I found this through Ben from Blazersedge.com as posted on Hornets247.com talking a bit about the upcoming matchup, but more or less breaks the Blazers down on offense and defense. Great stuff:http://www.hornets247.com/blog/2009/02/02/time-to-be-pitfall-and-catch-some-trailblazers#more The bolded part is mine for emphasis ... talk about hitting the nail on the head.
Portland did its best against the Hornets earlier this year when they doubled Paul early, and often time just sandwiched him with 2 taller players and denied him the ball. I would not be surprised to see Batum get a run on him tonight defensivly.
http://www.dwightjaynes.com/so-did-the-blazers-really-play-a-great-game our defense sucked vs utah...and williams is very similiar to paul
The banner in that blog in the OP rocks. Just freakin' awesome to see Chandler and Przybilla facing off, with Blake in the background.
I don't really understand the criticism of Pace here... he doesn't "see" the slowest team in the NBA? I don't think that it's possible to just watch the Blazers and watch other teams and make a conclusive statement about speed. Fast break points are one way. Average shot clock usage is another. I don't have either of those stats in front of me, but I'd be rather surprised if Portland is not on the "slow" end of both of those stat rankings. Ed O.
We shoot 19% of our shots in the last 4 seconds of the shot clock, with an eFG% of 45%. Our opponents shoot 16% of their shots in the last 4 seconds, eFG% 42.5%. We shoot only 29% of our shots in the first 10 seconds, while our opponents do it 34% of the time (our eFG% is 57% vs. opponents' 56%) trying to dig up fastbreak points, though I think we're almost DFL in that one. EDIT: 28th in the league, at 8.9. Ahead of HOU and TOR
Here is the thing I don't see a lot of you taking from this read though. It doesn't matter that Portland is slower pace. Portland is better at a slower pace than most teams, that is why they have a winning record. Part of basketball and winning is being able to force the game to your tempo, and hopefully, play at a tempo your opponent does not like to play at. The numbers on the post up above show this. Portland is more efficient at their pace of game then most other teams. They outrebound their opponent constantly, a staple of dominating half court play If you eventually get the defense to match the intensity of the offense, it will all come together. Scoring seems easy enough. Its getting the stops that needs to improve.
But it sure has worked in Phoenix. Too bad Phoenix wasn't playing that style in the playoffs! I could not resist that one!
actually, when you break apart our wins and losses, it's not like that. Our "pace" and "#of possessions" are almost exactly equal in our wins and losses. We don't "play slow better than others play slow", we generally blow teams away when we shoot anything average or above, and generally get Here are some comparisons (wins first/then losses) FGA: 78.6/78.8 3ptA: 19.1/20.3 FTA: 25.9/23.4 Reb: 42.9/37.7 Assist Ratio: 17.3/15.4 PPG: 103/91 Possessions per game: 88.4/88.9 EFF: 120.4/94.65 Notice, I didn't put it %s or makes. Here are the percentages in wins and losses (wins first): FG%: 47.5/42.8 3pt%: 39.9/34.4 TS%: 57.0/51.3 FT%: 78.3/72.6 It's not a matter of pace, it's a matter of shooting. We only play better slow if we're making an above-average percentage of jump shots (we shoot 69% of our shots as jumpers...I don't have a win/loss split on that). We're only shooting above our averages in 6 of our 17 losses (amazingly enough, all of them against the teams in the WC playoff hunt). We've shot less than our average in 9 of our 29 wins (all except HOU and DEN against below-.500 teams). Yet in those, our total shooting (except for SAC) was higher-than-normal, and our FTA were higher-than-normal. So it basically comes to this: when we've played good teams, shooting above-average from 3 doesn't necessarily get it done. Against poor teams it really doesn't matter how we shoot from 3 as long as we're still above 46% FG. We are 28th in the league in Fastbreak points. We shoot among the highest teams in the league in # of shots in the last 4 seconds of the clock. I fear that until we shoot more "efficient" shots (dunks/layups, FTs, open 3's, not buzzer-beaters) we'll continue to "die by the jumper" in a way that this team shouldn't.
I see some of what you are saying, and earlier this season when the Blazers were playing more of the "Live by the 3, die by the 3" game, I would agree. The team has been much better at attacking the paint lately, which kind of throws a wrench into things.
They've been playing much better lately, and I don't know that I want to bring up the Sergio/Bayless vs. Blake statement, but in our last 8 wins we're shooting 16 3's per game, vs the 19.1 we've averaged in wins and the 20 we've averaged total. Our FG% has also (funnily enough) gone up the more we attack the hoop (going with what you're saying about the "wrench"). I hope it's less of a gimmick and more of a purposeful offensive development. I'm not trying to put out an end-all, be-all hypothesis--just saying that I think our "pace" is really overrated as an indicator of our efficiency or winning.
Ah, but because of our slow Pace, you should convert fastbreak points to a percentage. Doing that, we wouldn't be 3rd lowest in fast breaks as a percentage of our scoring.
This team has a lot of good players. I think we'd have a winning record regardless of the style we play. The question is whether we're optimizing our talent. I doubt that playing slow makes sense UNLESS it helps our defense, and I don't think that it does. Ed O.
No. In this context, fast break points are an absolute measurement of speed... a potential replacement for Pace. Normalizing them for Pace doesn't make sense here. Ed O.
Is it overrated in terms of determining the speed of the game that the team plays at, though? I think it's hard to argue that the team wins or loses because of its Pace... the team has been consistently slow and so alternatives are speculative. Ed O.
All he is saying is that "slow" and Pace are not identical. Roughly related, by not closely. He thinks people confuse the two, and call low Pace = slow = no fastbreaks = running the shot clock down most possessions. He agrees that the Blazers ARE "slow", just not dead last in the league "slow" which Pace numbers would indicate.
And he has ... what as evidence? He has his gut level reaction from watching games? The fast break points indicate that the team is one of the three slowest teams in the NBA. I would imagine that shot clock data would, too. Coupled with Pace... how much more evidence do we need that we're super-slow? Ed O.
The one thing I do see though, is Portland has a lot of players who seem to be what I would call "fast break challenged." That is changing as personnel gets further from the Patternash years, but there are definitly guys on the team, that to say the least, when they are on the break, I have the worst feeling in my gut that nothing positive is going to happen. I won't go into names, I am sure each fan has a few of their own they feel that way about. I do agree though that you should always get cheap buckets whenever you can. Sometimes speeding things up gets more of those. Some young teams though speeding up the game increases the number of mistakes. The one thing I look at is Portlands record when their opponent scores over 100 points. Its pretty bad. I don't necessarily think that is the total indicator though, IMO it is more important Portland is the first team to reach 100. That is usually a better indicator, and shows the team is playing agressive.
