One of the more prevalent criticisms around here this year has been how bad the Blazers' bench is. I was curious as to whether this was an accurate assessment or simply a case of overstating the perceived inadequacies of our players. I put together some stats for the benches of the top 8 teams in the West to see how the Blazers stacked up. It's pretty rudimentary as it only considers minutes per game, points per game, and PER for the current backup bench players as listed by ESPN for each team. Still, I think it shows some interesting things: Overall, the Blazers' bench is 5th in total PER for the 5 backup players, 3rd in points per game, and 4th in the number of minutes the bench has been able to relieve the starters. There's room for improvement to be sure, but not too bad overall.
The trouble with the Blazers' bench is that it's so devoid of any fire-power, there's no real sixth-man type scorer who can come in off the bench and provide some pop.
I think that's a little overrated. Two bench concepts I think are overrated are the "sixth man role" and the "backup unit." I think both are overstated for the same reason: bench players should just be interwoven, throughout the game, with starters. There should always be starters on the court at every moment. So a bench "unit" should certainly not exist...outside of garbage time, there should never be a time when the entire on-court team is reserves. And a "sixth man" who can score is really not terribly necessary as long as one or two of your starting scorers is on the court. I think what you need is a few players who can give you production and/or defense of some type. Guys who will not waste on-court minutes providing nothing, in support of the starters on the court at the same time. The starters on the court at any given moment will still be the focus...you just want a little production from the reserves you brought in to rest starters at the time.
Several of your PPG numbers are in fact Points per 36 mins; Rudy Fernandez, Gary Forbes, Marcus Thornton, Jason Smith, and Kyrylo Fesenko all stick out, but there could be others on there too.
Good catches. Here's the corrected version. Given how crappy the bench played today, I'm not in the mood to go looking for more errors.
Call it "pop," "productivity," "skill" whatever, the Blazers bench seems a little deficient right now.
Well, I thought you were specifically advocating for an explosive scorer off the bench. I agree that they need productive reserves, but the bench PER suggests that they're doing okay. Nothing spectacular but holding their own compared to the benches of good teams.
Maybe the real problem is that the bench has too many players with overlapping skillsets (mostly being jump-shooters with only so-so ball handling skills and no inside presence either off the dribble or through a post-up game). It doesn't necessarily mean they need a high octane scorer, but they do need a little more scoring prowess or at least scoring balance.
Well, as I said, my opinion is that "balance" in the second unit isn't too important, since they should never play as a unit. Good management by the head coach should avoid ever removing all your starting unit scorers at the same time. Since who is on the court at any given time should be dynamic, balancing specific "units" (other than than your 5 best, who should play as many minutes as possible) isn't too important. From a "utility belt" standpoint, it would be ideal to have some of everything (scoring, rebounding presence, defensive stoppers, etc) on the bench...but I believe it's far from crucial. I think you should always be relying on whichever starters happen to be on the court (there should be 2-3 of them at any given time, IMO) and the reserves on the court should just...not screw up and provide at least some production, regardless of the shape of it. JMO.
I think it's a talent issue. They have scoring, rebounding and passing in decent measure...it's just that with Roy no longer in star form, they are prone to long stretches of being shut down. All team offenses have stretches where their schemes aren't beating the defense...good/great teams have at least one guy who can simply impose his will and make plays on his own. Roy was that guy for Portland. Right now, they have a few guys who are solid scoring options when the team offense is functioning smoothly, but are unable to force the action and remain efficient. I think that's much more the problem than balance or bench play.
One thing i would like to see is if Mills is gong to play, he needs to shoot the ball when he is open. I know he is the PG, but he is one of the top 3 shooters on the team. He is more of a scoring PG then a true PG. I watched him enough in College to know he has a variety of jumpers. At least in comparison to anyone else on the second team. He has at least the abilty to score as well as Bayless did. Taking the ball to the basket is not his strong point, but he is pretty good with everything else between 10-23 feet. The bench needs to score. I think he needs to be more aggressive with his shot.
Starters vs. subs doesn't matter. Some teams play subs many minutes, some few. To show the piece of the 240 minutes occupied by the subs, you need pie charts. And don't just shade out the starters on the pie charts. Shade out some number of minutes representing starter time, the same number for all teams, like 150. Then, focus on the remaining 90 minutes to see what the subs do. Easy. I don't know graphics, but all you young punks can do this in your sleep. You guys dream about computers nowadays.
I don't think you need a pie chart, old man. I'm pretty sure you could just take some fancy stat like PER for each player on the team and weight it by minutes played, to account for starters playing more. I'm too lazy, but I'm sure one of you motivated punks can do it in your sleep. You guys masturbate to weighted stats these days.
The problem with the bench is consistancy. Some games they come to play and do well. Other games they are fucking horrible. They seem to all suck at the same time. So taking a per game average really won't show the issue at hand. Perhaps showing the spread between good and bad showings compared to other team's benches might be more enlightening. I am going to guess that the Spurs, Lakers, Dallas and Utah have very little spread from game to game. Portlands will be very high in comparison.
