Looked more scared to me. I wasn't aware Dalembert was such a lockdown defender on bigs. Those alley-oop fakes are starting to fake his own teammates.
Not.. unexpected? He's been playing a pretty consistent 40 plus minutes a night over the last month, and playing mostly in the post. He is the team's lone consistent threat over that time period, he is constantly doubled and tripled team, and he's carrying us to a winning record as we watch players drop around him like flies. Dalembert is a good defender, and he's the only one who's been able to bother LaMarcus over the last month. LaMarcus kept taking it to the post tonight, Dalembert just did a really good job, and at some point LaMarcus is going to start feeling tired and the affects of being banged around in the most for so many minutes a night. I believe this is called basic human physiology.
I agree. I think that any bad game for him (or game in which he's not as good as we feel he really should be) comes down to either him being scared, a sissy or else heartless (lacking heart, that is, not compassion). I suppose a fourth option is that he didn't try. I can't see any other possible explanations.
Wow! He needs rest. He has been the focal point for us and has playing big time minutes! Can you imagine what would happen to us if we lose LA?
His minutes have been pretty high. Almost 40 MPG this season. And eyeballing the gamelogs, it looks like it's been even higher ever since he started playing great. Obviously, you want to play your best player as much as possible, but considering he plays hard both ends of the court, it may burn him out to go 40+ night after night.
I assume you're being sarcastic. I'm not saying it's impossible for him to have a bad game. It was just some of the tendencies that I saw him do during this game that made it seem like he was thinking a lot more than usual. He committed some really bad turnovers and rushed a lot of shots. To me, it seemed like Dalembert was getting to his head and instilling that.
I highly doubt he'll get any help from Cho. Rich is too busy analyzing the various rotations that we have yet to see.
On a serious note, the 40 Min/Per he's playing will definitely show down the stretch and could hurt this team if we do snag the 8th seed.
Sarcasm, yeah, but nothing particularly harsh. It's just that "Portland fans" (I'm working with a hazily defined, amorphous entity, not any specific people) have often framed their disappointment in Blazers players as some kind of character deficiency in said player. Aldridge has variously been called lazy, lacking heart, a pussy, etc, because he was never previously dominant the way some felt he should be. I thought it was interesting that after a stretch of dominance, one bad game drew a de facto character indictment (too frightened to do his job). I get that you feel it's based on observation, but players often commit turnovers or rush shots just because they're out of sync and having a bad game. I just think it's interesting that his inner mettle goes right back to being questioned. Though, to be fair, it's not just Portland fans. Sports fans of all stripes are often too willing to channel their frustration about results into attacks on the players' character.
He was due for a game like this. He's hinted for weeks that he's been feeling tired. He missed a couple of free throws in the last minute of of game last week vs NJ and he said he was "happy the hit the rim" (he was so tired). He's actually been dropping a lot of hints recently. It's not just the minutes, it's the pounding. Give him credit, he's really worked hard to become a force in the middle, but he's taking a pounding every night (for a guy who's never done that, it's tough).
