You mean the Ceremony at the RG for "2nd Round Appearance" doesnt appeal to you? I can just imagine the banner being unveiled now! Goosebumps I tell you.. GOOSEBUMPS!! Queen is blasting in the background.. WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS......... of the 1st round!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
I mean that the first couple of months of the season will be spent working himself into elite basketball shape (like Andre Miller) and the first half of the season will be spent with Roy and Aldridge learning to sublimate their games to work with a dominant low post presence. I don't have doubts about LMA; I do doubt that Brandon will willingly let GO take the number of shots he should.
Well considering when Oden was playing last year it appeared to me at times the team froze him out of the offense, I have every reason to be concerned. Fortunately, one of the players who was a big culprit (Blake) is now gone.
That was troubling, wasn't it? The difference this year is that Dre is a great passer into the post as well as delivering the alley oop. My concern comes more from Brandon. He pouted when Miller controlled the ball; what's he going to do when we have a legitimate post player demanding high percentage shots.
Is Ray Allen one of the top 3 shooting guards of all time? Roy made 3rd team All NBA this year. Ray didn't make any team.
QFT. Many fans are in denial about just how screwed up the team was *before* Oden got hurt. A repeat of the first 20 games of last season is still a one-round-and-out team.
A repeat of the first 20 games, if it continues all season long and into the playoffs. The main problem, to me, of Oden being hurt is that there was never a chance for everyone to adapt to each other. As, for example, Roy and Miller adapted to one another. Oden wasn't being used anywhere near optimally in those games before he got hurt, IMO, but I think the default assumption is that things would have changed as the players played together more, not that nothing would have changed and the team would have been playing, in game 81, like they played in game 20.
Exactly. Considering how Roy acted when forced to play with Miller, how's he going to react when he's left watching Miller and Oden playing off each other? We saw in preseason that when Miller is given free reign to direct the offense, he loves to get the ball to the big man. My advice to Roy is he should be the man learning to work a two man game with G.O.
hating on real non laker fans commenting on other teams bandawagons or lack there of seems to have a bandwagon nowadays too.
Roy taking shots wasn't the problem. Miller off the bench taking nearly as many shots as Roy, and more than LA and Oden early last season, was a big fucking problem. I don't want to see Miller take a shot outside of 17' this year. I'd gladly trade 5 shots by Miller for 5 more touches for Oden.
Prove it. You have a link somewhere that clearly shows most of the assists to Oden came from Blake I would love to see it. Cause I am not buying it. Frankly, most of Oden's baskets were unassisted. He got the ball in the post, dribbled a couple of times then tossed up a hook shot. I can count on one hand the number of times he received the ball on the move towards the basket. The only ones I recall came from passes from LMA in the high post. Both Roy and Blake would look at Oden in the post, then reverse the ball around the perimeter. That seemed to happen quite a lot IIRC. Nate, Roy and Blake treated the idea of a big man in the post like it was some sort of impossible, four dimensional puzzle they couldn't solve. That was mighty frustrating to watch.