Apparently this "scout" must head out to the beer line before half time, and he hasn't noticed when Nate sits Oden with 2 minutes left in the half and the other team immediately crushes us. Yeah, I never get tired of watching that. Dang Oden.
That "Oden jams up the floor" has amusing parallels, in my opinion, to the silly criticism of slow players in baseball with high on-base percentage that they "clog up the base paths." Yes, it's awful to have people on base. And in basketball, it's awful to have someone who scores efficiently inside and draws double-teams. He may not be the most dynamic scorer (yet), but does so many beneficial things. This seems more like visual-aesthetic scouting, rather than analytic scouting. "They seem too slow and boring to me, hence it is bad."
And they'd get A TON more easy baskets. Aldridge is a terrible defender, on ball and especially on help defense.
This just points out the fact that many "experts" love playng small ball. Small ball is a gimmick and until someone actually wins a Championship with it I do not buy it.
There's merit to the article in the OP. The team did seem to play better last year with Oden far less of a focus. Roy's game has certainly taken a dip, as has Aldridge's and even Blake's. Is this a 54 win team this year? It may be a short term negative, though, as the team will have to get better at playing around Oden as he gets better.
Yes, I tend to agree. It's not Oden's fault, but there are higher-percentage shots for the other players on the Blazers when the team isn't focused so much on getting the ball to Oden. Now that the Blazers have figured out how they can use Oden in a set offense (something they couldn't do last year, because Oden needed to improve offensively), it'd be great if the Blazers could basically go back to more of last year's style of offense, where Roy and Aldridge were getting shots in more of a flow. But, the team should still look for Oden. It's a more nuanced attack - and might require a little more "thinking" for a while - but in the end, it's the Blazers' ticket to a championship, if they can figure it out and run it.
Aldridge at the 5 won't get the Blazers to the finals... ever. That's what the scout neglected to say. I've been quiet, but to me the pressure should be on both Nate and the players to integrate Oden and Miller into the Blazer offense. Nate took the easy path sitting Miller after a rather unremarkable preseason. Now there's talk of trading Miller, which seals the future path of the Blazer team. You'll have to embrace BRoy being your de facto PG, and having some combo-guard like Blake compliments him. There will be no pure PG, as that ship has sailed. That's not the end of the world, but it does mean that Roy has to learn to be happy with less scoring... and keeping his bigs happy. Having a pure PG making smart passes would have solved that problem, but Roy wasn't ready or perhaps willing to work without the ball.
Forcing the ball through a player (Oden) who clearly isn't ready to be a primary scorer does bog down the offense. On offense, I absolutely agree that the Blazers are better offensively with Oden as a rebounder vs. the primary post-up player. Whether that changes or not depends on the expansion of Oden's offensive game. At this point today, however, it is clear that better offensive players are taking a hit in production by slowing the game down to get Oden the ball.
If I were a scout for a rival team to Portland I would do everything I could to get the Blazers to play Oden less. That's what this guy did. Good for him. Too bad for him Portland isn't going to waste a whole lot of time listening to a rival team's scout.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2010.html Oden's got the 3rd highest offensive rating(only Jerryd and Dante are higher, and those are some small sample sizes), and the lowest defensive rating on the team. Combined his ratings come out to +21 and the only guy even close is Cunningham's +16, take out Dante, Jerryd, and Juwan for lack of playing time and the closest player is Aldridge with a +10 or not even half as good as Greg. He's 3rd on the team in overall +/- and according to 82games we're +77 total with him on the court and +31 total without him, considering he's played in 51% of the minutes for us it's pretty simple to see the greater than 2-1 ratio advantage he gives us. Pretty much all the publicly known efficiency/overall production metrics I'm familiar with say that Oden is our best player when he's on the floor, PER of 23.2, EFF of 18.45(which isn't per minute), and a roland rating of 9.8. No one, not even Roy, is higher in any one of those measures. But this anonymous scout thinks we should be playing with an Aldridge/Outlaw frontcourt... dumbass.
I agree that things don't exactly develop quickly with Oden in the post, but with his ability to pass out of the post or find cutters through the lane I have zero problem with what he's done since they've started establishing him on the block. The only way he's really going to get better is with touches in live game situations. If it means more losses and struggles for the team in the short run for better inside-out play later (even if "later" ends up being next year and beyond) then that's a trade-off I'm happy to make. You can't keep pushing Greg's burgeoning offensive game off 'til "tomorrow" because there will always be more excuses to keep putting it off. It might also be worth noting that this is a contract year for Greg; it's pretty important to establish himself as a go to guy for this team for his sake and for the team's sake to know what they've got.
Angrypuppy!! You are back. I never really connected with you, but I read your posts on ESPN. I figured you were here under a different name. About a month ago on this board, someone described your posts well, but couldn't remember your screen name. Neither could I, so I didn't respond. I was thinking it was angry dog or something. The discussion was about something in the past, I don't remember.
But it's an adjustment that needs to be made eventually, wouldn't you agree? Eventually this team is going to have to learn to play with Oden. I think he is definitely developing as an offensive weapon. He might not be as polished as an Aldridge or a Roy, but he's coming along. That's something to be positive about. I would rather we take the time to integrate Oden now, rather than later.
The "scout" must be a Laker fan. No one wants Oden to dominate. No one wants Oden's confidence to keep going up. No other team wants to face a Oden that is without "foul trouble" and no one wants to let the Blazers know they are better with him on the floor. Whomever this lackluster scout, probably Minny's scout since those guys couldn't scout their way out of a paper bag, must have been taking some massive LSD drops and watched.
