I know your intent is to disparage the technique, but I think KP is also aware of positional concerns and chemistry concerns. This technique is successful, and basketball is no different than any other small business. I work at a small company that turns a big profit every year because we only keep the best people we find, with a mind for overlapping and unique talents. It's not that hard. When you bring in three people for a project, you watch them work, judge their ability to do their work and work with the rest of the team, and if you like what you see, they stay. When the work gets lower, and you need to let someone go, you look at where you are, who's doing the best work, and you choose the guy who is performing the worst, again being mindful of the type of work you foresee and everyone's skills. This technique works. Earlier in the summer, KP let the two worst PER guys go. He traded one for (effectively) Jeff Pendergraph. The other he simply let go. Both moves were for the best overall, imho. I think this technique can work in basketball. Real basketball, not "fantasy basketball."
Jeff Pendergraph is a better fit for Portland than Sergio is right now... I think it worked out well for both teams.
I agree it's always good to add more talented players to your roster when you have the opportunity, but there is a tipping point where the law of diminishing returns kicks in. I just think he's carrying too many young or rookie scale guys that are worried about their next contract (as they should be), worried about their minutes and are at their best scoring the ball and not enough defensive minded guys, hustle guys and glue guys. For instance I would gladly trade Webster and Rudy for Shane Battier even though he has mediocre PER of 11 but he would fill a role better than either and add veteran savvy to this roster without crowding the rotation with yet another mouth to feed. All of these players added to our roster only make sense if KP is viewing them as trade able assets to be cashed in, so far I'm not sure KP sees it this way.
I think that's why he's starting to invest in lunch pail second rounders: professional benchers. Of the guys on rookie scale, only Rudy is a sore point. Bayless has a career path: Blake is expiring, Miller is temporary. Bayless will likely start for us in two years or less. Mills has proven nothing yet, but could be something special as a backup for now, and maybe a starter if Bayless doesn't work out. For now, he's not an issue, though. Batum has a career path: Webster is a placeholder until Batum can take back the starting SF role. He'll start by season's end, and will cement his status as a core member. Dante is a lunchpail guy who has shown sparks of good play, but nothing to warrant him getting shirty about being stuck behind Batum. Pendergraph is the same way. He will be a career backup, but get lots of minutes as a PF/C backing up both LMA at PF and Joel as 3rd center. Rudy is the tough one. He has no career path. He feels he should start in the league. We probably will trade him over the summer, or let him go after next year. Webster, Blake, Outlaw all have shown themselves to be superfluous, unfortunately. Webster might get packaged with Rudy, but honestly, I'd rather just get an expiring and a pick and cull the herd. I think it'll happen; it happened this last summer, and it will likely happen this next summer too. KP moves slowly, but I do see direction in his movements.
I agree that Pendergraph and Cunningham fit the "luch bucket" mold, but frankly this team needs veterans that fit that mold too ... this team is also desperate for an enforcer type in the front court (not named Jeff Pendergraph). When I say 'cull the herd' I mean consolidate; simply letting assets walk at the end of their deals when they have value strikes me as being completely passive and not doing your best to get value ... especially when I think there are still some considerable holes to be filled in this roster defensively. But let's be honest about this roster. It has one bona fide star in Roy, an above average player in LaMarcus (who I have serious doubts that he will ever post a PER above 21), and a promising but completely unreliable player in Greg as their big three ... this team is short one star by my calculation if it ever wants to truly compete for a championship. I'm not sure if KP has the ammo to go out and get that second star, but as of now I see this as being a perpetually "good" team that may eventually have a Western Conference finals appearance, but probably not a lot more.
I usually watch the games pretty closely, but we seem to disagree on something here. Why do you feel that Webster is "superfluous", but Dante is a "lunchpail" guy who deserves to be Batum's backup?
The biggest difference is that in your company everybody that stays gets to work. The reality for the Blazers is that (in a normal year when half the team isn't injured) the 9th, 10th, 11th . . . players on their roster recently have been guys who think they should have a greater role than they do. Channing Frye didn't want to play spot minutes at PF/C and focus on defense/rebounding. Sergio Rodriguez didn't want to be handcuffed to a slow paced offense, and thought he should play more also. Jarryd Bayless thought he deserved more run. Rudy Fernandez thought his role was too limited. So what some people were calling "depth" was creating problems inside the team. And some of our "assets" at the bottom of the roster weren't considered all that valuable around the league b/c they weren't playing much or being allowed to play a style that suits their strength. What do you think we could get for Channing Frye now? (Throw in RLEC + prospect) Maybe KP does overvalue guys, but then again there was/is some talent on the roster that is hard to qualify when they don't get a chance to play. Look at the bottom 5 on the Lakers roster right now: Josh Powell, Sasha Vujacic, DJ Mbenga, Shannon Brown, Adam Morrison. You wouldn't expect any of these guys to demand a trade or complain about minutes. It's a fine line, but you have to have guys on the end of your bench that are 1) okay to be there and 2) can contribute something if needed. In other words, too much "depth" ain't always a good thing.
