Roy has the ball in his hands too much?

Can't find a thread on this so here goes, from a Dwight James blog; I agree with him and hope that Roy and the Blazers can learn from this.

http://www.dwightjaynes.com/the-trail-blazer-postmortem-begins-after-an-ugly-season-ender

"I believe the Trail Blazers need to take a very hard look at their style of play during the regular season. I believe it led to many of the problems they had in the playoffs. Some of these things must change for the team to get to the next level.

Prior to the opening of this series, I had a chance to talk to a few NBA scouts who had prepared for the possibility of playing Portland in the first round. The only promise was that I couldn’t quote them directly or give any hints as to the teams they worked for. Most of them didn’t want their stuff printed until after the first-round series was finished.

I can tell you the one thing that stood out from what all of them told me – Portland is very easy to prepare for. The reason: “They run so many isolations.”

One scout said, “It’s really just about all they do — particularly in the fourth quarter. You know how they play, everybody does. They’re going to give Brandon Roy the ball at the top and just stand back and watch him play. They may run a little screen for him, but it’s window dressing — he’s going to try to take you.”

Well, he’s pretty good at that — what’s wrong with Brandon going one-on-one?

“Nothing, once in a while,” one scout said. “But he’s not going to go one-on-one against Houston in the playoffs. He’s going to go one-on-five. They just won’t let him get to the basket. They’re going to lock him up.”

Said another scout, “What he’s done a lot of this season is go left. That’s fine, but he tends to put his head down, head to the basket and jump into somebody, expecting a foul call. He isn’t going to pass, he’s going to go hard to the basket, looking for a whistle. In the playoffs, you don’t always get that call.”


"I will say many other things in the future about the way the Blazers play but there’s one more thing that fits right in with what we’re talking about. Roy has the ball in his hands in one-on-one situations way too often. In fact, he has the ball in his hands, in general, way too much. He has the ball more often than Michael Jordan used to have it for the Bulls.

He’d profit from playing more often without it in his hands and so would his teammates. Much will be made about how little help Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge had in this series but a lot of that is a product of the team’s lack of offensive structure. Really, they don’t run a lot of team offense. Roy has the ball all the time, just looking to create stuff that’s mostly for himself. Others can go several trips up and down the floor without even touching it. Making no excuses for Rudy Fernandez last night, he was awful — but really, he didn’t get a lot of opportunities to get going in the first half, either."

 

wow, those scouts are reading my mind. that's really on nate as a coach, horrible that every team has the same scouting report. he needs to adjust because roy can't and won't take us very far as a one man band.

"He has the ball more often than Michael Jordan used to have it for the Bulls."
that quote is very surprising and telling, he needs to give up the ball, and nate should be the one telling him to trust his teamates

 

It would be one thing if we didn't have many talented offensive players on our team, but our team is filled with them. We are wasting away the talents of many because our coach doesn't know how to get the offense going without Brandon Roy doing it single handedly. Maybe getting Greg Oden more than 3 shots on a regular basis is a start.

 

i think its more nate than anything.....writing on the wall

 

Pretty much.

 

I agree that he had the ball inhis hands too much. I think that is both Nate and Roy and how our team was constructed.

Team Constructed -- Our PG (Blake) simply wasn't the type of PG who played witht he ball in his hands.... we didn't have anyone else that took it to the rim like Jack last year.

Nate -- It seems that Nate's gameplan was simply give it to Roy and get out of the way too often especially in the 4th QTR like the scouts said. That is good sometimes but it should not be the main part of our game plan. If we can win 54 games with that gameplan though, if we implement more diversity in the offense i don't see how 60 is out of the question next year.

and finally, Roy -- Seems that he is really only effective with the ball in his hands. He needs to learn how to play off the ball. To improve this team we will need to get a PG who can create and take it to the rim as well which will (hopefully) cut down on Roy's time with the ball in his hands and actually make it easier on him and not wear him down so much. He plays well in the all-star game, so he should be able to adapt fine, but I think this should be one thing that he should work on this off-season. I'm not sure if this is the case, but it seems that there was a huge difference in Roy's ball domination in his 2nd year and his 3rd year. He seemed like more of a playmaker his 2nd year and much more of a ball-dominating scorer his 3rd year. That is fine, but I think it would be better for the team to spread it around to keep the defense off balance, keep others involved and keep Roy fresh. We also shouldn't depend so much on Roy because he really isn't the most durable player out there.

I'd like to see LMA with the ball in the post more, Greg (next year) with more post ups, and our PG next year (whoever that is) creating more. In the playoffs Roy's touches will go up of course, but it should probably still be less than it was this year in the playoffs in my mind.

 

Not exactly a revelation. This was my comment back at Christmas time:

"IMO, a large part of the problem is that Brandon has a pretty large hole in his game. He needs the ball in his hands to be effective....which is another way to say that he goes one on one at crunch time. He has won the team a number of games by doing that, but the league is getting wise to his fourth quarter routine.

