Olshey on How the Blazers Will Reach a New Level

If you don't think Kaman's defense is significantly better than Leonar_'s or Freelan_'s, well that is really cute.

 

Perimeter defense is our glaring weakness. We did absolutely nothing to address it

 

Even from the small sample size of summer league I've seen defensive improvement by the bench players. Kaman is a better defender than Leonard and Blake is better than Mo so we have addressed some of that. We needed bench scoring and we have addressed that as well. For some folks, it's just never enough even though the new roster hasn't practiced once together yet.
Tell me we're terrible if we miss the playoffs but at this point, the team hasn't lost a game in 2014-15

 

I know it's not the end all be all stat, but both Blake and Mo have the same defensive rating for their career at 110, so how Blake is "better", I'm not sure. Summer league is just that, summer league. Saying you saw improvement defensively their is more than a bit silly. Our own Qyintel Woods should tell you everything you need to know about summer league. Blake and Mo are pretty much a wash in scoring, and will Kaman score a ton in Stotts' offense?

Your argument for not practicing yet goes both ways too.

 

Blake had a career year with the Lakers, not with Nate. Career stats are silly to compare. Once again, try to see the present state of these guys and not compare them to some historical reference point. If you watched summer league at all you'd have the same observation I did. 6 returning players were more in sync defensively than last season. Growth is growth. Kaman plays a very similar pick and pop game offensively to LaMarcus so there should be less drop off off the bench. Mine are predictions. Call them silly but I'll withhold judgement on the glass half empty philosophy that you seem to subscribe to.

 

How quickly we forget...no one on the Spurs roster is a current superstar and yet they wiped the court with the league. Heck, old man Duncan playing under 30 minutes a game was their only player with a 20+ PER.

STOMP

 

Step 1) steal underpants
Step 2) ???
Step 3) nba championship

 

I was looking at Hollinger's team stats for last season and found this to be interesting. I took his offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions) and defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions) data, calculated the difference and then ordered the 30 teams by the margin and this is the result:


This net efficiency rating seems like it was a pretty good predictor of team success. To nobody's surprise, the Blazers are near the top in offensive efficiency, but need to improve defensively to have a real shot at a title. They don't need to become a top defensive team, simply drop the points allowed by 3-4 per 100 possessions.

I think that adding Kaman will really stiffen the second unit, but it's clear that there's going to need to be a better buy-in by everybody to defense and that the younger guys simply have to get better.

 

That's pretty insane! Imagine if our defense was just a bit better?! We would be in the same boat as the Spurs.

 

That's B-A-N-A-N-A-S! Imagine if our defense was A LOT better?! We would be in the same boat as the Spurs.

 

Last year was so strange with a third of the league tanking and the east being horrible. I have concern we could play just as well next season but only win 45 games.

 

Blazers got off to such a hot start last season, they going to have a hard time duplicating that. Also, I don't see Kaman or Blake being able to play 82 games.

The hope is T-Rob and CJ emerge this year or I think the Blazers will be in that 45 game range.

 

I watched each and every game last season. I caught only 2 teams that didn't play to win against us. Most our battles were against teams trying to take us out.

I suspect we become a 57 win team

 

Last season we did well with having the worst bench in the nba. All we need is a bench and I think we got it. Things will be easier actually.

 

I like to be conservative so im going to predict no less than 70-75 wins and a sweep of the first 4 rounds of the playoffs.

 

We did fine, yes... but that dreaded I word hangs over every teams head... that was a HUGE reason we did so well.

Trust in Stackpole, they say!

 

Hope your right mags. We won a lot of close games last year and I'm not so convinced the bench got a whole lot better. Kaman being 32 and playing so few games last year is somewhat unproven at this stage of his career in my book. Blake is more of a known quantity but is 34 and is not much of an improvement over Mo.

But there is lots of room for improvement on this squad. Things will be easier this yr to get 54 wins? Hope so bro . . .

 

I understand your concern, but my biggest problem with Mo is how the offense would go to shit when he was on the floor. Of course Mo is a better scorer than Blake, but at what expense? I think Blake will bring more stability to our bench, allowing our other players to score.

Our bench can be capable, but we need a bench general other than Lillard to run that offense.

 

Out of their 5 titles during this run, the Spurs have had 3 different Finals MVPs (Duncanx3/Parker/Leonard), and Duncan hasn't won it since 2005. The Spurs are the model that Olshey is trying to emulate, and in a small market, it's really the only way to go unless a team (A) tanks, and (B) gets lucky that the player they draft at #1 or #2 becomes a superstar.