He has the right mentality and personality in my mind to be a special player here in Portland. I think Terry Porter type attitude and personality when I hear him talk about his approach. [video=youtube;mdq6QgKxgmo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdq6QgKxgmo&feature=related[/video]
He's definitely a keeper ... No other team would touch him and the 6M/year contract he's due for the next five years until he proves that he's worth it.
Why wasn't he drafted? What negatives put him out of the top 60 and better than, say, #55 Patty Mills in the same draft?
Only 7 players from his 2009 draft got more minutes last year--Curry, Evans, Jennings, Flynn, Jerebko, Gibson, and Collison. So he should have gone 8th? http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/tiny.cgi?id=9tQPH
ESPN Blazer Board (ID# 277321) Fantasy Basketball 2009 Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Basketball Archive Main Navigation Basketball 2009 8 of 12 MONTICELLO MAULER 84-92-4 | Manager: MARIS61 LaMarcus Aldridge .495 .757 5 1393 627 160 67 48 104 Nicolas Batum .519 .843 54 375 141 44 24 25 27 Marcus Camby .475 .639 2 556 871 186 95 146 91 Baron Davis .406 .821 82 1145 266 598 126 43 211 Rudy Fernandez .378 .867 98 503 164 127 62 11 72 Channing Frye .451 .810 172 904 427 113 64 74 73 Ersan Ilyasova .443 .715 81 840 517 84 53 23 71 LeBron James .503 .767 129 2258 554 651 125 77 261 Carl Landry .536 .806 1 1343 468 66 55 63 136 Wesley Matthews .483 .829 63 769 191 124 64 15 93 Ronny Turiaf .582 .474 0 207 191 90 23 54 49 Bill Walker .517 .796 50 329 88 40 23 3 28 Earl Watson .426 .710 53 619 240 399 104 16 175 Louis Williams .470 .824 70 898 187 268 80 15 106 Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! All rights reserved. Privacy Policy - About Our Ads - Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Help
Well, Rudy and Martell took about 48 minutes a night. Martell is gone, and Rudy be gone soon. There has to be a consolidation trade as well, so maybe Bayless leaves too. Either way, the minutes are there
If Mathews comes on board and Bayless is still here, Mathews and Bayless are the backup guards. Bayless is better than Rudy, and Mathews is better than both of them at this point of their careers.
I see Bayless as a PG in most scenarios. That leaves Wes has the primary back up at the 2 and 3. Now sometimes Dante will get minutes at the 3 as well. But I think we all assume Rudy is gone. so the minutes are there. Rookies will have to wait IMO
It's nice to be excited by a kid we're paying the MLE to, but in reality there's a reason he wasn't drafted last year. He has a ceiling on him. I'm not expecting much but some solid, unspectacular play.
Some clips I "borrowed' from another site (if you just check out 1, the Anthony clip is where they rave about him): Wes defense on Kobe: [video=youtube;F4f09GOmLyk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4f09GOmLyk[/video] Wes hustle on Anthony: [video=youtube;HXo6w068g6o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXo6w068g6o[/video] Wes lighting up the Lakers with the 3 ball: [video=youtube;hPPM86r-IBw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPPM86r-IBw[/video] Wes dunking it on the Lakers: [video=youtube;iK0DfIioOls]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK0DfIioOls&feature=fvst[/video] Wes driving around Kobe I know how this board loves clips against the Lakers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwg7QwmyIgs
Solid D, a good three ball and consistent effort. I pray this doesn't mean we're trading Batum. Unless it's for Paul.
Every once in a while I still think about how Batum is going to be playing PG a lot for the frenchies this summer, and how he played PG last year for the french team in place of Parker, and did very well. We all know he can guard PG. I could deal with a perimeter rotation where the shortest guy out there was Bayless. There is more than enough ball handling to get what needs done, done with that crew out there, but with the advantage of having a huge size, and lots of wingspan in order to plug the passing lanes on D.
"Why wasn't he drafted? What negatives put him out of the top 60 and better than, say, #55 Patty Mills in the same draft?" I must have been half-asleep. I meant to write, "Why wasn't he drafted? What negatives put him out of the top 60 and WORSE than, say, #55 Patty Mills in the same draft?" Whatever his deficiencies are, a big plus is that he excelled under Jerry Sloan, who coaches something like McMillan. That parallel coaching style explains why the Blazers have picked on Utah for two summers in a row.
