With no true center to help anchor this team defensively there have obviously been problems with this team's ability to defend and to generate second chance points off of offensive boards, which this team lives and dies by, but something else I've noticed has more to do with the offensive end of the court with Roy out the past month. - Nate's offensive 'system', which uses tons of isos and tons of clock (hoping) to open up a long jump shot, sure doesn't look very good without a dominant wing who can command a double team and bail you out. Opposing defenses must love playing the Blazers right now. - Our supposed 'young talent' looks a little exposed. A few nice games aside, the only 'role players' that appear to have the ability to bring it on a nightly basis, without Brandon drawing tons of attention are Miller, Batum and Dante. Webster is still the same up and down player he's always been, Rudy looks like a shell of himself, Bayless hasn't been able to adjust to the way teams are playing him and doesn't appear to be growing his game (and I think it's increasingly clear that he's got the mentality of a 2 guard). Frankly the only untouchable I see out of the guys currently on rookie deals is Nic, and even he has a long ways to go before he'll have a complete game (particularly on offense). - Sadly, LaMarcus will probably never be capable of being a number 1 option for a contending team. He's put up some nice stats, but to borrow from a football term, "He does it between the 20s" -- his output always seems to come in the non-crunch, non-critical parts of the game. I still like him, but I get the feeling his contract is going to become something of an Albatross in a few years. And finally, I'm actually kind of glad Brandon has been out for as long as he has; hopefully it's something of a wakeup call for KP -- his drafted talent proabably isn't as talented as he thought, and his coach has probably been benefiting from Roy's 'bailout' ability more than actually implementing a scheme that maximizes talent. I'll be be very interested to see what happens before the deadline and during the off-season. Just getting everyone back to full healthy doesn't feel like it's going to be enough.
So Batum scores 12 in the first half and none in the second. When asked about why Nate admits that the team never runs a single play for Batum. Why not? You run plays for our Powerless forward. Hell, Nate runs plays for Blake. This loss isn't all on Nate. Martell and Rudy went out on the floor and took a giant shit. But god damn Nate, you might want to try running a play or two for the only guy who could score in the first quarter.
Blazer management seems to use Roy being out an excuse to lose rather than a wake up call about the coaching and overall lack of consistent talent.
Whats bad, is this isn't the first time this has happened. Batum bailed us out in a game earlier this year where we went down by like 26 points in the first quarter. Everythign he scored he created on his own.
