7 people in the entire NBA grabbed more offensive rebounds than Aldridge did last year. I would say that is elite, yes. I think Roy and Aldridge make our offense a lot better than it really is.
This really makes no sense - our offense is based on the roster. If we had Shaq in his prime - our offense will look different. The offense is based on Roy/LMA - and as such it is super efficient. It's like saying that Tea does not taste good because it does not taste like coffee...
Your reasoning for our EFF being so high, is the same reason our PACE would be so low? Correct? This week I watched the Laker and Denver games (at home) near the end of the season, and I would say without a doubt, those two teams took way more bad shots than Portland. Especially Denver, who takes a ton of horrible, low percentage shots. I don't know why taking a horrible shot with 10 seconds left in the shot clock is better than taking a contested shot with 2 seconds left on the shot clock?
I don't disagree with either thing you said here. I haven't jumped LMA for being a poor rebounder. I also agree that Nate has done an excellent job in going to our bread and butter, putting them in a position to have a high impact on our offensive efficiency.
I think it's a matter of consistency. I had charted every box score for the first 55 or so games, and it was actually kind of telling. Our "#2 in the league efficient" offense WAS efficient on average, to the tune of (at the time) 110.8, behind the L*kers 111.2. But there's a kicker to this. In games we won (where you'd expect the efficiency to be high), it was. 128.8 in wins. Far and away the best in the League. In our losses (where you'd expect it to be lower), it was...97. Below MIN, LAC, SAC, all the crappy teams. You saw it again in the playoffs. Yes, Roy and LMA are our bread and butter. But they both play perimeter games, aside from when Roy drives and gets buckets or fouls (and he wasn't getting many of either against HOU). Our shooters were just that...one-dimensional shooters. Blake, Rudy, Batum were all good ON AVERAGE during the season. But aside from a few Rudy plays (and a couple of Batum dunks), there wasn't a lot of motion or passing. http://www.82games.com/dribbles.htm shows a clear correlation not between "touches" per possession, but in touches per second. The quicker the ball moves around, the significantly better return on pts per possession you get. I'm more with MM on this than most. Our offense, when Roy and LMA were clicking (or when Oden and Przy and LMA were rebounding) was great. 3pt % or # of attempts didn't have as high a correlation (actually, we generally shot better % against good teams, but still lost). When we weren't getting the "easy, efficient" buckets (FTs, dunks and open 3's) or having a high touch-per-second pace, we were worse than SAC and LAC on offense. That's NOT where I think we should be...and I think that has less to do with Nate himself and more to do with how the players run the system he's designed. I think he'd LOVE to have more running opportunities--we heard him screaming it from the sidelines a lot this year and during timeouts--but the team didn't really ever respond to that. Roy seems not to like to run at all, Oden had a hard time getting up and down the court, and Blake made me almost wish for Jack back when he ran the break (Almost). More passing, more running = more efficient and consistent offense.
Why is that a kicker? It's fairly obvious that games the team loses would be a picked population of the games in which the team played more poorly than normal. Is that different from any other team? Team lose when they play badly and win they play well. The best teams are the ones that play well most of the time, which describes Portland. They played well offensively most of the time, which is why they had the #2 offense and won 54 games.
The correlation wasn't that we lost when our D was poor. It was when our efficient offense wasn't. And if our efficient offense is worse than the worst teams' in the league 1/3 of the time, I don't know that it's that efficient. Statistics guys can overrule me on this. I didn't do an analysis like this of the entire league, since it was a lot of work just to do ours, so I get your point. I think our offense DOES need a boost...maybe even moreso than our D. Resting on the laurel of saying "were the most efficient on average, but not consistently" won't cut it for a championship contender, imo. HOU proved that. But that's another thread.
Perhaps the issue was more the over all difference then the fact they played better when they won. A difference of 31 points seems rather high. I wonder if there is anywhere you can see a split of win/loss and see where Portland falls out in the difference. All it tells me is when Portland plays well, they play REALLY well and when Portland plays bad they play REALLY bad. Which explains a great deal about the season, come to think of it. All that said, I have no statistically evidence to back this up. It would interesting to check into, however. Where were these stats gathered in the first place?
I think that is a product of our youth. I truly believe guys like Rudy, Martell, GO, Batum, and Bayless will all become more consistent. My guess is, that will be closer to the way they played in our wins this season.
