Clyde and the other Houston homer announcer are hard to listen to. However my ears did perk up when the guy said LMA (in his humble opinion) should be the STARTING Pf in the all star game. Interesting to say the least coming from this guy.
There may be some bias in Texas for Aldridge, since he went to school there, but I wouldn't know for sure. I don't think Aldridge should be an All-Star starter, but he's looking like an All-Star caliber player.
After the game I told him he was third in dunks......... he got pissed and said, "I only had 2 tonight huh!" I told him that dunks on Lebron or Wade count as 2!
Aldridge tonight: 1st half: 10 points, 5 rebounds, plus/minus pos 17, we outscored Minn 63-43 2nd half: 18 points, 5 rebounds, plus/minus neg 6, Minn outscored us 55-45 http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20110107&game=PORMIN
Minny was attempting a comeback run in the 3rd when LMA was scoring the bulk of his 2nd half points. Four times they cut it to 14, and looked ready to shake things up and get closer, and four times, LMA scored at least 2 in a 4 point run to push them back to 18. It was starters versus starters, and not garbage time regardless of the maintained lead. La Monster now has a 20.2 PER as of this morning, and a .145 Win Shares/48.
Aldridge was down around 17 PER a few weeks ago, so this has been a pretty remarkable stretch to get his PER up over 20. He's probably been playing at a 25+ PER clip the last 2-3 weeks. If that really is his new, permanent level of play, that would be incredible. I can't quite bring myself to hope for that. But if it happens...Portland suddenly doesn't look too different for the future than they did a year ago, because two strokes of fortune will have balanced a huge stroke of bad luck. The stroke of bad luck, of course, was losing Roy. But with Aldridge breaking out and Matthews being much better than expected, instead of having Roy as a superstar and Aldridge as a very good complement...you have Aldridge as a superstar and Matthews as a very good complement. Now, we need a stroke of good fortune to balance out Oden's injuries. Sean Marks becomes a once-a-generation center?
In the first half, MIN was doubling LMA, which is why Matthews was wide open for so many threes. In the second half, MIN made some adjustments to try to slow down Matthews. That is when LMA dominated. I see nothing wrong with the above.
Depends on what's offered If someone offered us, say, Tyreke Evans, Cousins, and a draft pick, I think we'd take it.
Superstar big men like Aldridge are worth more. Would you trade Dwight Howard, prime Shaquille O'Neal or prime Moses Malone for Evans, Cousins and a draft pick?
