster:

Monty Williams kind of took Travis and a couple of our young guys – Martell Webster – under his wing when we took over as a staff. He’s basically mentored those guys our three years in Portland. You’re starting to see these guys grow and develop and improve. Each of our assistants we kind of assigned them to a couple players throughout the years and those two guys because of the small forward position – Monty played it, and knows how to play the four position – he kind of adopted those guys and he works with them.

On the phenomenon that is Brandon Roy:

The one thing that Brandon has and he came into the league with is a calmness about him. Whenever you have your stars or your go-to players who plays with the ball late in the game and they have to make decisions, those guys need to have a calming effect about them because it calms everybody else down. He has that.

On James Jones:

Teams have to respect James’ shooting. He knows that teams are starting to double team Brandon. He gets himself to the open spot. It takes the pressure off Brandon and the rest of our guys because he is helping them with their spacing and he just has the know-how that they don’t have because of lack of experience.

There's a whole lot more that you'll miss out in if you don't give it a read. I suggest you do.