If you're not on the L-Train, what are you waiting for?

It was due to your vehement comparison of Blazer Fandom to Christianity, and how you were the arbiter of fandom. If you consider it an insult I'll stop--it wasn't ever meant to be.

It's a play on a PapaG quote from the game thread. I discuss, I don't "throw".

Could be. Or the guy with the map who can tell you how many stops until you reach your station.

I said that your contention that he's playing the best in his career was wrong, and that he has done nothing appreciably different than he did on a 33-49 team other than take 2-3 more shots per game (at a lower efficiency) and get more defensive rebounds, your "31-9!" (now) trump card doesn't make much sense. Meanwhile, Dame's efficiency has gone up markedly, Wes is shooting the best he ever has, Nic's a walking assault on a triple-double, there's an NBA-caliber center now and we have a modicum of a bench. If you choose to assign MVP-dom to LMA because of counting stats, cool. No one's stopping you. But when you use those stats as a foundation to ask why others "aren't on the train", I'll tell you why I think it's not the clear-cut case you think it is.

 

uh, I just did. Dec. 1 to Jan 17 (when you made your post) = 49.0%.

Or maybe you wrote the post early on the 16th, then it becomes...48.9%.

http://stats.nba.com/playerStats.html?PlayerID=200746&DateFrom=12/01/2013&DateTo=01/16/2014

I don't know what else to say.

 

[video=youtube;42b-Inq6l6E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42b-Inq6l6E[/video]

 

I'll repost verbatim from my original response to the OP:

 

He's not shooting enough!

 

Wow. Just, wow. As I said, if (since) you find it an insult, I've stopped.

And NO, he HASN'T. His ppg and rpg numbers are up, because he's shooting more shots. His PPP are not as high as they were last year. His ORB are not as high as they were last year. He's crushing DRB, as I pointed out (and backed up).

I am defending my opinion that he's not playing the best ball of his career, and that I personally don't feel the need to be "on the L-Train" until he gets more consistently into the post and becomes a more efficient scorer. Everything else has been defense of that opinion.

As I've stated repeatedly, yes. He's taking 21 shots a game--3 more than his career high--which is why he's getting more ppg. Earlier this season when he was shooting 54% and people were pointing to that as a harbinger that he should just keep shooting as much as he liked (not sure if you were one or not, so disregard if you don't care), I asked what changed with him to get him from shooting 41.8% +/- 1% for 7 straight years on those shots, to now being above 50%? Well, now that he's back down to his career averages (which all show that he's NOT an "elite" shooter on par with Dirk/Scola/Anderson/KG/M.Gasol/etc (all these threads are available from the summer, if you don't want to rehash them here), he's still shooting more of those "contested" jumpers as a detriment to the team's overall offense.

Not at all. I think (and have repeatedly said) that right now LMA's the best PF in the game not named LeBron, because of his paint game. But he's not an elite shooter---he's elite when he gets into the paint and uses his array of moves and power (as we've seen the last two days) to abuse teams who can't defend him. And his jumper, when open, spaces the floor. When contested, it's better to have DeAndre Jordan shooting FTs for us. So to your point--no, I can't get behind LMA shooting 500+ sub-optimal jumpers in less than half a season when we have 2 guys shooting 44% or so from 3, or guys like Nic who can drive the lane at will when LMA's being "contested".

 

Which part of that edit (as opposed to the original that doesn't seem to fit your narrative) do you think that I haven't sufficiently backed up?

 

Everyone has the wrong stats and everyone is wrong in this thread! There! :MARIS61: