Chuck Still thinks Blake, Love > LA

IMO the odd guy out is Love. He has no go to moves. He is not a good defender. He gets a ton of rebounds because his team shoots like shit and he has Darko next to him, not Camby for most of the season. Does anybody come into a game and think "Hey you know, we really have to look out for Kevin Love. We have to stop him." Really? Yet I see teams defenses totaly geared to stop Aldridge every night. I haven't seen a team gear their D to stop Love once this year.

 

That's a good point. You can see that their coaches know that they have problems - and they usually have someone else on the team guarding the main big on the opposing team (like D'Andre Jordan or Beasley/Darko).

If you watch games you see that Love is not a good defender. I mean, we have seen Z-Bo on this team, if you do the same stuff with 82games.com and look at ZBo - you see that his opposing position is not horrible. Of course, when you see the games - it is clear that Gasol is guarding the good guys and they leave the crappy guys for Z-Bo. IF you consider that - and you see that Love and Griffin guard the 2nd big on each team and still make them look like an average NBA starter - it is pretty clear that there is an issue there.

 

I don't know, it sure looked to me like Griffin took his turns guarding LMA (or at least trying) and he at least made LaMarcus work most of the possessions he was matched up against him.

 

I get what you are saying about Love - but I think you are off base of Griffin. For a guy who has only played half a season's worth of NBA games, his defense is where you would expect it to be. Now, if he follows Love's path and doesn't get better with experience, then you have a good point.

 

No. And here is one reason why. Do you have any idea of how many games the Timberwolves get the total shit kicked out of them and the opposing power forward isn't even in the game the last quarter to play against them? The same for the Clippers. They started 1 and 12.

 

It's not just Chuck who thinks this: http://www.nba.com/POLLSERVER/results/54676.html

 

I have watched a lot of Clipers games this year living in LA and Blake is incredible for a rookie. He is going to be awesome. But right now he is not better than LMA. He and Love's numbers are great. But so were ZBO's all those years he didn't make it.

 

Only blazer fans seem to think that blazers are worthy of all star games. If it wasn't for the coaches vote no blazer would ever play a all star game.

 

Some of you are acting like because Love or Griffin don't play good defense that they shouldn't be in the AS game. There is few PF's in the league that guard the position well. Randolph, Nowitzki, West, Boozer and Lee have all made AS games being absolutely lousy defenders. Even Amare has made several AS games being a horrible defender.

Love is about to break the streak for most consecutive games with a double-double. He is the first player to record a 30/30 game in 28 years and the first person to average 20/15 since Moses Malone. Shitty team, or not. These are things no player has done, or atleast hasn't done in almost 30 years. How can you overlook that? There's been plenty of players, even on shitty teams that could have done that. They haven't though.

Like it, or not. But, sports are driven by stats.

 

how many rebounds would love average if he was playing with camby for most of the season

 

Love absolutely deserves to make the all star team by his stats alone. So does Griffin.

But the league and its coaches sorta established a precedence during ZBo's last season here when he was averaging 23/14 on decent %s and didn't get in over Okur who was clearly the inferior player.

 

How many rebounds would Camby average if he were playing next to Love for most of the season?

 

When they have been matched up - except for containing them on rebounds - LaMarcus has made both Blake Griffin and Kevin Love look BAD. Very ordinary.

On offense, neither can do a thing to slow LaMarcus down. On defense, LaMarcus takes them out of their half-court offense completely.

Will the coaches consider that? Did they even see the games? I dunno?

 

I'll bet they watch far fewer than we would initially think; these are crazy busy people with just enough time to probably look at their next opponent on film and with the rapid succession of games are probably mostly concerned with what little practice time they can get their own team and install whatever game-plan they can for the next match.

 

Are AS selections based off one-on-one matchups?

 

Griffin is exciting for a rookie. You have to give him that. How many rookies played good defense - Duncan? Robinson? Not that many.

But, it sure is annoying that Griffin somehow is allowed to travel several times a game when he makes his move (what happened to a player having to "establish" himself in the NBA before they get away with that); and Griffin gets away with fouling by going Over the Back multiple times each game and no call.

When did this shit start? Remember Shaq the rookie fouling out of lots of games early on?

 

Depends on how long Marcus would allow Love to box him out for rebounds.