Primer Draft: What to Watch For (Part One)

I know the RipCityTwo community hashed over a lot of news and moves this summer, but a lot of the readership either does what normal Blazer fans do and actually take the offseason off, or does not care to delve through 27 different “LMA Trade?!” threads or 1800-word posts (with 11 pages of responses) to answer their basic questions: what happened? What does this mean? Does this make us better? When’s the parade?

There are plenty of other places to get in-depth analysis, crystal ball-gazing, expert opinions and random comedy, so here’s my attempt at a one-stop primer for the year, generally focused on topics the community at large has thought newsworthy enough to talk about and utilizing information from sources both professional* and, uh, anti-professional**. So to you, Fan Interested Enough to Check Out Blazer News on an Online Forum For Your Fix, welcome! Cheers! Enjoy!

Think of these pieces as conversation-starters, to be enjoyed over an adult beverage (or substance) or two.
*Thanks to Chris Haynes, Ben Golliver, Mike Tokito, Joe Freeman, Kevin Pelton, Kevin Arnovitz, Kerry Eggers, Zach Lowe and others for their great work in getting quotes and video and providing some analysis that I’ve quoted (and hopefully referenced correctly).
**Generally, uh, me…while using some S2 quotes and stats from basketball-reference.com, RealGM, storytellerscontracts.com and other sites


I’ll be posting the whole thing at some point, but please feel free to crush the first few if they’re not what you’re looking for, you’d like something different, etc. By popular demand the hardest episode (for me to write, anyway) was the one that was requested most and to be first. Hopefully they’ll get better. If not, Denny will give you your money back. So without further ado...

What to Watch For?
It’s not a stretch to surmise that this year may be the most important transition year for the Blazers since the 2006-07 season that saw the rise of Brandon Roy and that culminated in the trade of Zach Randolph and Honking Once for Oden. There have been forests of paper and countless megabytes used up in the ongoing “Is LaMarcus Aldridge happy here or not?” saga, and by almost all accounts a winning team and an upward trend are necessary for LMA to even consider re-signing here when his contract expires in June of 2015. With that in mind, GM Neil Olshey’s acquisition of an (on paper) NBA-average-or-better bench seems like the typically calculated “mortgage the future to win now and keep the superstar happy” plan that GMs have been utilizing frequently over the last two decades in (usually futile) attempts to keep their star and save their jobs. In reality (and further scrutinized in Part III), the team has even more future flexibility now than in did in June. So what does that mean?

"Last Year Kinda Sucked...Will It Be Better This Year?"

The Mantle of Leadership
Much like 2006-07, whose team is this? Is it the soft-spoken, get-in-done-every-night All-Star who’s on the fringes each year of being on the All-NBA teams, but may only be around for 22 more months? Is it the charismatic, unanimously-declared Rookie of the Year whose brilliance on the court seems matched by his peer leadership and marketing acumen? And what does “leadership” mean to this team, the fourth-youngest in the NBA?

In my mind, and to horribly paraphrase Denny Green:
via Imgflip Meme Maker
He’s a very, very good player (All-Star, probable All-NBA, Top 20 Player) who will most likely put up another season of around 21 points and 8 rebounds per game. He has moved over the last two years from being the LaMonster that Nate McMillan was forcing deep into the paint for 63% of his shots to Terry Stotts’ Keep Rip City Weird rendition of Dirk Nowitzki (playing an offense where your biggest, most powerful and best low-post player shot mid-range jumpers on 59.3% of his shots). But LMA's shot breakdown is later on. He may possibly become more efficient with more rest—Coach Stotts will probably not be cringing this year as he sends Robinson and Training Camp MVP Freeland into the game as badly as he did sending Jeffries/Rookie Meyers/Lost Rookie Freeland in last year—and with a legitimate center in Robin “SideShow Rob” Lopez banging away down low for 30-35 mpg you’d think that he’d have even more energy and efficiency. In other words, quiet, competent, get-the-job-done style. He's too much of a pro to make waves in the media over contract/trade situations, and no one has ever said a word about him having a "Hoop Family" off the court. There should be no reason that he's forced out Z-bo style.