That may continue work against some of the teams, but soon he'll have a steady diet of double teams in the fourth quarter. Brandon needs to learn to work without the ball in his hands. If he could learn to run off of picks and screens, receive the ball and shoot, it will help his overall game immensely. It's a lot harder to double him when he's running through a series of picks than if he's standing at the top of the key, deciding how to take his guy one on one.

Here's hoping that Rudy can teach him how to move without the ball. Rudy reminds me of the way that Reggie Miller used to run through picks and screens non-stop."

As others pointed out at the time....if the ball's not in Roy's hands, then whose?

I think Roy can learn to play off the ball more, but we're going to need distributer at PG before it happens. I like our PG's but sadly, with the game on the line, our best shot currently is to give the ball to Brandon and clear out. I don't think that game plan can win the Blazers the title though.

Maybe, with the development of other players, we will see enough improvement that teams can't double Roy without paying for leaving his teammates open. Barring that improvement, we need an upgrade at PG.

I worries me that the team seems to think Bayless might be the 'PG' to fix the problem. I don't see that happening if the game plan is for JB to bring the ball up the floor and give it to Brandon. That's just more of the same.

There might a another option, though, and that's Brandon finding his teammates that are left open by the double team more often. That requires other Blazers to step up and git er dun when Roy gives up the ball, and for Roy to trust those guys to do it.

I will be interesting to see how KP addresses this.

 

Why is this a problem? Kobe had the ball in his hands ALL the time. Fisher is not a player that sets up people at all...

 

Kobe doesn't walk up the court and stand still while the defense gets ready.

Brandon does.

Kobe knows how to handle a double-team.

Brandon doesn't.

 

Sweeping generalized statements are almost always wrong and this is no exception.

This appears to be a case of selective memory more than anything.

 

Brandon does not trust any of his teammates outside of LMA because they don't deserve his trust. Not one other player has been consistent this year. Give him another good scoring option before we declare him a ball hog.

 

We do? So we have more than two guys on the team that create his own shot? Greg was ready to be fed the ball down low? Our coaching staff doesn't know how to run an offense? The Blazers didn't win 54 games because BROY was the most productive player in the 4th quarter in the entire fucking NBA?

Granted we need a third starter that can help Roy out. No doubt Roy would be willing to defer if there were other options. But Roy did not have the ball too much in Games 2 and 5 when he dominated the 4th. Game 1 was a blowout and game 6th turned for the worst when Roy went out in the second quarter.

So I guess my response to this scout is if it was easy to come up with a game plan to defend them, then why was Portland such a good 4th quarter team the whole year when Roy had the ball in his hands? There are about 3 teams in the NBA that match up well against Roy. Unfortunately as we all know, Houston is one of them.

 

He definitely isn't a ball hog. Its just I think something that can be improved in our team. Offensive diversity is really important, especially after hearing what the scouts were saying.

I agree though, and that was part of my point. The team arround him and Nate's system add to this as much as Roy, imo. Overall, we simply need a lot more movement in the offense.

I definitely don't think its a problem that he has the ball in his hands a lot, I just think it may be a bit too much and we could use that time better for various reasons I listed, one being that it will wear on him more and more.

 

I agree.

A ball hog would have a much lower assist:turnover ratio, and would be much easier to defend based on what the scout is implying.

I think we are putting way too much weight on things based on Houston's defense. Sure, we want to measure ourselves against the best, but it is possible the offensive strategy needed to win against Houston, wouldn't have won us 54 games in the regular season.

 

A) The Lakers play the triangle offense, which is built for Kobe's game.

B) Kobe has a better mid-range game than Roy. He has a better fadeaway, and he is a little better at pulling up off the dribble. Brandon is good at those things too, but not AS good.

 

Agree 100%

 

If you look at the problems on the team, every single one of them could be handled by a good PG.

1. Too many isolations because we have no play making PG.
2. Roy carries too much of the load because we have no play making PG.
3. Defensive penetration is common because our current PG (that play) can't stop anybody.
4. No offensive threat besides Steve Blakes 3 shooting out of our current PG. You don't even have to guard Sergio.
5. Rare easy buckets for our bigs, where I see Tyson Chandler get several per game, and he is one of the worst offensive big men there is.

All of these things scream "GET A FUCKING POINT GUARD"

 

I agree completely. Now if only a proven point guard was available for 7 million dollars Portland would be set.


Too bad there isn't one out there.

 

Honestly, there are probably 13 or 14 PGs out there that I want, which is more than i've ever wanted recently with the emergance of PGs like Sessions, Brooks (most don't like him probably so I will lay off him), Westbrook and Rubio coming into the league and so on. I think we can get one, tbh... of course most of the PGs on my list of 13 or 14 are probably impossible to obtain, but still...

I simply can't fucking wait to see what happens this offseason.

 

Portland might have between $8-16 million available to them (depending on what they decide to do with Blake and Outlaw). They can get Miller for $8-9 million, I'd guess, assuming he's interested in playing for Portland.