The answer is Crawford + and Matthews -. I'm not too surprised though. Matthews was a steaming pile of garbage too, both on offense and especially defense, getting worked on every play.
You can see Crawford's double cross-over a mile away. * LMA is not getting deep enough position on the block. * Felton is Andre Miller-bad with his jumper. It's early but if Felton continues to shoot like this we aren't going to be a real threat.
We're almost 20% done with the season. The one thing I thought Felton would give us was a better three point shot, but he's now shooting it worse than Dre...
Here is a list of all the + players: Crawford +6 Nolan +3 Thomas +3 Felton +2 Batum +1 Apparently my eyes were lying. (Craig Smith was -2, so presumably Nate has some justification in only playing him 15 1/2 mins.) [Edit: I think I've got the explanation for the huge disparity in Crawford and Matthews! (I'm actually serious - this is kind of obvious if you think about it.) At the end of OT, Nate was substituting EVERY change of possession: when the Rockets got the ball, Crawford went out and Wesley came in for defense. Vice versa on the other end. So Matthews was ONLY there for defense, and never had a chance to get any +, while Crawford was only there for offense and never got a chance for -. Mystery solved!]
In the first quarter, when Lowry was just dominating the game, one Rockets announcer was going on about how Lowry was an all-star and the other made the observation that he couldn't remember a time when there were so many great PGs in the league. And he's right. Which makes it all the more painful that we can never seem to get them...
The 09 draft was where we should have made our move for one. There were so many PGs in that class and we fucking ended up with Claver. Rubio, Curry, Jennings were all top tier, but there were guys to be had later on in the draft like Jrue Holiday, Ty Lawson, Jeff Teague, Eric Maynor, or even Darren Collison. These guys all went from 17-21. We had pick 22. Hell, even Beaubois when 25.
Another reason is Matthews' box score line. Defense doesn't show in the box score, but his line is this game's weakest line per minute for any player on either team. He played 34 minutes, a long time, yet shot 2-8 and had 5 points, 2 rebounds, and 1 steal.
Well, another game another dismal performance within our half court offense. I love that we are pushing the ball, but our half court offense is still horrible
It's worse than last year what the fuck??? It's got to be because Dre is gone. Dre bailed us out on offensive possessions with slick moves. Felton and Crawford do the same thing by bricking 20 footers. UGH
Forget the three pt line. Even in the midrange, and near the hoop, Dre is a far better shooter than Felton. Felton, otoh, just horribly bricks everything.
After watching the last three games; maybe Nate was onto something when he said after one of our playoff losses "you gotta make your shots". It seems to me that Portland has as many good shots as the other teams but they don't have guys (or even one) who can consistently make open shots or consistently finish layups. By the way, NBA broadband seems to have missed the key sequence of the game; Portland was up by two with about a minute and a half in regulation; they had possession and called a timeout; when the broadcast resumed they were down by one. What happened, please?
Thanks, I found it on there; i guess it was inside a minute; Mathews missed the layup and then Lowry made a three pointer; at least there wasn't a turnover.
I guess one way to look at it is that our two top offensive guys, Aldridge and Matthews, had bad shooting nights; Felton and Crawford are still feeling their way and their shooting will improve soon, and the team will get over the hump. But if after another 20 games, this continues; then I would start making other plans if i ran the team. I know that supposedly Batum doesn't have great handles but I would start thinking of polishing his point forward skills. And I would start looking for a new PGOTF.