Bear with me a moment, I'm going to try something. Here's the Total PER for the top 6 players in each Championship team going back 8 years. 2009 Lakers: 113.7 2008 Celtics: 111.1 2007 Spurs: 119.4 2006 Heat: 114.5 2005 Spurs: 114 2004 Pistons: 104.2 2003 Spurs: 107.9 2002 Lakers: 111.5 Here's last year's Blazers: 107.2 Rudy, Joel, and Travis were the bottom three of the top 6, all hovering around 15. To go from shouting distance to really contending, we need our starting SF to give us 17 PER, our starting PG to give us 16 PER, and our fist guy off the bench to give us 16 PER. The problem with this year is that we never got to see Batum play with the full starting lineup. Next year should be interesting: Roy and LMA are down in PER, but Oden and Bayless more than made up for it in their gains this year, giving us a net positive. If Batum can come in and be 16 PER player, we're suddenly in the 112 PER range.
This season, Dante is making 1/10 of what Webster makes. In 2012, it will still be 1/5. Is Webster worth the difference? IMHO, the jury is still out on that.
How so? In my mind, if healthy, we have: 3 point guards: Miller, Blake, Mills 1 combo guard: Bayless 2 shooting guards: Roy, Fernandez 3 small forwards: Webster, Outlaw, Batum 1 combo forward: Cunningham 2 power forwards: Aldridge, Howard 1 forward/center: Pendergraph 2 centers: Oden, Przybilla How much more balanced can you get? If we didn't have a lot of injuries, we'd be arguably the most balanced team in the league.
How many of those guards are good perimeter defenders? How many of those forwards or centers are low post threats? It's not just about positions, it's also about roles and strengths.
That is two posts now that I have read from you, that makes me think you are a chi-mo[/QUOTE] bendavis503, 1) you heckled another poster about this, not me. if you are going to talk smack, at least keep it straight 2) the point of my heckle was that you spend time with third graders. Do I really have to spell that out to you? 3) I am here to talk blazers and a little ducks and not to get into a war of words with people. 4) this is the second post of mine where you decided to talk smack when unprovoked. maybe you have something better to do? 5) I have no desire to continue this with you. you are not very good at it and it is boring. can we please get back to discussing the blazers? p.s. please do not hack my computer.....
I thought you wanted to talk PER since you were mentioning LMA's PER. That said, yeah, defense is under-appreciated in the calculation; it explains why Detroit had the lowest PER of any of the last 8 champions. That's good though, since we're getting better defensively this year over last.
I mentioned PER as a sort of catch-all to describe the kind of offensive output star players usually need to provide in order to dominate a game or a playoff series at that end of the court (The Piston's being a notable exception in the past twenty years). Almost all championship teams usually count on having at least two "star" players with a PER north of 20-21; efficient and/or dominant production on the offensive end of the floor -- that is to say at least two players worthy of and capable of beating a double team. If LaMarcus were a dominant defender I think you could make an argument that you don't need him to be a 'super star' player or post a guady PER, but he's playing some of the most passive and porous post defense I think I've ever seen from him in his career; that's not a good sign for a guy who just inked an 11 million dollars five year extension. Hopefully he picks it up in the second half of the season like he usually does, but at this point I think it's becoming increasingly likely that he's a lot closer to his ceiling than not. As for team defense, you're right the team has gotten marginally better on this end of the court, but I think there are a few caveats to this improvement. We played quite a few poor offensive teams to start the year and our centers were erasing a lot of mistakes and breakdowns on the perimeter, which consequently lead to another problem: early foul trouble for our bigs. Overall, even when fully healthy, this is not what I would consider a top tier defensive team, and is unlikely to become one unless some of the young guys like Batum and Bayless fully live up to their potential (no guarantees), or the roster is bolstered with some established players who have already proven what kind of D they can provide on the perimeter. Don't get me wrong, KP has done a nice job turning around a really awful team and making them good, but there's a lot of consolidation left to be done, or I don't ever see this current incarnation of the team ever being great.
He knows how to draft. I'm eating crow after throwing KP under the bus when we didn't draft Blair. Pendergraph is a beast! Howard looks like the player he was in Dallas. But I still think letting RLEC expire for nothing is a mistake. His huge contract with insurance covering most of it was a rare asset.
I agree with this part. The difficult part is knowing exactly what we will need going into the future. we had our need addressed at center and now that position is a big question mark. we also need a SF badly. I think we might have to be patient at this point until we know what all our needs are.
It's really not that difficult. Ask yourself a couple of questions. 1) Who is your core (top three or four most important players), and 2) what are your core players best at and worst at? For me that's Brandon, LMA and ... Well, Oden I guess when/if healthy (but I don't know that you should count on that anymore) and possibly Nicolas and maybe Bayless moved into that conversation as borderline core pieces of the puzzle, although both are still pretty long on 'potential' and pretty short on 'proven production'. What are the strengths and weakness of that group?
