GAME THREAD: BLAZERS @ NUGGETS - DECEMBER 2, 2014; TUESDAY, 6 PM (PST), KGW

"lets be real" huh? well being real is being honest and Wes-Dame-LMA are always working on their game in the offseason, and as much as you "wish" it Nic does not, so all U got is a dream

 

and BTW LMA's rebounding improvement is mostly because of Rolo being here as LMA said in an interview just the other day

 

Batum is never going to average 20 ppg or have a 20 PER. He doesn't need to, to help this team in significant ways. And I'm OK with that.

He does need to get healthy and get his shooting stroke back. He made a lot of clutch 3s last season and in the playoffs. Not so much this year, so far.

I sincerely wish the guy would STOP playing on the French team every damn summer.

 

Does that even matter? Do I need to pull all the replies everyone said to me that Aldridge will never ever average 10 rebounds a game? In fact, I bet many would probably argue that his rebounding would probably drop with a traditional center in the mix, saying that center would grab most the boards.

 

I'm against him playing over seas as well, but wouldn't that be "working on your game?" I mean he's still playing at a higher level, which would be better practice then working by yourself.

 

U apparently think Nic is playing at a higher level and I don't, and playing in the summers and wearing yourself out IMO is NOT improving his game

 

He absolutely is playing at a higher level. He's playing against Euro pro players. That's at a higher level than practicing at home or in the gym. Why would you think that isn't?

 

what? so you think that so far this season Nic is playing at an overall higher level than the past few seasons, if that is the case then lets just stop disagreeing because we are of two very differing opinions. Stats from past 2 years suggest his assists are barely up (5.2 this yr vs 5.0 prev 2 yrs), rebounding similar but shooting percentage has crashed to 37% from 2 yr avg near 44% and PPG down to 8.6 vs prev. 2-yr avg of 13.6, 3 point shooting at a horrible 23% from avg of 36.5. IMO all these stats clearly show an overall DECLINE

 

I want Nic guarding the hot hand in any close game. Chris Paul, Ty Lawson, Afflalo, whoever is a mismatch for Dame. Nic is the epitome of a team player. His shot will come around. We can't keep throwing players under the bus when they have shooting slumps. It's a long season. Without Nic, we don't beat the Rockets in the playoffs last season

 

Nico will be fine. It's still early in the season and I expect his shot will come back before too long.

 

This. Nobody becomes a bad shooter overnight. He started the season in a slump and the injury didn't help anything. We still are less than 20 games into the season, my guess would be that he will be back to his normal self come January.

 

Yeah I definitely. 100% and utterly disagree with you. I don't give a flying fuck about the numbers this season, especially those after the injury. But for you to tell me that playing overseas is less of a level than practicing at home, then we are at ends.

 

why can't you understand that it is "less of a level" because of the toll it takes on his body and he's been playing full NBA seasons for years now and every summer playing Intl or Olympic ball. Like Wes or LMA if he worked on resting his body and doing specific work to strengthen his body and work on parts of his game IMO he would be a better player. Just playing all the time is NOT the answer, especially when the body wears out and more injuries occur.

 

Bashing on Nic's shooting percentage is kinda dumb, IMO. He's our 4th (?) scoring option in the starting unit. And maybe our 5th option overall? He has a career 45% FG% with a career shooting efficiency (did ESPN change from eFG% to SHEFF?) of 53.7%. This is the first time his SHEFF has been below 50%. To put this in perspective, LMA's SHEFF has never been over 51.3%, and he sports a career SHEFF of 48.8%.

Yes, Nic's shooting terribly so far. Nobody is questioning that. He's near the bottom of our AFG% list, but LMA is only two spots higher:
http://espn.go.com/nba/team/stats/_/name/por/cat/shootingEfficiency/portland-trail-blazers

Luckily there's a LOT of season left before the games really start to matter. What do we have, 64 more games? If he's still shooting this poorly after we play those games then I'll be worried. Until then I'm going to assume that his shooting will get better over the course of the season and he'll be right around his career average by the time the season ends. Remember last season when LMA and Wes started out RED HOT? Well there were a few of us that knew they'd regress to their career averages, and that's exactly what ended up happening. The same will be true for Nic. But in the end we're quibbling over ~6ish points from our 4th/5th scoring option, and we're just 3 days into the second month of the season. Oh, AND we have a few bench players who are more than capable of picking up Nic's 6 points.

 

One of the reasons Rolo is able to score is Nic..I've said before, Nic makes our bigs more successful in the paint. Since playing with Nic, Rolo has benefited with touches he normally wouldn't get.

 

I transcribed my monologue to nic via TV right after he did this play.

"WHat the fuck are you thinking? Are you kidding me with this shit? I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

 

Okay, I'm sorry... totally off topic, but for the love of god, this isn't twitter. YOU CAN SPELL OUT YOUR WORDS!!!! Seriously, shorthand on the word YOU?? I wrote that and it took .23 seconds to do.

/petpeeve

 

http://espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400578551

39 points, 16-30 shooting, 7-9 FT, 11 boards, 1 assist (that won the game), +8

 

I really don't care what U think about that

 

We have a 5 game winning streak on the road. Gotta love that.