Wow what a joke he was last night. All this crap I heard all summer was how much he has changed and added muscle. Thats funny, cause it looked like footage from last seasons playoffs. Ya know I watched the houston/laker 2nd half... give me scola any day of the week... hell give me jeff green. The guy is soft and a perimeter drifter.
They were throwing double teams at LA all night. And let's be honest - no matter how much we want to believe that LA has improved and gotten stronger, in what fantasy did any of us see LA beating double teams? He's just not that type of player. Phoenix was content to let Camby and Miller shoot anywhere from the perimeter, and LA never really got the ball in good scoring position. He did hit a nice turn around midway through the 4th to give us the lead back, and he had a couple of offensive rebounds/putbacks. It's not like he played terrible.
The good news is when nobody else is 'killing' one of the players, we can always count on you. Go Blazers
If you people actually watched the game, instead of just looking at the box scores, you would have seen a hard double onto LMA all game, which he passed nicely out of, finding open teammates. If two people are covering him, that means one guy on our team is open. Might just be me, but I'll take a guy with no defender taking a shot over a guy with two defenders. I knew there would be some LMA complaining from people looking at the box score. Whatever. Looked fine to me. Luckily, he didn't try to force the issue, which was the right thing to do. Blazers won. First place in the NW.
The blazers had 93 FG attempts. 19 more shots than the Suns. You always have some forced shots, but for the most part they had good looks. The fact that LMA only took 9 of those 93, does not scream "joke" (Although you do) 9 boards, 3 assists, 2 steals, a block and only 2 TO's.........was just fine in a 14 pt victory.
You're letting stats and facts get in the way of a good rant. The worst parts about last nights game was the teams help defense and pick-n-roll defense. I personally don't care if LaMarcus averages 10+ boards a night, if he's playing smart defense, smart offense and scores 17-19 ppg (eventually..that's why it's called "average"), I'm happy. there were some negatives to last nights game. Mostly the defending of the pnr, and transition, but overall it was a good game. Phoenix isn't as good as they were last year, but they're still a good team. Portland played like they did 2 years ago, in the sense that even though Phoenix lead by 6 after the 3rd quarter, they came back and won. Although it was kind of nervous time, I personally never felt like the game was "lost". there needs to be some polishing of the team, but that's true of every team that played last night. The Celtics need work, the Heat need work, the Lakers barely beat Houston (on a three pointer that Derek Fishers white twin made) and Houston needs work. So does Portland and Phoenix. I don't think the lack of "killing Aldridge" really means that people are blind to the deficiencies in the team. But glorifying them (or blowing them out of proportion) doesn't do anything but get attention to yourself.
I can just imagine MIXUM's thoughts as he reviews the morning sports section: 'Well, crap, the Blazers won. Hmmm...BRoy scored 24 points, shit. Nic played well. The bench came through. What the hell am I going to post this morning? Ah, wait, LaMarcus didn't dominate...YES!!!!!! Get out of my way, can't wait to get on the board.'
I think what is scary is the fact that Lamarcus Aldridge does not play well when you put smaller players on him. I can guarantee you if I noticed it, that most scouts in the league have too.
I would be happy if other teams put two smaller players on LMA every night. That would leave some open players.
One thing I will mention is the PHX was throwing the double team at Lamarcus every time he touched the ball early. Here is what I have noticed. If the double team comes, Lamarcus always throws it out to the perimeter. Because he does that every time, there is no reason not to run a double team at him every time. They basically took him out of the game with one simple move. Then the ball ends up going around the perimeter, and usually ends up with some sort of perimeter shot. Exactly what Gentry wanted.