I charted all the box scores (ours and opponents') until around the All-Star Break. Ran spreadsheets charting advanced team metrics. Made a post about it, few cared, it took a lot of time, so I stopped doing it.
That isn't surprising. Portland's defense was consistently mediocre. Therefore, that wasn't going to be the determiner of wins and losses. When Portland's strength failed them, they lost. Since it was their strength, it didn't fail them a lot (relatively) and so they won a lot of games. I don't think this makes sense. Efficiency is charted over the average. Those "worst teams" were likely even worse in their worst games. Portland's worst games were surely more efficient than those team's worst games. Over the entire sample of games, Portland was excellent. Clearly the down games weren't bad enough and didn't happen often enough to sink Portland's overall efficiency or wins. I don't think any team is consistently the best, without any poor games. The team should always strive to be better, but building a team means having a clear evaluation of what the team's strengths and weaknesses are. Saying that Portland had one of the best offenses in basketball isn't "resting on their laurels." It's understanding what the team did this past year. Knowing the team had one of the best offenses, but a mediocre defense, suggests that the team can make more gains toward winning more games and series by improving the defense. It's not that Portland has reached unimproveable perfection on offense...it's that Portland's efforts at improvement are probably best focused on defense, where they have more room for improvement.
But what will they become "more consistent" in? Maybe they'll be better at shooting 3's, but Rudy and Batum were well above league average in that. Webs was around Batum level his first 3 years. Bayless and Oden may get more consistent, but I don't know if that's happening if we're running a significant amount of iso's for Roy or Pick-and-Pops for LMA. That's why I (and, to put words in his mouth, MM) think that it's an x's-and-o's issue, not a player personnel issue. A way to get more consistent is to get more efficient points more easily. That means: 1) Getting more free throws, or shooting higher % on those FTs you do get. 2) Getting more dunks. 3) Getting more open 3's, or making higher %. 4) Increase touches per second. Three of those have to do with getting the ball into the paint more (whether to bigs, or guards driving). Two have to do with passing (out of the post to an open 3pt shooter, and increasing touches per second). That can all be game-planned, and (aside from better form on Oden's part) we already have the personnel to do those things, if Nate and our guards were more inclined.
Would you go on record to say that you don't think Rudy and Batum will become more consistent? Even if Rudy and Batum become more consistent in 3's, that is a huge advantage to our offense. The nights Batum is hitting from the outside, teams are forced to stay out on the perimeter and help out less on Roy and Aldridge. Greg is by far the most important, when it comes to being consistent. If he can bring it every night, this team will be near impossible to stop on offense. I understand you don't like their offense, and you would rather see the team run more of a motion style offense, but I disagree. I coach basketball, and I love playing against teams who try to spread the ball all night. It allows us to pick where certain players are going to get open looks. Whenever the teams best two players are not touching the ball, we instantly become a much better defensive team, and are given so many options. It is much easier to deny a star player the ball, than take it out of their hands once they get it. I also firmly believe that a large majority of people underestimate the number of plays and sets that Portland runs that involve the entire team, and focus on getting the ball to players outside of Brandon or LMA in isolation situations.
My question was "what will Rudy and Batum become more consistent in?" If it's "more consistent attacking the hoop", then I'm ok with that, but I don't think that's in our offensive plan. Maybe I'm wrong. If it's "being able to be another option at starting the P&R", then I'm ok with that, but I don't see that happening in our offense. What do you think that "becoming more consistent in 3pt%" means? Are they going to become 50% 3pt shooters? If Batum did, he'd go up another .25 3's a game, so another .75 points added (1.5ppg for Rudy). Is that what's holding the offense back? Or, instead of hoping that they go up 10-12% in 3pt%, we could just have 2 p&R plays for Oden or LMA per game. That seems easier, more efficient and effective. That's kind of what I'm talking about. And yes....I'm a Rubio fan.
Who on this team are you choosing to give an open look to? And you can't deny the ball to everyone at once. And once you double, you're hosed on two fronts, right? So you're basically guaranteeing single coverage for one of the two "stars", while also saying that you're going to choose someone on the squad to leave open? I haven't coached at a high level, but it seems odd to me that that would be the case.
You should thing about sending that in to a site like basketball prospectus (spelled wrong, probably) instead of posting it here. That site lives for such things. Hell, start your own blog called Blazer Breakdown or some such. Post your findings there. I for one would be very interested in what it shows.
