Excerpts from John Hollinger's Per Diem.

He had a pretty interesting analysis of the Blazers woes today (he also covered the Wiz).
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PERDiem-091202

And there it is in a nutshell, the people we expected to perform at or near their production last year aren't even close, and the role-players' inconsistent play coupled with injuries (the one to Nic seems especially important to me) have put this team on pretty unsteady footing offensively.

I thought the note about Butler was pretty intriguing.

 

Yea I was talking with LittleAlex and we were wondering if Joel is hurt, or sick or something. He hasn't been the Joel Pryzbilla we knew over the last few years. The reason being, that Joel was all about effort. Right now Joel only shows that in spurts.

I don't think KP will trade in the middle of the season. Just because he tends to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, and the names being mentioned are guys he didn't trade when good deals were on the board in the past. If he didn't trade them then, why would he now?

 

I don't know, maybe he won't/can't but in the past he could make the argument about not messing with a good thing, at this point I think it's OK to say he'd be messing with a bad thing.

 

I think that's a/the key. While I didn't entirely agree with the philosophy, Pritchard seemed to have a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality at mid-season. I still think he would have made any clearly (to him) good move, but I think the value of RLEC was somewhat overrated by media/fans.

This season, it is broke. I think/hope he'll be more aggressive this season.

 

I'm this close \.../ to believing that, but ... I guess I'll believe it when I see it.

 

You know I would hope so. But the one weakness I see on this franchise is the lack of ability to learn from past mistakes. It starts at the top. It goes down through the coaching staff. That is why I am concerned. They repeat the same mistakes over, and over, and over, and over.

 

While the article is statistically correct, it does sound like it was written with the box scores as the only source. I think there are a number of writers out there, who don't get to see the Blazers play, so their analysis is pretty pointless.

 

I don't think he was referring to that one particular game. He is referring to the teams play in general.

 

It just that statistics only tell a very small part of the story....very small.

 

Why would Butler fit here? His defense is atrocious and he needs the ball to be effective. Makes no sense. Hollinger should stick to his numbers and not play GM. That quote somebody had in their .sig about letting Hollinger do your taxes but... is apt.

 

I don't agree. Butler has shown the ability to defend in the past. The last couple of years with Arenas and Jamison out, he has had to shoulder almost the entire offensive responsiblity for the wizards, and IMO, that left little room for effort on defense. He has had to put up huge numbers just to keep the wizards close in games.

 

Hollinger used to live in Portland and while I wouldn't say he roots for the Blazers he watches them and writes about them quite a bit. He's not just a bean counter, he is an actual analyst, he just happens to also be a statistician, so he mixes his numerical analyses with his eyeball analyses.

 

I think his defense has been pretty good in the past if you subtract last year. But I do agree he needs the ball in his hand to be effective so that would be interesting to see how that worked out. And I wonder if some of his effectiveness had more to do with playing in Jordan's Princeton offense, cause he certainly seems to be floundering in Saunders point-guard dominant offense.

When I think about it seems like it could work on paper, but in practice it could be a problem. I guess I tend to lean more towards the "trade for Shane Battier type" move (if possible).

 

Who could the team possibly bring in who wouldn't suffer the same problems as Miller?

 

Well that all depends on if you view the problem with Miller, or the coaches. If we bring in say, another SF of quality, and then Nate plays him behind Martell, the problem isn't the new guy is it?

 

Unless the new guy is a Miller type SF who doesn't fit in . . .

 

Hedo Turkoglu!

 

That's not really relevant to my point. I'm not assigning "blame," I'm simply saying that I don't think RLEC was as valuable as it was commonly portrayed.

And of course Pritchard would say that. He's the guy selling. The seller tends to overstate value in an attempt to get a buyer. What would you expect him to say publicly, that RLEC isn't really all it's cracked up to be? It was an asset he couldn't hold onto indefinitely, so he needed to try to create the illusion of multiple teams being interested.