Growth of Lillard:
That doesn't mean that there's not space on the team for an Alpha Dog. Lillard is rapidly becoming a legitimate NBA superstar. Commercials, Rome Show invites, ESPN analysts swinging from his jock like Tarzan in the Congo, the respect of college kids, his NBA peers and of Team USA executives--all are dropping like confetti onto Lillard's shoulders at a time when his game is still being refined. He's committed to defense after being torched last year (and this summer at Team USA camp), and the early returns (locking up folks from Trey Burke to Andre Iguodala) look like he's done alright for himself. Having a Hall-of-Fame defensive wizard like Gary Payton take an interest in you doesn't hurt. He's continued to work his 3 point shot and developed a crushing step-back shot he's refined since being suffocated late last year by defensive game plans tailored to stop him. Each game he plays, it looks like the Trail Blazers will go as far as Damian Lillard takes them.

In another development that portends well for the team, the veterans on the team can actually play. Gone are the days that greybeards like Kurt Thomas, Jared Jeffries, Juwan Howard, Ronnie Price and the like were brought in for "veteran leadership and mentoring" at the cost of the on-floor product. Now, veterans like Mo Williams and Dorell Wright and Robin Lopez are just as likely to dish advice in the locker room as drop 25 on someone.

Rotation:
Kevin Pelton points out that our bench last year was the second-worse bench (by Wins Above Replacement Players) in modern NBA history (at -9.9 WARP, only behind the 98-99 Bulls). A "replacement player" is defined as the "best available players who substitute for a suddenly unavailable starting player at the same position and who can be (or were) obtained with minimal expenditure of team resources." So yeah—a team of 5 of the best scrubs available we could give a 10-day minimum contract to would have won 10 more games last year than our bench. In fact, here’s one discussion I had with Golliver on Twitter early in the year:

To steal from Bill Simmons: “Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2012-13 Blazers’ Bench!!”

Coach Stotts has said that he plans to have a 9-man rotation, which is pretty standard in the NBA (and a shift from the "Red Team"/"White Team" concept of previous coaches. The starters line up to be:
PG: Lillard, SG: Matthews, SF: Batum, PF: Aldridge, C: Lopez
with Williams, Wright, Robinson and Freeland filling out the rotation. One of the surprises of the Preseason has been the play of Joel Freeland, who beat out last year's lottery pick Meyers Leonard for the backup C spot. From the pure stat forensics, you might wonder why:
• Freeland: 7 games 4.0 PPG, 5.6 RPG, 18.1 MPG, 34.2% FG
• Leonard: 6 games 4.7 PPG, 3.2 RPG, 14.2 MPG, 57.9 % FG

But if you listen to the coach, it becomes clear:

Well, there you go.

Defensive principles:
After last year’s team defensive rating of 109.2 (25th in the league)—or roughly the same as rolling out a lineup that included 48mpg each of Goran Dragic, OJ Mayo, Kyle Singler, Jason Thompson and Tyler Zeller—something needed to change, and I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone reading this. Yeah, DRtg isn’t the best individual stat (for instance, I could also cherry-pick a lineup from the same list of Kyrie Irving, Wes Matthews, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Bismack Biyambo and Robin Lopez), but you notice that Tony Allen, LBJ, Joakim Noah, Serge Ibaka, CP3 and Tyson Chandler aren’t on that list (or in our lineup, sad to say) and not many of us, I imagine, are screaming “I wish we could just play defense as well as the Magic, Hornets, Kings and Bobcats!!”. Or, to put it another way, “I want our defense to make it look like we’re playing against the Spurs’ or Clippers’ offense every night!”

While some may want to assign blame to Coach Stotts for being an offensive-minded coach, buoyed by Video-Coordinator-Made-Good and (Legit Nice Guy) Kaleb Canales as his principal Defensive Coordinator for our poor defensive rating following years of McScribbles-Ball, it could also have been a result of playing 4259 minutes of J.J. Hickson/Meyers Leonard/Luke Babbitt frontcourt defense. But I’m only speculating here.

To his credit, it’s not as if this was news to Coach Stotts.

Well, they didn’t get there.

Exit J.J. Hickson and anyone on the bench not on a rookie contract for this year. Enter Robin Lopez and Thomas Robinson, two big bodies who, while not considered all-stars by any stretch, have decent rebounding and block numbers.
(SB Nation photo)
Fast-forward to October:

Rim protection sounds like it’s being focused on here, which sounds good. But is Coach Stotts ready to put his lineup where his mouth is? Sounds like it. In the last preseason game, he played a 9-man rotation with Freeland and Robinson taking the backup frontcourt minutes at the expense of last year's lottery pick, Center Meyers Leonard.

