not to mention, i dont know how many times last night i saw oden open in the paint off pick and rolls, etc, and never got passed to. i was screamin at the damn TV...lol
A few things pondered about our beloved center. 1. Throw him the fucking ball in the post. He is open nearly every time on pick and rolls. 2. The other team really struggles when Oden is fed the ball, and conversely when he is guarding the paint. 3. Oden really needs to learn how to play defense without fouling. He makes some really stupid fouls some times.
I'll probably get slammed for saying this.. but it almost looks to me like Oden is fouling intentionally at times. I wonder where his head is at... it seems like he doesnt want to be on the floor and maybe subconciously he is making these stupid fouls to get off the floor. Anyone else get that feeling?
These two paragraphs of your post can be summarized as... Greg is currently underwelming. Your view actually agrees with Kingspeed, we should wait until next year. KS and I and everyone around here knows he'll be good down the road, but the simple fact of the matter, PER considered or not, he's not now. He is consistently being outplayed by Joel. I don't get excited by Greg being substituted into the game. The team doesn't play better when he's in the game. He still doesn't have nearly the explosiveness he had in college.
Maybe not intentionally, but subconciously maybe??? I remember back in high school I went to an open gym in North Portland. My 2 friends and I were the only white players there (this is not a racist post hang in there with me) All of us were starters on our highschool basketball team that was state champions the year before. Most of the guys playing were a little older, so no one "knew" us from playing or anything. We all got out there on different teams and for the forst game NO ONE passed any of us the ball. We all played soild defense, but on offense they ignored us. Well at some point during the game I stopped playing defense because I was frustrated being open every time down the floor and not getting the ball. Maybe this is Gregs issue. He is tired of not getting the ball and in return is tired of getting pounded inside with no glory at the other end? The guards let players run by them and he has to pick them up. Then at the other end the guards jack up 3's or Aldridge shoots a 20 footer while he is standing under the basket. Just an outlandish conspiricy theory on my part, but it could be????
I think this makes some sense... but it may even go deeper than that. Oden is very disappointed in the way he is playing this year.. and he is having a tough time not living up to the expectations the fans had and he may have had for himself. Nate is force feeding him minutes..maybe subconsiously he wants out..and picking up cheap fouls is the way to do that without admitting what is really going on in his mind. who knows..
Blazer fans will be patient with Oden . . . no one is calling to trade him. But the original expectations have got to be lowered in many fans minds. Yes rookies can be inconsistent (not all but many), yes Oden is coming off knee surgery, yes he is a young big man . . . but GO is also a tough player to figure out. I'm with KS in that all these "excuses" can only go so far before fans realize GO is a bit of an enigma. I would have rather seen him go 2-11. To me that is more of rookie inconsistency . . . Durant and Rose either light it up or go down swinging . . . to just disappear from a game . . . has me scratching my head.
Another thought on Oden.... why not just play him through the foul trouble and if he fouls out, so what? We have capable Bigs to play behind him in LMA, Joel, Frye and Ike. He needs to stay on the floor and try to get into some kind of rythmn.
I'm starting to think it's Nate's fault that Oden is struggling............ Greg should not be switching on the high pick and roll (resulting in half his fouls). He should also be getting 10-12 shots a game not 4-6.
The Oden expectations are interesting. I think many of us were mislead by the Blazers coaching staff and people like Mike Barrett because they were raving how good he is, and what they were seeing in practice and stuff. Lead us to believe that anything less than a 14 and 10 and 2 season with a ROY award or close to it was a disappointment. I think that, more than Oden's play, is what is disappointing. I think he had an unfair amount of pressure on him, and the year off only built upon that. Those things lead to some of us in the prediction thread saying like 16 and 11 and 2 average for the year and stuff like if he doesn't win ROY it will be disappointing. What they were doing to him, with all that pressure, is probably why he is taking it so hard. He heard those expectations, and was anticipated on the court for a long time after sitting out a year, that he was really hard on himself that he was letting everyone down. I really don't think he is playing that poorly, or under his capabilities right now, honestly. He is only going to get better from here... he is getting 8, 7 and 1.5 which isn't bad in his 22mpg after what he has been through. His PER is also pretty good. You see the glimpses of what he can become. Also, I think that if we just kept track of his stats after the all-star break, he would be getting around 12 and 9 and 1.5, which is really good, imo, for a 20yr old rookie center. You also got to remember that on top of him only getting like 22mpg, which is really affecting his stats, is the fact that he usually never gets up that many shots. Its not like he isn't shooting a good percentage, or going 2 for 9 and hurting the team. He doesn't really get touches on offense, which must be very frustrating, and doesn't usually shoot more than 4-5 times a game most of the time if i remember correctly. I still believe if you put him on the thunder he is getting 15 and 10 and 2. He would be getting 30-35mpg (barring fouls) and they would just be developing him for the future. They would run the offense through him, and he would get at least 10 shots per game. He is the 4th option on offense in our starting rotation, and Batum sometimes gets more shots up than Greg.
I think a lot of Greg's fouls come from him trying to block everything. He needs to play with his arms stright up. Allow the player to go by him and then try to block the shot from a better angle. His foul on Brown at the start of the third was just dumb. As was his foul early in the game when he brought his right arm down initially to the ball. That being said the foul on AI was not even a foul.
Agreed with every one of those points. There were many times where people in our section were going, why don't they keep feeding G.O. in the post? His passing out of double teams has surprisingly been really good, and he always gets deep post position. The guy just needs to be able to stay on the floor, and Nate needs to leave him in when he gets his fourth foul in the third quarter. Let him learn to play through it, and he might start adjusting or learn how to play without having to foul.
You gave up on him? What have you been contributing? Come on, now. The guy is 20. Can't even drink legally. I wish I could have seen you when you were 20. I 'm sure there was plenty to criticize. Too bad the glass is always half-empty for you. This thread sucks.
Unless it is for Travis Outlaw. Definitely stick with Outlaw through his ups and downs in his 6th year, but give up on Greg after his first 30ish games of his career! Its all about the preseason expectations, imo. I think that really messed up our view on Oden, on top of putting pressure on him and his game (alreayd talked about that in my previous post).
We've now gone from "basketball IQ" to "inconsistent" as the basis of Outlaw's criticism. He's a bench player. His role is to take difficult shots. By nature, this type of player is "inconsistent".
