Oden will help yes. But it will still be a problem until players start coming to play. Oden being there doesn't solve the issues on the perimeter, either Outlaw for Frye at PF gives up physicality. As for Rudy, indeed he has been doing worse since the inury, but the facts are the guy is not hitting a high percentage of his shots, and the injury is just another excuse. Excuses are for losers, especially when many of his looks are wide open.
With Oden back, Frye won't be seeing any minutes. It will mostly be a three man front line of Aldridge, Joel and Oden, with Travis getting spot minutes at back-up 4. You'll always have one of Oden or Joel on the court, so there won't many many teams whose 2nd units will be outmuscling us. Prior to the injury, Rudy was shooting >0.390 3FG% for the year. He's 0 - 6 since. 0.390 isn't bad for anyone, let alone a rookie. It's not league leading good, but above average. It's better than guys like Mike Miller, Kyle Korver, Paul Pierce, Peja Stojakovic, Josh Howard, Jason Terry, Hedo Turkoglu, etc. And, since > 60% of his shots are threes, it drags down his over all shooting percentage. I still think the bench will be fine - more than fine - once we get Oden back and Rudy's back at 100%. BNM
I don't really agree with that. He was given chances, and he had the chance to separate himself from the others, and earn major playing time. This year (and his rookie year) Nate showed that if he is playing well he will stay in the game. Last year, we simply had 2 better PGs in Blake and Jack. This year, he has been the 2nd best PG, but when he had his shot when Blake went down, he really didn't outplay Bayless to cement anything in the rotation, especially not given the fact that Bayless will provide more toughness and defense and is just getting his feet wet (so we don't really know how good or not good he can be right now). Sergio was gettin' something like 7ppg and 5apg and 3rpg in 20-25mpg as the starter, which isn't that great when you consider poor defense and a couple turnovers. Now Nate is giving Jerryd a chance to see if he can separate himself as a quality backup, and though Jerryd played well for his first real PT of the year when Blake was injured getting 10ppg, 3apg and 2rpg, lately Jerryd hasn't really changed anything in my mind, and we still have no idea who the backup PG is and are still searching for some consistancy. I agree with the fact that Sergio struggles under Nate/Nate's system here in Portland though, just not that he hasn't been given time on the court to prove himself, or a "fair shot". Nate's system has improved our team by plenty of wins every year, so its not like we are going to mess around with it so Sergio can fit in. Maybe Bayless will fit in better, maybe he won't, we will see. Yeah, this is what i'm trying to say. But at the same time, the backup PG only has like 10mpg to play per game, and if Nate is trying to play each of them it simply won't work as with 5 minutes nobody is going to get comfortable out there (along with the fact that each PG probably feels that they can't mess up or they will get yanked, which hurts their game as well).
This to me has been the real folly in the way the backup point guard spot has been handled since Steve came back from injury. It got me to thinking about and reflecting on the way that Sergio and Jerryd played when Blake was out with his separated shoulder. Sure both had their ups and downs, but it's pretty clear that their shooting percentages, assist rates and overall play picked up substantially when they both knew they were going to be getting minutes and would have an established place in the rotation; neither feared they would be getting the hook or juggled around if they made a mistake or two. I like Nate and overall I think he's done an admirable job with the team, but in this case I think he really fell down by retreating on his promise to make Sergio THE backup; I've been mostly a Bayless fan and I think he is likely to be the long term solution at the point guard position in a year or two, but I had no problem with Nate sending him back to the bench to wrack up DNPs and giving the 12-15 backup minutes to Sergio, but Nate did some real damage to both player's state of mind by back-pedaling and all of a sudden yanking Sergio after a couple of bad plays and then sticking Jerryd in at odd times for little bursts of minutes and getting predictably bad results. I did see one positive development last night, Jerryd looked awful (for the most part) but Nate stuck with him even through his mistakes. Hopefully that show of confidence will calm him down so he can start playing aggressive and loose like was back in part of January and February. And even if it had been Sergio he put in there and stuck by despite some inevitable mistakes I'd be OK with that too; mostly I just want to see him pick one horse and ride it, trying to go half-way with both is ruining both players' level of productivity and ability to play with confidence.
