The thing with Nic is he'll pass up the open shot to pass it to a teammate. The other guys just shoot it. I like Nic and think he's a part of the future, but he deserves more blame than Aldridge this season if we're passing blame around.
I liked it better when we bashed on price, Babbitt and smith. Pretty obvious that all agreed they were awful.
If this roster deserves blame for not making the playoffs, then I agree you got to look at the two high paid players as not getting the job done because the buck stops with them. I am still of the opinion that the roster has overachieved because the starters have all over achieved given how much has been asked of them. So when a starter goes into a funk or has a bad game, they should be cut some slack. But again, if the original thought is this team has performed poorly, then I think Batum deserves as much if not more blame than Aldridge.
Why does this have to be about blame? Blame for what exactly? I don't think anyone thought we were a contender. Aldridge is supposed to be our best, or our second best player. There is expectations that go with that position. Do you think Aldridge believes he is the first or second best player on the team? Nobody thinks Nic is our best or second best player. Is he overpaid? Yes. That wasn't because we wanted to overpay him, we had no choice. It was either overpay him or let him leave for nothing.
That was certainly not the opinion of the board during the first month of the season. So why are expectations changed now? Oh and Batum was definitely expected to be our second best player coming into the season, especially with that contract.
I've never avoided the Batum questions. You're making this thread about Batum when we aren't discussing Batum. We've talked about Batum in lots of other threads. Its called deflecting.
Hey B-Roy . . . time to change the name. This board needs a poster with the name Lillard in it or some play off his name.
Pretty on topic actually. It's about a high paid, high expectation player being blamed for losses. Obviously batum is the second highest paid player, so it applies.
If you go back to the start of the season I'm sure you can find many posts talking about how Nic is our best or second best player.
Aldridge is the ONLY NBA PLAYER with 1200 points and 500 rebounds. If he just isn't that great over the course of an 82 game NBA season, than who the fuck is? People, you're killing me.
Agree w/PapaG that this is kind of a train wreck thread, but let me see if I can add something... I don't think anyone (seriously) is saying to dump LMA for garbage. I don't think anyone (seriously) is saying LMA's the best PF in the game when LeBron Raymone James and Carmelo Anthony are allowing their teams to play extended small-ball. But in between those two is some pretty large gray area. One would think that if LMA was (let's say) a Top-3 PF entering his prime on a pretty reasonable salary for 2 years after this, that he'd bring back an absolutely awesome haul to us if we trade him. I'm not sure that's the case. From almost everything that I've seen from LMA over the years (whether watching every game until January, or reading the quotes from interviews, or looking at both "normal" and "advanced" stats), he seems to fancy himself as a slightly-poor-man's Dirk. Aside from the random LaMonster stretch every now and then, he hasn't played anywhere near the level he was in 2010 where 11% of his game was tips/dunks/inside 3 feet and 36% was inside 12 feet. He's now shooting 74% of his shots from outside 12 feet, at a 42% clip, a career-worst. (To put it in perspective, Lillard shoots 76% of his shots from outside 12 feet, but since he's making 36% of his 3's then his TS% is higher than LMAs). His offensive rebounding rate is 12% lower than his previous career-worst (7.1% to 8.1%). One might assume that having Hickson acting like a rebounding beast is stealing some of his opportunities, but JJ's ORB% is lower than Oden's and Przybilla's were in years when LMA was consistently getting 9% and 10% orb%. His DRB%, however, is the highest it's been in his career. On average (PER, Rebounding, TS%), he's playing at about the level he was in 2008-09 (except with a much higher Usage Rate and a much lower ORtg), where he wasn't close to being an All-Star, he wasn't close to being the Lead Dog and it was thought that, with some work, he could make the leap. The question becomes: What does the team do now? If LMA goes back to being the LaMonster from about All-Star Break 2011 to All-Star Break 2012, playing what is in effect the C position on the block and defending opponent Cs, he's an underpaid All-NBA force that you have to keep. Even in a regression year for him this year, his PERdifferential at each position is +2.5 at PF (the bulk of his 2000 minutes), but +14.4 in his 250 minutes at C. He destroys other centers when he plays there. But when he's doing his Dirk impression (and not nearly as well), a large part of his effectiveness goes by the wayside (and you're seeing it this season). Unfortunately, I don't think it's an isolated thing: For me, it's difficult to place LMA in the "untradeable" category that I'd put Lillard in. In looking at this team going forward, I think (along with a lot of people) that, whether or not LMA is kept at the PF spot, a defensively-capable big man is needed. (It's a bit amusing to me, since LMA was drafted as a DPoY center to go next to Z-bo, how things have changed). We've talked ad nauseum about how, in the eyes of most, JJ and LMA as our two starters going forward (at whatever the price) probably isn't a contender for much. So, imho, it's worth looking at what a "multiple-all-star-maybe-top-3-PF-in-the-game-with-2-years-left-on-a-pretty-good-deal" will bring back that can fit our team going forward. If the verdict is that he somehow doesn't bring back a good, young-ish defensive big and some other talent (either young guys who haven't played much or potentially good draft picks), then keep him and roll the dice that he plays more like LaMonster than LaMarshmallow. But if you can get your defensive big of the now coupled with some more assets while clearing even more cap room, then I think you have to look at it. And I don't want to bring up Batum much in an LMA thread, but for those who don't like his play right now, do you think he forgot how after his triple-double streak? That other teams scouted him harder? Or maybe that when you can't shoot, pass or dribble without pain in your severely sprained (broken?) wrist that it just may impact your game? Honestly, I think that it's more an indictment of our bench that a hobbled Batum is still the best option to start and play 35mpg.
How did you get that out of my post? I said that Aldridge is supposed to be one of our top two players, so there are expectations that go with that. When you start trying to point the finger at Batum, realize that he isn't one of our top two players, so the expectations are different.
A PF's first responsibility is to rebound. How does our super-tall PF, whom 2 people in this thread say is the league's best PF, do? Leaguewide, Aldridge is #124 in rebounds per minute. He is #121 in Total Rebound Percentage.
Thats just stupid to say. PF's/C's do grab the majority of rebounds a team has but to put one stat up as the first responsibility of any player is crazy. Thats like saying Rebounding at the PF position is more important then defense and offense, if thats how you look at it then i'd disagree with you on that. Also did you take out players under 10m who really don't get a lot of time or is that just players in general, because stats are usually screwed up when its per minute because it lets in a lot of out of rotation players who might come in for 1-10m and put up "great" stats for that very short amount of time. LA needs to be a better rebounder I don't think anyone is going to argue that, its definitely frustrating watching him play when he has elite length and seems to not want to use it to take advantage of it on the glass. If you average it out between starting PF's in the league per 36 I wonder if LA would even break top 15.
How about actual rebounds? 20th in the league, but higher than gortat, hibbert and Marc gasol. Hmmmmm. I seem to remember going goo goo over these guys.
