Yet another reason the magic of last year is gone

http://www.blazersedge.com/2009/12/14/1200680/short-shot-clocks#comments

A really interesting analysis of the Blazers and their performance late in the shot clock. Sort of confirms for me in numbers what I'd suspected from casual observation, that this team has been sort of anti-clutch late in the clock.

 

These numbers are about what I would expect. It's not that the offense is much different this year, the shots just aren't falling. The two biggest reasons IMO are 1) Brandon Roy's jumper has been inconsistent all year. His shooting % is way down from .48% to .443%. I would guess his % has dropped even more inside 4 seconds on the shot clock. He bailed us out so many times last season. 2) Travis Outlaw - for all you want to say about the guy, he made a lot of shots late in the shot clock last year.

Obviously Blake hasn't helped either. He wasn't exactly Mr. Clutch last year, but he's just been awful so far this season.

 

The article mentions both players and Rudy too.

Brandon last year shot 37% this year he's down to 30%, last year Blake was at 35% this year he's at 13% (eek!) Rudy was red hot at 45% and this year he is (was) still pretty decent at 39%

 

Roy in particular has been driving me nuts with this lately. When he's isoed at the top he lolligags and takes forever to get something going. The whole team plays with a lack of urgency. Miller tries but you can tell his skills have slipped.

 

This seems to correspond with how often he drives to the lane, gets hit, and doesn't get a foul called. He seems to be out of favor with the refs this year.

 

Can you back this up statistically? Or is this just an opinion?

 

From personal observation, he seems to be doing it more this year.

 

I hope you are joking.

 

We had a discussion about this last year. I can't remember the particulars, nor do I like bumping threads, but for those of you that argued against me that the Blazers had to lead the league in forced shots at the shot clock buzzer.......suck it. Checkmate. Learn the game, then post. Whatever.....

 

Chris Paul taught him that; I really wish he hadn't.

 

My ninth graders were playing a game last year where the other team had a really good player. He was a yeller, and got a bunch of calls simply by alerting the refs to him as he flailed around. I had recieved a technical foul in the game for "politely discussing" how this was not ok.

At half time I instructed my players that on our first possession we were to make one pass over half court and then have our entire team flop and yell like this kid did every play. The ref actually blew his whistle and everyone looked at the one ref, waiting for him to tell us who the foul was on. The two refs got together and decided it was an inadvertant whistle, but the kid never got another call all game.

 

I wish I could have seen that.

 

The bottom line for me is that it appears (at least some of the time) that Brandon goes into the lane not even looking to hit a shot, but only looking to get contact and draw the foul. As for Blake, part of his struggles can be attributed to receiving 'flaming bag' passes and hasn't had a lot of uncontested or in rhythm jumpers in these situations (compounded by the fact that he's in a horrendous shooting slump).

Hopefully the insertion of Miller into the lineup shakes things up and makes this team a little better late in the clock, Bayless getting more time couldn't hurt either with his uncanny ability to get into the lane and draw the foul (and finish) I've never seen a 10 minutes a game second year player get as much respect from the officials as he gets.

 

It's funny you bring up that Flaming Bag pass. That is part of the reason I want Bayless in that spot. He can create, and create quickly, as shown the other night when the took the inbound with only a few seconds left before half and drove the full length of the court and got fouled. Blake was indeed getting shafted with a lot of passes right before the shot clock, and lets face it, that's not Blakes game. Players have their best chance to succed if used correctly. Blake needs to be used as a spot up shooter/pressure outlet within the flow of the offense.

 

BlazersEdge has had some great analysis this year. That site is really coming along.

As to the point--I think one thing not mentioned that's contributed to all the late (and bad) shooting has been our rebounding. Seems like we'd try and try for the perfect open look, knowing that if we missed we'd still have Oden, Przybilla and Aldridge down there to inhale offensive boards. Now that Oden is out, the team should adjust but they haven't.

 

I'm not a big fan of TJ Simer who writes for the sports page of the LA Times, but I agreed with this quote.

"Sometimes, I wonder whether sports is society's way of identifying morons, just a figure of speech, of course, for sports fans who lose a grip on reality because someone loses a game."

This thread screams truth to TJ's words.

You guys should take comfort that your loss of faith is merely a part of the human condition. You should see the L*ker fans cry when their team loses two straight or don't win dominantly.

I don't get the total loss of perspective during bad spells, but that's just me.

 

I dont either, but I sure enjoy the meltdowns on boards such as this one.

 

Your post is flawed. What you don't get is that nobody has lost faith on this board. Lamenting over things we think can be improved is far from a lack of faith. In fact, most of the people are here, because of their love of the team. We may all express it in different ways, with different emotional level responses, but most of the folks here goals are the same. They want to see the Blazers win. The facts are that the Blazer fans here haven't lost perspective as you would say in your post. They are expressing their perspective here, now. You may not like it. But thats tough cookies.

 

Um, listen to the games man. You can hear Brandon yell every time.