Blazers 5-1 when Patty Mills plays 20+ minutes

He's been a huge offensive boost for us. More Mills please.

 

Thank you Paul Allen

 

I couldn't agree more. He has a very good shot. Also, consider he shot two of his 3-pt attempts as end of the quarter heaves, he was 4-5 from '3'. That's shooting.

I am also not surprised. I watched him play UO twice when he was at St Mary's and each game he was easily the best player on the court. He's also an energy player.

 

Yes I watched those two games as well. It was very frustrating. He kicked ass.

 

At the beginning of the season when the question was raised about keeping Patty, I argued he was the fastest/quickest player on the team and possibly the best three point shooter, and those skills were going to come in handy at some point. Same argument in the silver lining to the decision to trade Bayless. Without Patty's play and shooting tonight, we don't win that game. However, re the premise of the thread, when a bench player gets lots of minutes in wins, it usually means the team had big leads in those games, more often than it means the team won because of the bench player. I'm not going to look it up though. Either way, I'll take it and I'm glad Patty is coming into his own. Andre Miller who?

 

As long as he continues to minimize ridiculous passes/stupid turnovers, I'm happy. He's a great change of pace for us, and when he beats his man, as long as he keeps his head up, he's good for us. Love the energy he/Rudy/Matthews/Batum seem to feed off of each other.

 

The trouble with stats like these is that Mills gets 20+ minutes when he's kicking ass. To have a bench player kick ass (like he did tonight) really increases our chances of winning. If Nate played Mills 20 minutes every game, including his bad games, the W-L stat would be very, very different.

Just the same - go Patty Mills!

 

Excellent post. An example of why correlation does not imply causation. Mills getting 20+ minutes per game is not what is driving those wins, IMO. Mills playing well correlating with wins isn't too remarkable...that's true for quite a few players. Any game in which a team gets a surprisingly good performance they are more likely to win than any random game.

 

Yeah, but he's fuckin' Australian.

 

Patty Mills. Australian for Damon Stoudamire. (But a bench Stoudamire being paid near the minimum isn't such a bad thing.)

 

Exactly right. If this is the role Patty has carved out for himself in the long-term as a 20 minute a night backup who can hit a three and provide a little bit of spark offensively then I think he's perfectly adequate for it. However, I think if he ever gets thrust into a starters role, the size and length he gives up on defense and the fact that he really is more of a shooter/scorer than a distributor is going to bite us in the ass.

After Miller moves on, this team is still looking for a solution to its starting point guard spot.

 

Maybe McMillan puts him in when the team is cruising, or when McMillan expects to win anyway. I won't call it garbage time since we've had so little of that this season.

 

Were 3-1 when Nate McMoron wears a purple tie.

 

I am not a Mills fan. He really strugles when we play a decent defensive team, and will only get worse as teams actually take time to scout him. Nice little back up I guess?

He has won more games for us that Taurean Green though

 

I agree as well. He is not a long term starter. But a nice change of pace back up pG. Like a Nate Robinson.

 

The key to Mills having a positive experience on the court for us, is he has to score some while he is out there. If he isn't getting us buckets, he isn't doing what he is out there for. He has that element you can't teach. Blazing speed. Experience will only help this kid. Right now we are seeing him in a lot of situations that he isn't used to being in. But we are immediately seeing improvement. For instance, look at the end of the Dallas game and the execution in the last plays. Rudy and Mills were out on the floor for the last plays of the game, and the execution was awful. A day later the same situation comes up, and you could tell that they had a little practice in between. Spacing was better, execution was better. That shows he is learning from his mistakes, as is Rudy. Result? End of game buckets and a win.

 

The OP was incorrect (I'm surprised no one caught it). At the time of the original post, the Blazers were 4 -1 when Patty played more than 20 minutes. They are now 4 - 2. Pretty small sample size. If you expand it down to 16 minutes, the team is 7 - 4. But, all 7 wins were against teams with sub 0.500 records (MIN twice, HOU twice, GSW, MIL and PHO). So, I'm not sure how impressive that is. Those are games the Blazers should win regardless.

And, in the three games since Patty's coming out party in Houston, he has hit only 1/12 3-pointers (.083 3FG%). Have teams already figured out how to neutralize young Patty? If so, I wonder how long before we see Part 2 of the Armon Johnson Experiment.

BNM

 

More than anything I think Patty is just a really streaky shooter. Most of the misses I've seen him commit have been fairly open looks. As for Armon, who knows; I get the feeling he's pretty deep in Nate's dog-house.

 

I didn't but League Pass this year so haven't seen many games. I like Patty but I'm worried more about his defense. Offensive states are only half the story. How's he doing on D?