RAYMOND FELTON http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2012_advanced_stats.html Thinking about how bad he has looked to us fans being torturted having to watch him; knowing as we all do, that he has the worst stats of any of the Blazers rotation; I wondered how bad Felton is compared to other players in the NBA this season. Feltons Win Shares per/48 are .021. That is a real bad number folks. That puts him at 356 out of 452 players listed. Felton has played 1128 minutes this season so far. Oh, hey! There are 100 guys ranked lower than him on this one advanced stat. However - NOT ONE OF THOSE PLAYERS HAS LOGGED MORE THAN 1,000 MINUTES. Most of the lower ranked players are deep bench guys or rookies getting little burn. A few guys have got 500 to 900 minutes - but they are all on Cellar-Dwellar crap teams, where no player can earn much in Win Shares as the team doesn't have wins. Guys like Diaw (Cha); Salmons (Sac); Jordan Crawford (Was); Kemba Walker (Cha - ah, just list the entire Charlotte team). So, I looked at guys above Felton on the ranking list, looking for players with a bad ranking who play big minutes on decent teams. These are the only players that qualified: Kendrick Perkins: 962 min; .033 WinShare / 48 Metta World Peace: 808 min; .035 WinShare / 48 Luis Scola : 1121 min; .045 WinShare / 48 I think a case can be made that Felton, so far this season, is the VERY WORST heavy rotation player in the entire NBA. Without a Kobe or a LeBron to vault us past such a big hole, Felton's crap play is bringing the team down - killing it. I do put much of the blame on Felton. But, I also lay a huge chunk of it on McMillan. It was Nate was couldn't figure out how to use Miller, which led to the rift, which led to Miller being moved for Felton. It was Nate who can't figure out how to use Felton. It was Nate who continued to play Felton big, big minutes despite the obvious lack of - well much anything positive. Nate being stubborn, and slow to react - again. Felton is not this bad of a player. This is an unholy marriage of a struggling player AND a struggling coach. McMillan has hit a brick wall and can't figure out what to do. Thing is, he and the Blazers have been speeding towards that brick wall for a long time. Disagree or agree, post you thoughts about this historic Blazer's failure here.
Someone here said that Nate should go to Raymond and ask him what he needs to get back to his productive self from last season. I agree with that.
And the answer will be: A different coach. The ONLY coach that Felton has had in the NBA that made Felton look like an above average NBA player was Mike D'Antoni - for half a season. Other than that, Felton has been a below average NBA player, who is now playing like a WAY below average NBA player. Nate runs a simple, no movement, isolation heavy offense. This is not an offense well suited to Ray Felton. He needs a high paced offense with a lot of ball and player movement - and that's just to be average (which I'd take right now, compared to what we're getting out of Felton). The situation is not salvageable. If we had a GM, Felton would be gone at the trade deadline, one way or the other. He sucks on the court, is a horrible fit, and now supposedly becoming a locker room cancer. The guy is a poor fit, but he still has no right to complain based on his play. Just get him out of here and move on. Same goes for Nate... BNM
Matt Calkins @blazerbanter Raymond Felton said, after talking with Nate, he expects to return to the starting lineup soon.
Ridiculous... What the fuck makes Felton believe he should start? He is the worst player in the league.
If that's true, then Nate needs to be gone. This has YUCK written all over it. At this point, if we get no takers for a trade; I would be happy to release him.
Has playing Crawford out of position at the 1 really yielded better results? I'd say it's been a colossal failure so far with no real sign of getting appreciably better.
This. Felton has always been a bad player, is a bad player and always will be a bad player. And I don't care who we get to coach. The sooner he's off this team the better.
I knew he sucked. I hadn't realized he was "worst in the league" sucking. Repped for pointing this out.
Yeah, well it sounds like you'll be seeing more of his suckitude soon. He says he's moving back into the starting slot "soon". http://www.columbian.com/weblogs/blazerbanter/2012/mar/04/what-we-have-here-is-failure-to-communicate/ Edit: I see this has been discussed above. Sorry.
Just think - what if the coaching staff had been able to turn Smith/Williams/Johnson into a useful player? Nate seems cool with young players - and long as HE doesn't have to do any work developing them.
If Felton loses this game against the Hornets, with horrible stats, this would be the lowest point of the Blazers season.
You're absolutely right. Crawford has been a fail experiment as well. But to give someone the starting job without earning it is a terrible move IMO. It sets a tone for the other team that regardless how good you play, a shittier player can still start over you because you bitch and moan enough. That's not the right example to set for the other players working hard to improve their game.
He's our starting point guard because he's probably still better than Nolan Smith at this point and Crawford is severely miscast in that role. So it's not really about "earning it" it's about being at rock bottom and having no real choice.
Crawford isn't really a point guard, but he is putting up a respectable (and near career-best) assist rate. Considering he's actually a viable NBA player and Felton (right now) is not, I think Crawford is the clear choice over Felton.
