Fun with stats: Afflalo is the 65th best SG in the NBA in Real Plus/Minus for this season (Denver and Portland) (For comparison: Will Barton is ranked 43rd.) Afflalo is 78th in "Wins against replacement" (Will is 44th). Afflalo is the 343rd best player in the NBA by PER. But I'm sure he makes up for it in scrap and intangibles.
if he opts out as we recent heard was likely then I don't think he is coming back which is fine by me
Before he became a Blazer, the only thing I knew about Afflalo was that he was an odd name turning up in boxscores. I have seen nothing to make me wish I had paid attention to him. We gave up, top-14 protected, the worse of our 2016 1st-round pick or Sacramento's. If Aldridge leaves, we may be losing the #15 pick.
Portland is the only place AA has signed as a bench player since Detroit as a rookie. If he can start somewhere and get 4 years and a decent paycheck, he'll probably take it. CJ and Wes will both be back. Dame plays off the ball part time. Crabbe can play the 2. Nico can play the 2 if he's back
For more comparison, Anthony Morrow is #10 and Nick Calathes is #13. Do you honestly believe that Anthony Morrow and Nick Calathes are 2 of the top 15 SGs in the NBA?
But really, who can't help to quote a stat that has Cody Zeller as the 5th best PF in the NBA, ZaZa Pachulia as the 2nd best C, and Gordon Haywayrd better than Kevin Durant.
I believe they're better than Afflalo, but that barely makes them top 50. As any moron knows, there is no stat that ranks players perfectly. Scoring favors the chuckers on bad teams. And, in fact, even combo stats like PER can flatter players on bad teams (call this the Kevin Love Syndrome). What this means is that scoring well on a particular stat is not sufficient to show you're a good player. But, unluckily for your attempted point, this does not show that scoring well in that stat is not necessary for being good. That said, there are players who do valuable things that are hard to quantify (or that aren't quantified by any well-known stat - because some geek somewhere will be working on a stat for it) like setting picks and boxing out. So you can get (or you used to, before the advent of advanced stats) "no stats all-stars". But adjusted (or "real") plus/minus was invented to catch just these types of players (like Shane Battier when he was good). But Afflalo has been SO bad that he doesn't even show up as good on ANY stat. He can't even get in on the noise, let alone the signal. Or am I wrong? (Why do I get the feeling I've just done the equivalent of giving a lecture to a brick wall?)
It's cute when people conveniently forget why AA was brought in here to do as a bench player behind Wes, to satisfy a loop-holed argument. It's really, really cute. Like, super cute. And sad. Very, very sad. Like, super sad.
Irrelevant. It doesn't matter why he was brought in - 6th man or 11th man off the bench. He came in and stunk up the joint. He was atrocious before the injury and was even worse after. He's owed $8m next year if he opts in, I'd bet no team offers him more than the MLE. And the MLE is too much for the type of player he is now.
Are you saying he wasn't brought in to play well? Perhaps you mean he was brought in specifically to sit on the bench, at which his performance might be admirable, if he wasn't being forced actually to go on to the court and suck.
In all fairness, he was brought in mid season on an offensive scheme that is predicated on timing and being in the right place at the right time. To make matters worse, Matthews got hurt and he was put into a starting role. Then he got hurt and couldn't recover in time. I would like to think that he would have played much better if he had a training camp and full season to figure shit out.
He was also NBDL rookie of the year, a few of which (Bynum, Amundson, Gee) have gone on to be decent NBA reserves. Have a little faith.
You act like we run a complex offense, when in reality we run one of the most basic and simplistic offenses in the league. There's not much to figure out - either for a new in-coming player OR for the opposing defense!
It's not just about a systematic offense though, basketball is a team sport that is all about chemistry. Especially the NBA where the competition is so great, it's not a simple as it looks.
It's not necessarily "complex" but it definitely involves timing and being in the right spots. The timing is a real issue here. That is why having all the same players made us deadly at the beginning of the year. Once we started getting injured, players weren't comfortable with their new roles. This is proof that timing is the real issue here.
