I was hoping for this when Martell was balling in January. I wonder if that had any impact on his trade value. We'll never know I guess. It could be that his contract makes him untradeable for now. $5 million/year was a good bargain two years ago, but with the new CBA looming . . . this could be what pretty good players make. I don't know what you do with Martell. Clearly, he sucks coming off the bench and Nic is a better player. I'd love to see Martell come in with the 2nd unit and be an energy guy like Doug Christie who D's out of his arse and knocks down 3's. Martel has had his moments defensively (not just the Lakers/Kobe game) but doesn't bring the same effort every night. It's even worse when he's not starting. He could help himself immensely if he learned how to dribble. He is just plain awful when he puts the ball on the deck, which makes him one dimensional. And with his leaping ability, it doesn't have to be that way. You CAN make yourself a better ball handler. Instead of shooting 600 jumpers a day in the summer, shoot 300 and work on your handles a little bit. Not saying he could become Steve Nash, but just enough for him to drive to the basket without kicking it, getting stripped, or just fumbling it away . . . when he's not hitting 3's and playing with defensive energy, he's just worthless out there.
I'm sitting here trying to think of one good reason Martel should play any minutes that Cunningham could, and I can't think of any. I suppose if you are down by 3 at the end of the game....but even there I almost trust Cunningham to make the smart play more than I do Webster making the three in a clutch situation. Imagine we'd drafted Webster this year with the 33rd pick. Now imagine Dante had evolved to the player he is now after taking him with the 6th pick in 2005. Would there even be a debate about who should get minutes? Because in my mind Webster would be seeing fewer minutes than Pendergraph if it weren't for all the history. I think at SF you give 28 mpg to Batum and 20 minutes to Cunningham, and garbage time to Webster. It'd suck for chemistry, I realize, so maybe it's not feasible. But if you just look at productivity, those are the two guys you want in there at SF instead of Webster.
There have been a lot of Martell critiques over the past couple years. Pretty much the only posters who bring up the Chris Paul draft gaff are the one's that are defending MW as if the other side of the argument is still so filled with bitterness over that missed opportunity that they can't rationally evaluate the situation today. Martell has never played well off the bench so I don't know how one can claim he's a fine backup. More like he's an okay starter and a poor backup. This combined with Nic being clearly the superior player is why I was projecting Martell to work his way out of the rotation in the preseason. I'm much more comfortable with Rudy and Dante getting the backup wing run. Thats not to say I wouldn't be happy to see Martell step up his production off the bench and keep one of those two seated, but I'm just going off what I've observed time and again. STOMP
I agree. Martell is terrible, and exactly the opposite of the type of player you want on the floor. You want players who work like a machine, you know what your going to get every night. Martell is exactly the opposite. The other young guys are inconsistent too. But they haven't had years in th league to develope like Martell has.
Batum is inconsistent, even when you take his defensive skills into play. He'll make some good plays and play great D...but he's still inconsistent. And again, there is no rotation logjam. Moving Blake and Outlaw has ensured that. As for his "truly awful shooting numbers"....he's shooting 47% in the month of February versus 43% last month where he shot more. He also is shooting better from behind the arc percentagewise than when he went on that tear in January. (NOTE THE ERROR ABOVE I SAID HE WAS SHOOTING 40%, that was for the YEAR so he's shooting 47% versus 52% for Batum). Again, its more fabricated pre-conceived notions based on nothing really.
Should we start playing Patty Mills so we can give him experience for a rookie as well? Whats wrong with it is that we have a better chance of winning if Batum is on the court instead of Cunningham.
Cunningham, to me, is more of a PF than a SF "hustle player". He has that short jumper from about 12 feet and a few put-backs.
I know he's bulkier than Batum, but they are the same height and Batum has a larger wingspan. I'd still take Batum as our PF over Dante, but Nate obviously disagrees.
I think Batum is fine playing all his minutes at the SF. I want to see more Pendergraph, but sometimes he's a little lower bball IQ than Cunningham...which is why Dante gets more burn.
Pendergraph and Cunningham aren't really comparable, IMO. Jeff is pretty much the only guy left on the team who delivers a hard foul, which is nice to have. But the stats (and my own eyes) show Cunningham is the vastly superior player at this stage. For a tough guy/banger, Jeff isn't even that great of a rebounder.
I would put that jumper range at about 18 feet, from what I have seen from him as a pro and in college.
no doubt, its more fabricated pre-conceived notions based on nothing really... like the Chris Paul strawman. DC has demonstrated all season that his comfort zone stretches to a step inside the 3 point line STOMP
Well who else on our team rebounds? Seriously, though, it's pretty clear to me that Cunningham has carved out a niche as a midrange jumpshooter/hustle guy on this team. Considering where he was drafted, I suppose Pendergraph isn't a bad rebounder. (I was going mostly off what I see on the court without looking at stats.) But if he's trying to define that as his niche, he seems to have a lot farther to go than Dante does in defining his niche.
Pendie should really be a bruising PF, unfortunately, on this team, because of the Center shortage - he got most of his minutes as a Center where he is sub-par. A LMA/Pendie combination will not give you a rebounding advantage, but a LMA/Cuningham combination will give you a speed/quickness advantage - so Nate chooses to go small a lot - and the Blazers do fine with it. I agree however that Dante was the steal of the 2nd round when you consider his overall game (offense + defense) - he is a cheaper, not as dominant on the post version of Landry - if he can improve his post game - he will be starter material, as is, he is a nice guy to have for 15-20 minutes of the bench.
Ben from Blazersedge did a pretty thourough analysis a month or so ago of Martell's production classed by minutes and it was pretty clear that he got better as time increased. The only conclusion I'm willing to draw is that he's a rhythm shooter and needs lots of plays called for him to get him into that rhythm ... which isn't likely to happen in Portland with the current roster where's a 4th option at best.
