According to this, we had three of the top 5 rookies

Apologies if this has been posted before.

 

Interesting, but I would point out we probably were one of the few teams that played our rookies, and playing=production to a certain point.

 

Westbrook sucked some serious a$$ if you look at those stats.

He's the worst out of all rookies in 3 out of the 5 categories considered.

 

huh? This was a draft deep in talent and lots of rookies got similar burn as the Portland rookies... heck many of the lotto picks were starters.

STOMP

 

What surprises me is how well Oden did! I know it was in limiting mins, but still it's nice to see when he was in he dominated compare to other rookies.

 

fernandez is only in the top 10 for defense

 

Don't let MIXUM see this list, he's convinced Nic is a lousy player.

 

Man, our future is bright!

 

Did I say all anywhere there? All I said was to produce you have to be out on the floor, and our guys got a good burn with a fairly good team. The more time you have on the floor with a good team as opposed to a bad one, you are going to get more production. Players on bad teams have to struggle to score because there is more attention on them if they are one of the more talented players on the floor. You will note, that Rudy, Greg, Batum, etc were never even close to being the most talented players on the floor here. Now look across at the other names on the list. Many of them were the 1st, 2nd or 3rd best players on their team.

I am surprised nobody noticed that OJ Mayo isn't even on that list. Yet I would think he is up there with the best if not better than most of the players on that list and to deny such is folly.

 

He's not in the top ten, or the last, but that doesn't mean he's not on the list.

I don't think "to deny such is folly" - Mayo has been slammed by any number of stats. His defense is average at best, and he needs a lot of shots to score. He was a disappointment at USC, and it continues in the NBA. He looks pretty good, once in a while, but the king of that is Iverson. Oh yeah - who is now his teammate.

And notice that you can't simply blame it on him playing for a sucky team, as his teammate Marc Gasol is the third best rookie by the overall ranking scheme.

(Talking of Gasol Jr. - how long before he legs it out of Memphis? I bet his agent is already asking for a trade. The team sucks, Navarro went back to Spain rather than stay with Memphis, and they just used their #2 pick on a guy who plays the same position as Gasol. And that's not even mentioning Hadadi, who always puts up good numbers whenever he plays.)

 

If I was Gasol I'd have zero worries about being able to beat out by Thabeet, but yeah, he probably will hoof it sooner rather than later, especially when it comes time to get paid -- no effing way Memphis is going to extend any of these young guys (maybe Mayo, but I doubt it).

 

No matter what those stats say, I'd trade Fernandez to get Westbrook in a heartbeat. As much as I like Rudy, Westbrook looks to be the better player.

 

"Be" in what sense? "Looks like he has a higher ceiling" I will grant you. Although Rudy is a far better passer, which is a bit damning, as Westbrook is supposed to be a PG. Westbrook is one of those players who will have to be so good they can be played at SG (like Dwyane Wade, Steve Smith, Jalen Rose and any number of "PGs" who turned out not to be such in the NBA, the apotheosis of which was Iverson. Even Penny Hardaway was moved to SG later in his career.)

But answer me this: if Westbrook is so damn good, why did Memphis's summer league team get its arse kicked even before he stopped playing for them?

I would trade BAYLESS for Westbrook, because they strike me as very similar, but Westbrook will be the better defender, because of his longer arms.

 

As a follow up: is anyone else tired of hearing what a wunderkind Sam Presti is, and how the team he has assembled will trample all other teams underfoot in the very near future? This I have to see. It looks to me an awful lot like a bunch of tweeners in the bad sense. Even Mr. Jesus Christ Almighty Durant can't play a lick of defense, so he's only half a player. And Green is a SF too slow to play it (and Durant is there anyway) and Westbrook is a short flashy SG who can't shoot.

But maybe that's just me.

 

They should have drafted Rubio.

 

While in some ways that might be true, usually a player on a bad team gets a lot more mins and might get a lot of stats that he wouldn't get on a good team. So I'd say just the opposite is true.

 

It's not just you ...

Christopher Reina isn't exactly slobbing their knobs

http://realgm.com/src_feature_piece...ising_oklahoma_city/s_championship_potential/

Pretty interesting read from a pretty well respected analyst.

 

A lot of it is misleading, like win shares and +/-. Portland won 54 games, and that skews the data for our players. Most of the rookies were playing on terrible teams.