Game Thread GAME# 13: HAWKS @ BLAZERS - JANUARY 16, 2021 - SATURDAY, 7:00 PM, NBCSNW

I'm sure you know that "You seem to be the only one who doesn't feel this way?" is just an appeal to majority and is probably not even true.

Every player goes on streaks and has on and off nights. Players can shoot 45% from 3 one month and 30% the next. Players shoot worse at the end of games - they get tired and defenses ratchet up. Dame shoots 32% from 3 at the end of games. Aminu's playoff 3-point percentages are: 64%, 40%, 41%, 43%, 29% and 39% overall. Not a train-wreck. Not a choker.

Aminu's A/TO ratio in the last two years as a Blazer was 1.25. Camelo as a Blazer 0.89. Kanter career 0.55. Aminu did not turn the ball over at some high rate. His last two years as a Blazer he reduced his TO rate to 10% of usage. That's normal, even somewhat low. It's also not fair to use A/TO on a low-usage high-rebound player because rebounds get stripped in traffic often enough to inflate their turnovers relative to their low-usage assists. That's one reason good-hands Kanter's A/TO and TO% are bad.

Aminu was not a train-wreck on offense. That's myth. He could hit 3's at a reasonable clip. He could drive and finish when closed out. He got fouled a lot on those drives and made his free-throws. He grabbed 1.5x more offensive rebounds than Carmelo does. Of course you'd rather have a player who makes 40% from three, can slash and assist, on top of defending and rebounding. Those players are hard to get. Get that guy and you'll have no complaints from me about replacing an Aminu. But not having that guy it was foolish to let a guy like Aminu go. Just because Aminu was not that guy, that does not make him a train-wreck on offense. What you really don't want to do is dump a player like Aminu and replace him with a guy like Melo. A player who can't defend, can't rebound, is slow to loose balls, has poor shot selection, takes away shots from better shooters, and despite shooting over his head from 3 is still less efficient than Aminu was his last year as a Blazer. Fools gold. He'll win you some games making a clutch 3 in the 4th, but he will lose you many more games by all the other things he does or fails to do.

There is also such a thing as a train-wreck on defense. Like we had last year without A&H. The year we went 35-39 just after we'd gone 53-29 and made it to the WCF with A&H and without Nurk.

 

Giles did some decent things. I'm not going to crap on his game.
Melo was better in there last night and so was Kanter.
What i am seeing from Giles is an unwillingness to stay around the rim or be in the paint. I don't think it's unsolvable. He just seems to want to get back on defense and misses any chance for an offensive rebound. Where both Kanter and Nurk stick a bit longer and run harder to get back.
Then there is the defensive side of things. He leaks out and gets lost in the middle a bit too much. Hanging around the free throw line or top of the key. He gives up second chance points.
Both ways he is getting caught in no mans land at times.
The guy looks to me like he just gets lost? Lillard, CJ, Trent and Melo all are telling him where to be all the time. I run things back during breaks and look for little things. Giles is trying no question. He is working. He is listening. But he is still as many as 500 to 1000 mins from being comfortable on the court in this situation.
Bottom line- I think he needs minutes.

 

Not gonna lie i was really surprised to see Dame throw a halfcourt lob to DJJ. That was beautiful

 

It's stuff like this that makes people hate "Statistics".
First off the 64% was with Dallas in a Five game series they lost. I'll give you the 64% beings it was 63.6%. He actually had good numbers but again the reason might not show in the "Stats".
Next you got 3 years in the playoffs where he shot over 40% from three. Sounds good right?
Lets take 2015-16. Remember the Blazers were losing badly to the Clippers until Chris Paul and Blake Griffin both get injured. We aren't talking close wins. We are talking 20-25 point blowouts. Why? Because the Clippers wrote the book on how to deal with the Blazers. Let Aminu shoot and keep the ball out of Damian Lillard's hands. Use 5 players on 4 and absolutely Beg Aminu to shoot from three or try to put the ball on the floor and collapse on him in the paint.
Would have been a first round out and anyone watching knows this.
Next season 2016-17 Golden State warriors. Possibly one of the best teams to play the game but again sweep and 30 point blowouts. Because they let Aminu shoot WIDE OPEN looks and clamped down on Lillard.
Sure lets talk about 2017-18. Same story. Stop Lillard and Let Aminu shoot WIDE OPEN ( we are talking totally uncontested three's ) Just make sure Lillard cannot beat you.

The next year 2018-19 The Blazers changed the act. Lillard widened his shot range and they added Seth Curry not to mention CJ became more potent. They added Hood also. Guess what? Aminu didn't get all those wide open looks against the Thunder and look what happened. Lillard torched them.
Against Denver he went 5 for 23 from three point. Why? Because Denver had the personnel to guard Lillard and Aminu. However CJ was a huge problem. As soon as Aminu was under any pressure at all he clanked the shot.
Then we have the Warriors again. Aminu went 1-6 for the entire series and in the end his minutes dropped because any time he was on the floor the Warriors went 5 on 4 against the Blazers.

You have to actually watch what happens on the court instead of simply basing your statements on Stats. I'll bring Melo into the conversation because you did. If you give melo that many WIDE OPEN looks from three the Blazers don't get swept out of the Playoffs. No team leaves Melo around the three point line. When they do he burns them. Another thing. Melo played one series against Anthony Davis no less. Averaged over 15 points and 5 rebounds. Aminu in his career in the playoffs averaged 11 points and 7 rebounds without being guarded. I'll give you that Davis might have had to work a bit harder against Aminu but he would still dominate him.

I'm going to let this conversation go because i really don't like bashing any player. Certainly not Aminu when he was a great part of the Blazers and worked as hard as any guy you will ever find out there.
I agree to disagree with your perspective.

