Oh, hell no. There's plenty of blame to go around. I just find it amusing that a guy who went scoreless on 0-5 shooting gets a thread dedicated to praising his play. BNM
Talk about damning with faint praise... This thread exists because, for one night, Blake was less bad than the guys who were truly horrible. WHOOO FUCKING HOOOO!!!! Way to not totally suck Blakey!!! BNM
Right... Steve Blake: PER = 10.7 TS% = 0.518 TRB% = 5.3 AST% = 21.9 TOV% = 15.3 DRtg = 110 WS = 2.0 Andre Miller: PER = 17.2 TS% = 0.531 TRB% = 6.3 AST% = 30.5 TOV% = 15.0 DRtg = 110 WS = 4.0 So, Miller is a more efficient scorer, gets 38% more assists, more rebounds, turns the ball over less and has the same defensive rating. Blake is a better 3-point shooter, but Miller is a much more efficient scorer as he gets a LOT more high percentage 2-point FGA (AKA lay-ups) and gets to the line almost 10x as many times as Blake (249 FTA vs. 28 FTA) and shoots a higher FT% (0.815 vs. 0.714). So, other than your incredibly biased opinion, do you offer to support the statement "Steve has been our best overall PG since Sergio left"? Ironically, Steve WAS our best overall PG UNTIL Sergio "left". BNM
I think steve had heard his name in trade rumors and wanted to show KP that he still has some fight left in him.
LOL....Yeah way to go out and quiet any of POR mgmt's thoughts of trading you Steve.... Apparently Steve should get a gold star from Nate for being one less level of SUCK last night than some of his teamates... That is, if there are even varying levels of suck... wow......
Well at least you acknowledge that Blake did something last night that he usually doesn't do. At first you were wondering why Blake is getting an appreciation thread when all he did was not suck as much as others. I think you even mocked this idea (This thread exists because, for one night, Blake was less bad than the guys who were truly horrible WHOOO FUCKING HOOOO!!!! Way to not totally suck Blakey!!! I understand that you think bringing more energy than usual doesn't deserve an appreciation thread, but at least you get now why there is an appreciation thead. Blake coming out and showing a lot of energy and in game like last night . . . many appreciate a player who comes out with more energy than they usually do. Especially for a player whose energy level is rarely questioned.
It is sadly true that Blake is our best defender at guard. That is indeed a stinging indictment of the other guards. If we DO trade Blake, we damn well better be getting a lockdown perimeter defender back. Blake even handled Westbrook pretty well (at least, while I was watching) despite the fact that Westbrook is bigger, stronger, faster and far more athletic. Bayless always makes me laugh on defense: he's like someone who's seen films of how you're supposed to act as a defender, but he has total tunnel vision. He's just locked on his guy and has no idea of what else is happening on the floor. And of course he can't get steals because of his B-Rex arms. What's up with Rudy, though? His shooting has stunk all year, but at the beginning of the year he was getting a ton of steals (not the same as being a good defender, but still good to have). Last night he was just a total non-factor on either end. You people who respond to the claim that Blake was a difference maker last night either by pointing to his PER or even his boxscore, once again fail to remember that Basketball is a team game. Too much fantasy basketball.
Yeah, that's nice. But, all the energy in the world doesn't mean shit if it doesn't impact the results (in a positive way). In spite of all his new found energy, the fact remains Steve Blake is exceptionally bad at creating scoring opportunities for his teammates and for himself. Last night was no exception. That's a serious deficiency in a PG, IMHO. So sure, I'll praise him for his energy, but I won't go overboard and praise him for the results - which, as usual, were less than spectacular. BNM
So, what exactly did Blake do to help his TEAM win last night? I watched the game, and while he didn't stand out in a bad way (other than the shotting, but he was not alone), He also didn't stand out in a good way. He did apply modest resistance to Westbrook that delayed OKC getting into their offense by a couple seconds, but since THEIR offense doesn't rely on milking the shot clock to the final seconds, it didn't really make a difference. He obviously didn't create any offense for himself (ZERO points), and very little for his teammates. So, yeah, I agree there is more to basketball than stats, but after watching the game last night, I fail to see exactly what Blake did to help his team win. BNM
Due to the strange alchemy of basketball the team played better with Blake on the floor then it did with him on the bench. By a pretty large margin it seemed to me. Who knows what he did? Maybe he set good picks that freed other guys up. Maybe he had several good hockey assists. It could be his energy and effort on defense brought his teamates out of their funk for a short period of time. Perhaps he bothered guys enough that they made a bad pass that became a steal for someone else. It's really, really hard to measure a players impact via their stat line. There is a reason that coming up with quantifiable analysis of basketball is so damn difficult. I don't mean to say that Blake is even a good point guard. But last night his impact on the game appeared to be mostly positive when all of the other guards effected the game in a negative way.
I know that you are not the biggest Blake fan (to say the lest) . . . so I appreciate the honest analysis. I agree, sometimes (many times) stats don't show the real impact of a player.
What I noticed was that he slowed down Westbrook (a little) by playing him 94 feet; he started on him at full court, and hounded him as best he could through the entire play. Maybe that helped.
When it's not clear what a player did to get a good +/- in a single game, I think the best default hypothesis is that +/- is so noisy as to mean nothing in a single game. Maybe he didn't do anything at all, and was just lucky to be on the floor when the team happened to be playing well. That's very likely in a single game, which is why +/- (and related concepts of team performance when a player is on the floor) are not single-game measures.
I agree +/- is crappy/noisy especially in a single game. I didn't even look at it, but it looked like they were playing better when he came in...I'm more of an "eyeball" test guy myself...
I get frustrated seeing guys pass the ball ahead to Blake on the break. All he does is stop at the 3 point line and pull the ball back. He's a big culprit when it comes to the question of why we don't get quality scores early in the clock. He did that several times last night, taking all the pressure away fom the Thunder an letting them get their D set.
nothing = zero less than nothing < zero Last night Steve was providing around nothing which is more than the net negative Jerryd, Rudy and Martell were providing.
