There was no Summer League last year. With that lack of vetting period combined with the lockout, a lot of rookies didn't get a ton of playing time during the 2011-12 regular season. And everybody talked about how the 2012 draft was pretty deep. So I was expecting to see a really remarkable SL this year. Sure, Davis and Irving sat out, but still....it seems like there were a lot kids itching to play some hoops, and yet our #6 pick and a Bayless clone were the most remarkable players. I watched all the Blazer games (and a few others) and I just didn't feel like any team I saw except ours and the Rockets were really showing a lot. Was I expecting too much? Did you feel like it was a competitive SL? It's never going to be the NBA Finals in terms of intensity, but still. Also, does Lillard's dominance lessen a little if it wasn't a competitive SL, or did the SL seem less competitive because Lillard was so dominant?
Summer League is built for ball-handling guards. Aside from Lillard there weren't exactly a ton of guys in this draft that fit the bill. So I don't think it really diminished what Lillard did, but I also wouldn't use it as a great barometer for the depth of this draft class either because there were so many bigs and those guys usually take a little longer to get the hang of the NBA game.
Whatever was handed to him, he took it with a vengeance. 22/12 doesn't just happen because of the refs or Stern.
It makes a huge difference. I think one of the biggest learning curves for young bigs is adapting to the NBA refs and what they can or cannot do. Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla are two good examples. It's hard to put up 22 and 12 if you're sitting on the bench with foul trouble. Further, not only was Griffin given leeway on defense, but he was also protected by the refs on offense. There's a reason why Andre Miller went "cannonball mode" and checked his ass. Griffin as a rookie was fucking ridiculous. He could do whatever he wanted. This inflated his scoring and his rebounding. He averaged 8.5 FTA his rookie year. By comarison Tim Duncan only averaged 5.9 FTA his rookie season. Shaq averaged 8.9 FTA his rookie year. Kevin Garnett has never averaged more than 6.6 FTA in his career. Kevin Durant averaged 5.6 FTA as a rookie. LeBron averaged 5.8 FTA as a rookie. LeBron and Durant didn't average more than 8 FTA until their third seasons.
How much of that 8.5 FTA was actually teams employing a "Hack-A-Blake" strategy on him, since he's shaky on the line? I know that was a technique employed against the Clippers a ton last season. I have a feeling it's been consistent against him throughout his career.
Well.... his FTA actually went DOWN last season, but so did his overall stats by quite a bit. 7.1 FTA
Interesting. I do agree he got quite a bit of love from the refs, and he was already a Yoda-level master at flopping as a rookie. Glad to see it settling down a bit.
One reason for the "meh" level of play was that good players got shut down quickly. MKG was supposedly amazing in his one game, and then they sat him. Austin Rivers, who has at least a fun-to-watch crossover got a mild injury and hardly played (perhaps in shame, after Lillard showed him up). Klay Thompson looked incredible - in all of two games. And so on.
You are reminding me of a game his rookie season where I watched Griffin go over the back (pretty blatantly) 3 times, before getting called for the 4th, but he only got that call because despite going over the back he didn't get the ball, and then he swiped his arms down.
I was among a small but growing number of people who felt this draft was incredibly overrated, so a ho-hum summer league comes as no surprise. When virtually every top player has a "good except for..." attached to his name, you're looking at a lot of role players and that sort of player tends to take some time to get established. As for Blake Griffin, my biggest issue with him (I've got several) is that he gets away with an off-arm push-off on nearly every dunk. Dude's always a highlight waiting to happen, but the league has decided to increase those odds greatly by not calling the obvious offensive foul. Take that away and I think he'd be pretty easy to defend at this stage.