 

a big problem with Aminu + Harkless wasn't that they were bad on offense, it's that they were wildly inconsistent on offense. And that meant it was pretty uncommon for them both to have a good game at the same time. They were generally undependable, and opposing defenses didn't respect them as threats. And we had 4 years of that which was probably 2 years too long

but a bigger problem is that inconsistency made them poor two-way players. And they both had weak handles. They were role players and generally below average starters, especially as a pairing.

unfortunately, at this point, the same things are true of RoCo and Jones. Aminu/Harless didn't take the pressure of Dame. RoCo/Jones don't either. They are probably a little better defensively than Aminu/Harkless (although Aminu, IMO, was a better rim protector and rebounder), but may be worse offensively. But, as we saw last night, the biggest limiting factor for Portland's defense is Dame & CJ on the floor at the same time

since 2015, Portland has needed a consistent two-way player at one of the forward positions, and a backup PG. But Olshey refuses to see the need for another PG and has always tried to cheap-screw together the forward rotation

 

Kanter was solid with points/rebounds, but Capela double the points with the same amount of rebounds and shot 11-16 from the field. Defense matters.

 

He was enjoying himself so much that I almost wondered if he picked a team who he knew had centers with histories of injuries......

 

Well said. If they both had good games on the same night the Blazers won going away.

 

So we won but question for everyone. With that timeout and Hawks are down by 2, as a coach. Do you put RoCo in there for defensive stop and take out Melo? If Hawks tied the game, do we blame Stotts again?

 

I actually asked that question watching the game. As bad of a night as RoCo was having and as good of a night as Kanter/Melo were having it's a tough call. Most nights i would pull Melo and play RoCo. Either way Stotts gets torched if they lose that game. Part of being a coach i guess?

 

Why even nitpick 63.6% vs 64%? I brought up Aminu's playoff 3-point percentage to show that Aminu doesn't choke which you implied by saying he can't make a shot in the 4th.

Your presumption I don't watch the games just because I cite statistics to make a point isn't true. Take the Pelican series as a prototype of trapping Dame. Your claim would be that they played 5 on 4 because of Aminu and he failed to punish them so we got crushed. That's not what I saw. Yeah they played 5 on 4 a lot, but what I saw is that Dame wasn't good at escaping the trap. He turned it over a lot and his passes out were weak, giving the defense time to recover. Somehow it was on Aminu who shot 43% from three on 0.652 TS% on high usage. But not Dame's fault who had 4 turnovers per game or others' fault (Napier, Connaughton, Turner, Collins) combining for 20% from 3. In the GSW series our 3-point shooters who were not a train-wreck (Hood & Curry) combined 11 for 33 (33%) but Aminu was a train-wreak going 13 for 30 (43%) all by himself vs the Pelicans. Not buying it.

Yes, it's easier cheat off Aminu (and even more so Roco & DJJ) than Melo as he can get up a shot quicker under pressure assuming he continues to be lights-out from 3. That still won't come close to making up for the rest of Melo's game. I think you are overrating the impact of scoring relative to other aspects like defense and rebounding, especially on a team that is already strong offensively and weak defensively.

 

It's almost like he needs a coach to tell him what to do. But we don't have one, apparently. Maybe that's why Stotts like to play Melo so much. You don't need to tell Melo or Dame what to do.

 

Like i said in the post.
I'm gonna agree to disagree with you here because you are absolutely not "Wrong" by any means. I just see it differently and don't agree.
No problem.
I like the way you present factual stats and stay on topic. Also like i said above i totally respect what Aminu did here. If all players modeled themselves after Aminu there would be a bunch of better basketball being played.

 

this is a big part of the problem for Portland. Dame is 6'2 and he's was getting trapped by 6'4 Holiday and 6'11 AD...a lot. When it wasn't AD it was 6'10 Mirotic. And occasionally, Rondo, a very good defender was on Dame but the big man traps were always coming. And quite a few times, Dame was tripled

again, Dame is a short guard and just about any short guard will have trouble dealing with those kinds of doubles and traps. Certainly Dame probably could have done a better job of anticipation and not taking the ball into the sideline. But I watched every minute of that series and a lot of Dame's trouble wasn't his fault. A big issue I saw was that CJ-Turner-Aminu-Harkless-Napier did a poor job of getting in positions when Dame could see them clearly with any kind of passing lane. It was a team failure

and the reason it happens in the playoffs, year after year, is because Memphis set the playoff template on how to stop Dame: stop-Dame-stop-the-Blazers. I remember Lionell Hollins talking after game 3 of that series about how they had to do a better job of defending CJ. But of course, they didn't change their defense a bit from the stop-Dame approach

Memphis essentially said the only Blazer who could beat them was Dame. So they defended Portland accordingly. After that series, San Antonio did the same thing; so did the Warriors 3 times; so did the Pels.

it works and it's doubly effective because if you take Dame out of the equation, you've taken out Portland's #1 scorer and the only guy who can consistently run the offense. It's a 2 or 1 bargain. And it's just about certain Portland will face it again this season in the playoffs if they get there. And it's almost as certain Portland will capsize again because of it

 

Yeah I agree it was a team failure. I don't think it's all that easy to beat a good trap. I've seen players and teams with all the right pieces in place still have trouble punishing it. There isn't all that much time before the defense recovers. You have to find the open player quickly and get them the ball without messing up. Often requires multiple good passes.

Are any of those series where Dame got trapped on YouTube as full games? I'd like to watch again because at the time I was probably screaming at the TV, not analyzing the trap. I looked for the Pelicans series on YouTube but only found highlights.