Barkley just said the Portland Trail Blazers are tops in the west

I agree. I think I even mentioned in the Houston game thread that we were missing his defensive rebounding. The Rockets were killing us with second chance points.

 

Speaking of rebounding... Anyone know what date RoLo is anticipated back? Already feels like we've been without him for awhile

 

Well it's 8 weeks from news of injury

 

Sorry I missed this. What did Barkley say specifically?

 

"I think the best team in the west is Portland." Then the entire TNT crew started shouting him down.

 

2 people is clutchfans?

The 3rd guy "J.R" is just some insane reporter guy who embeds every tweet and gets every quote on demand, we wonder if he's even human. You guys worried about Rockets fans as much as you worry about your own team.

 

Shaq immediately scoffed. He just kept saying "SPURS" anytime he had a chance.

 

I am always amazed at the inferiority complex of our fan base

 

Had he said this three weeks ago it would have made snse, but we all know now they arent making the playoffs

 

I liked our chances this season. Was even savings for plane tickets and nose bleeds for the finals. But now with the Barkley jinx I guess ill pay off my car. Better luck next year guys. Seasons over.

 

C'mon man. 30 games into the season and you really think you know who is making and not making the playoffs in the west? The Spurs are having some troubles for sure but they are by no means out of the playoffs. Now if you had said they will not be the number one seed i would wholeheartedly agree with you.

 

The numbers don't need to "work", they are what they are. Shaq and Smith were correct in calling him a jump shooter. Just as it would be correct to call Durant, Nowitski and Bosh jump shooters. But he doesn't shoot nearly as well as they do.

He's been a decent rebounder this year. He's ranked 44th in the league in defensive rebounding rate. (Bosh is 24) And I think he's playing the best defense of his career now.

Most stretch 4s take a much larger portion of their outside shots as 3s. Something Terry Stotts has been trying to get LA to do, which LA has resisted. But look at how he's shooting a better percentage from 3 this season than from mid range.

 

Did I argue he wasn't a jump shooter? My stats don't lie either. There isn't a player that has a higher clutch FG% than Aldridge, he is a beast rebounder and the Blazers are one of the best teams in the league with Aldridge being the guy taking the most shots. End of story

 

Yet he's the #1 FG% in clutch games, the team's best rebounder and takes the most shots on a team that has the second best record in the league.

 

Ha, ha!

 

The irony burns...

 

I made a post supporting the assertion that he was a jump shooter, and listed what his FG% was, and you retorted the weird assertion that those numbers "only work when trying to explain why a team is losing". That's why I said, no, the numbers are what they are whether Portland is winning or losing.

Where are you getting your clutch% from? I think Damian is our designated clutch man for a good reason. Though overall, clutch shooting is a bit over-rated, because of a guy misses goes 1-15 in the first 3 quarters then hits the last shot, he's a hero, but all his misses affect the score just as much. As Robin Lopez said, it's never the last shot.

And I wouldn't call being #44 in defensive rebounding % and #70 in OR% "beasting it"

Not sure what point you're trying to make about the Blazer's record. I'm pretty sure that missed shots don't help you win basketball games, so you'll have to explain that one further.

It's like saying "Nic Batum is the starting SF on this team and he's only shooting 20% from 3pt range, we have a great record so that proves it doesn't matter if your SF can't shoot 3s".

 

I had to delete that post, because I realized that those numbers were the percentage of shots made that were assisted vs unassisted. So most of his makes are assisted, but he's not actually shooting 77% on asssisted shots.