and Outlaw could give fits to KD especially Batum. Oden should have a huge night and Roy may have another massive performance, he's due! This will be a blowout game!
Batum and Durant is going to be a good matchup to watch tonight. I'm not sure why you brought Outlaw up though. He's not good on defense at all and he plays POWER FORWARD not SMALL FORWARD, I doubt they'll be matched up much if at all. I find it dumbfounding that people still don't realize this. He's played almost all of his minutes at PF for three straight years.
He does play some SF. He usually comes in for Batum and plays for the starters for a couple minutes before the other bench people come in.
I think Outlaws length alone could cause KD fits to shoot over. That and Oden will erase him in the paint which makes me think Kevin will live from the three point range most of the game. Batum is really who I think will be the difference maker on D though.
Durant is going destroy Outlaw. In fact, this is the match-up I expect to be most infuriated by. A close second is Westbrook's domination of Sergio in the first 6 minutes of the game. As for Oden, he will be in foul trouble very early in this game covering for Sergio's patented Ole defense.
Exactly: some. But the vast majority of his time and success has been at PF. He has played a very minimal amount of SF over the last 3 seasons, yet most Blazer fans call him a SF or project him as a SF. But even Mike and Mike are constantly bring up how poor Outlaw plays when he's at SF and they're as big of homers as you can get. I just wish Portland fans would recognize that he's not and will never be a SF. While he's versatile enough to play the position if needed, all of his potential is at the PF position.
I think we all call him a small forward because saying there is any power in his game is a sad joke. Portland is forced to play him out of position power forward because he is so useless at small forward. Outlaw at the 4 is one of the reasons we keep getting destroyed by back-up power forwards. He can't guard them. The only real hope is that he can negate them by scoring a bunch of points. In short, it's not that he IS a small forward. It's that he SHOULD BE a small forward. The fact he isn't hurts Portland now and in the long run. One other thing. Travis at Power Forward just means he gets destroyed by Green and not Durant.
Usually the same people that think LMA can "slide" down to play SF if we got another big man. Really though Outlaw CAN play some SF depending on who he's matched up with defensively. He can shoot and spread the floor enough for that position. Outlaw is a tweener. So is Durant really (at least he was in college) but simply MUCH MUCH better. Anyone else happy to see OKC playing Durant at SF rather than keeping him at SG like they initially tried?
Outlaw needs to continue to naturally put on weight and his defense at PF will be better. If he's up to 230 in 4 years with his athleticism he could be a solid defender. He has all the tools, he just needs a some more weight/strength and experience, both things that will progress naturally. He'll fill a vital role during Portland's Championship window.
So...is Nic Batum still the next Scottie Pippen? Wondering, because I saw a lot of that earlier this year.
He just turned 20. What was Pippen doing when he was 20? Was he starting for a playoff bound NBA team? Just wondering.
Kobe Bryant had bad games when he was a rookie too. He shot three air ball 3 pointers in a row against Utah in the playoffs ending the series. Why base your judgement of a rookie off of their worst performances? Judge them by their best performances, their tools which allow them to grow and repeat their best performances more often, and their repetitive negatives. If a lot of a players repetitive negatives can be coached and corrected don't weigh them too heavily, but pay attention to the repetitive negatives with a history of staying with a player.
Pippen's story is pretty amazing actually. He was a 6' walk-on at a NAIA school (just above juco, way below the NCAA) and grew to 6'8 by his senior year. He had an amazing tourney and got drafted fifth by the OKC Thunder, err....something like that.
That's not an absurd stance at all. I personally think Batum will be a Pippen-like player in the same way Kobe is a Jordan-like player. I don't think that's an absurd stance either.
I've heard the Pippen story, its pretty good one. The Sonics made one of their greatest trades in history, trading him to Chicago for the great Olden Polynice.
