You forgot one. KEVIN DURANT!!! The Blazers should go after either Kevin Durant, Harrison Barnes or DeMar DeRozan in that order.
This is a total pipe dream. Durant was PISSED about going #2 and there is no way he leaves Westbrook and Ilbaka to come play with Dame/Leonard especially because we passed on him once already. Other teams that have a bigger strings attached to Durant and are in better situations will be the only ones who stand a real chance of luring Durant away.
Tank heads and lottery pick geeks always ignore the experience a team gets in the playoffs..in many ways it's the most important lesson they learn all season. We've got a bunch of young, top picks from the recent past and if they make the playoffs this season, it's frickin' awesome!
Whatever it takes to get Paul George except Lillard is worth it. He's a needle mover..Henderson, Kaman, Frazier..whoever
I've never been a huge fan of the "empty stats" arguments, or label. But fans will always look to make excuses for their own players. If they're on the "empty stats" side, then they say how much harder it is to get those stats on a bad team, because their guy constantly faces triple teams. If it's the other way, it's tougher to put stats up on a loaded team because not enough shots to go around. Or, conversely, it's easy to put up stats on a loaded team, because nobody pays attention to so and so. And it's easier on a loser team because they can chuck and not care about "team". Easy to mold an argument to however you want. I've only thought of stats as empty stats if it's like, Will Barton chucking in a blowout win for us sort of stats. But whatever. I'm not too worried about specific stats for any guys, and more just how they look getting them. But I'm sure we'll see plenty of the above 4 arguments made this year.
I always thought of the empty stat guy as a JJ Hickson when it came to the Blazers..contract player who'd get his even at the expense of winning..rebound stealers who steal from teammates
I used to scream at the TV when Pippen was young. He's a forward, but he chucked up a lot of low percentage outside shots and didn't go after the rebounds. It turns out he was learning to be a PG, the Bulls' answer to Magic. So empty stats, yep. But with a purpose. Speaking of Pippen, he was about Harkless' size.
Ahhh Stats Padding..... Jalen Rose did a great pod cast once we're he went into how players bump their stats up, not just per game averages, but per 36 minutes, in garbage time. Not the least bit interested in stats, but I found it insightful.
The only empty stat I critisize is when guys get a lot of points, by shooting a lot of shots at a low percentage.
