GAME THREAD: Blazers @ Suns 11/21/2012

Wow, Dwight is a cranky old man right now on Talkin' Ball.

 

Must have been tough on him, not having anything to grumble about the past few games.

 

If I was Olshey, after watching Claver and Freeland tonight, I would begin to have some serious doubts about my talent evaluation team. Not only did they draft these guys, but presumably they said this year that they were NBA ready. Not to mention these are the same guys who drafted Smith over Faried.

 

Ready as any Euros will ever be, you should know this UKRAINEFAN, the NBA is a different beast. It takes a ton of game time and NBA level practice to make the transition to this league.

It's like a US soccer player trying to play in the Premier League

 

Tough loss tonight....... As usual, Meyers is spending time with Coach Hughes on the plane watching video and soaking up some hoop knowledge. And even a loss like this won't crush Rice's appetite!

 

Tell Hughes to coach all the scrubs equally! This is why our bench is so bad!

 

I just don't really know. I do know that guys like Batum came into the league with a lot of confidence and the athletic ability to hang in there even as he was learning. Not sure if either these guys is gonna qualify in either of those categories.

 

One odd thing about this game: with Hickson out, you would expect LMA to play a *bigger* role on offense. Instead, he turned into the invisible man.

Just an off night - or do he and Leonard have on-court chemistry problems? Leonard may not be a scoring threat - but neither were Pryz or Camby.

 

Were 10 game into the season, gotta give them some time. Batum averaged 15m his first 15 games and was in there for defense reasons and barely scored. These guys are coming over in a new system and a new league, its way way to early to say anything about them. The first year on Overseas player is fairly hard, Look at Splitter the guy was the best big in Europe hands down and except for one game he looked horrible his first few months in the NBA.
This team needs time, nit picking any of the rookies who haven't been given specific roles or time, so early into the season, is just a recipe to be left disappointed in every aspect. These guys weren't top 3 picks who were expected to produce from the get go.

 

LMA has looked off almost every game when it comes to making his presence known physically on the court. It makes you wonder if he is having some set back from his surgery, most notably not trusting his hip. Anyone who has come back from a debilitating injury will tell you that one of the hardest parts once you started moving around again was trusting the body part you injured.

 

Don't forget that Batum looked TERRIBLE in Summer League (we all thought Koponen was better - seriously) while Claver and Freeland haven't had Summer League at all.

That's not to say I'm not a little alarmed by the play of Claver and Freeland. From what little I've seen Claver looks like he should be good, but has absolutely zero confidence scoring (BANKING in a free throw? That's crazy - I'm sure he never did that in Spain). Meanwhile Freeland just looks lost. He's used to being the biggest and most athletic guy out there, but he's actually small for his NBA position.

He still doesn't look great - but last night he did!