What kind of "principles" is Coach talking about? Well, Boston and Chicago have done pretty well over the last half-decade implementing the defenses of Tom Thibodeau, and it's something that the Blazers have been hinting at all summer.
(Note: I was looking up some stuff online to delve deeper into the questions some had about defensive principles in general, and CHI/BOS specifically, and while writing this came across this pretty amazing post on Blazers’ Edge. So I scrapped my plan. Many props to Wilson7117 for putting it together better than I could with the resources I have here, and I highly recommend checking it out)

Is it wrong if I went a whole section on defense without mentioning the word “Scrap”?

Rebound Rate a key?
Last year, here were the Top 10 (well, 11, since L*L and HOU tied) teams in rebounding rate. Let’s see if you can spot a trend:
Indiana, Memphis, Brooklyn, Denver, OKC, L.A. Clippers, New Orleans, Golden State, Chicago, L*kers/ Houston.
I’ll do that again, but this time place where they ended up their season. Indiana (ECF), Memphis (WCF), Brooklyn (1st Rd), Denver (1st Rd), OKC (WCSF), L.A. Clippers (1st Rd), New Orleans (none), Golden State (WCSF), Chicago (ECSF), L*kers/ Houston (both 1st Rd). The Top 11 teams (save NOH) all made the playoffs.

Where’s Miami, you ask? I mean, they actually won it all, right? Actually, they're right below Portland: 22nd in Rebounding Rate. However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make an exception: if you blow away the field in True Shooting %, Effective FG%, and Offensive Efficiency, then by virtue of your team missing way fewer shots than others I’ll submit you can do well for yourself with a middling rebounding rate. Unfortunately, I don’t see our team supplanting MIA (or even OKC at a way-behind #2) in those three categories this year. Probably should try to clean up our misses a little better.
Whether it’s scheme or personnel, the Blazers have taken rebounding to heart. As Rastapopoulos points out, they’re outrebounding their opponents 51.7-41.1 over the 7-game preseason, including a pretty incredible 54.8-40.2 edge in their wins. You can cover a lot of other issues (ahem, TURNOVERS) with elite rebounding. The last time we were semi-elite in rebounding we had LMA, Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla slurping them up like a Dyson, and probably-not-coincidentally made the playoffs three years in a row. Then again, having LMA and an elite Rookie-of-the-Year backcourt player probably helped with that. Speaking of which...
via Imgflip Meme Maker

Offense:
Last year, the aforementioned Keep Rip City Weird offense attempted to turn LaMonster in a poor man's Dirk Nowitzki. Well, it kind of worked: he shot the most midrange shots in the league last year.
via Imgflip Meme Maker
More than K*be, more than Steph Curry, more than KG or Boozer or any other high-post shooter. But it's not just the offense, or a return from a summertime hip rehab, it's been a trend moving outward:
Shots from 16-23 feet (and percentage of total shots)
2009-10 (playing the high post, with competent big men down low): 412 FGA, 5.3/g, 32.6% of his shots
2010-11 (his only All-NBA season, with Camby and Przy, McMillan forcing him down low): 368 FGA, 4.5/g, 24.0% of his shots
2011-12 (first All-Star Season, McMillan fired): 302 FGA, 5.5/g, 32.0% of his shots
2012-13 (second All-Star Season, Stotts' Offense): 507 FGA, 6.9/g, 38.4% of his shots

It's actually more stark if you look at his shots at the rim (tips, dunks, layups) and in the paint over the same period:
2009-10: 24.0% at rim, 44.9% in paint
2010-11: 31.4% at rim, 58.4% in paint
2011-12: 28.1% at rim, 46.3% in paint
2012-13: 21.5% at rim, 40.7% in paint

During the best year of his career (and the last time the Blazers made the playoffs) he played like LaMonster. He's (necessarily?) drifted to the perimeter over the last few years, as the Blazers have abandoned the "and roll" part of the Pick-and-roll and turned it into picks-and-pops, leading to a decreased offensive efficiency and the lamentable fact that one of team's best rebounders is 16+ feet from the hoop the 58% of the time his shot misses and the concomitant impact on rebound rate (see above).

This year, however, he should have some help. In addition to Lillard and a "is-he-putting-it-all-together?" year from Nicolas Batum, and the consistent 3-pt range of Wesley Matthews, GM Olshey has imported shooters Mo Williams, Dorell Wright, CJ McCollum and Allen Crabbe. There should be no time this year where LMA is on the floor that he doesn't have at least 3 lethal 3-point shooters on the floor with him.

(More to follow in Part II)

 

Fixed and repped. Thanks.

 

This is what makes RC2 great! Brian makes a fantastic well researched post and the majority of posts are about or from HCP being compared to Shrek.