Forensic Fan, Preseason Game One, 10/5/15 vs SAC

Forensic Fan Preseason Game 1, POR vs. SAC, 10/5/2015

From the top: Man, it’s good to be back, but I feel rusty. After devouring almost every word written by the Blazers I could come across this summer (again, hat tip to guys like Casey and Quick for some solid work this preseason), it’s good to look at some real stats and start another season of Forensic Fan.

I’ve been told that with a slightly newer audience, there are some that don’t quite get what Forensic Fan is or why I do it. To recap, this is a thing I do for fun. It started in 2013 when I was in Afghanistan and had no access to Blazers content other than box scores and basketball-reference.com. So I tried doing a reconstruction of what could have happened using nothing but what I could find there and what might be gleaned from it. Now that I’m back here (out with a season-ending deployment), it’ll be even tougher, so I may go through and pull out some game thread quotes. This isn’t “what I saw from Press Row”; check out SlyPokerDog’s “Dog in the Arena” for that kind of analysis. It’s not a post-game recap. You will get no “eye test” analysis. It’s (hopefully) another way of digging out what happened to our team on any given night. Enjoy, Rip City.

Player of the Game: Dame had a tidy 17 points in 24 minutes, Leonard went for 14 and 8, but the inaugural preseason Player of the Game award goes to Noah Vonleh (first of many?!), who collected 12 points and 11 rebounds (9 offensive!!1!) for the first double-double of the year.


Monster Games : Noah’s 12/11 was the only double-double, and with the minutes spread, really the only notable one.


Points Per Shot (5 shot minimum, or as some like to call it, “Rice’s Pregame Warmup”): At 42%, no one was what we in the bizness call “efficient”…no one, that is, except for Mo’ Money Harkless. Showing off impressive 3pt range, he had 14 points on 6 FGA, for a pretty stellar 2.5 points per shot. It could have been much better, had he not blown 4 free throws. But it’s preseason for everyone, and we should keep playing him and seeing if he can do good things more and bad things less. Congratulations, Mo!



Dishonorable Mention? Well, I’ll just leave this right here.

But whatever sickness he had was contagious. Patty Baseball and Phil “Not My Dad” Pressey also missed over 75% of their shots (3-15 combined). Um, yeah.



Coin Ratio: 24 assists on 99 shots means that the team as a whole passed around a quarter’s worth of CR, and it was spread pretty evenly. Dame had 3 assists on 15 shots (20 cents), CJ had 4 on 11 shots (36 cents), Pat had 3 on 7 shots, and Frazier had 3 on 6 for the 50 cents and today’s award. Honorable mention to the centers, as Plumlee and Leonard combined for 5 assisteses. Kind of tough to get a bunch of assists when the team shoots 42%, but it looks as if the ball was being moved, which actually makes me feel really good about how well the team is gelling already.

Bench
Good opportunity to see most of the new faces get some run. The aforementioned Harkless was steady and seemed to show some previously unheard-of range, and it seems as if the ball got spread around pretty well, with 7 bench players taking more than 6 shots. One thing that I learned, however…probably not a good thing to go with a Frazier/Pressey/Connaughton/OmariJ/Vonleh overtime lineup. And especially if you’re not going to “go Rick Moranis” by inserting Montero for Vonleh.

Just sayin’.


JinxSpeed Mini-Thread of the Game: Eric, already in midseason form…

Questions for the Group:
1. On a scale of "Ho hum, just preseason" to "OMG!11! I was totally wrong!", how did tonight's action change any of your opinions on the team?
2. If you had to guess tonight, who's starting at the 2/3/4 Opening Night?
3. Can shooting be taught to a not-good shooter over an offseason?

No joy for the Blazers tonight. But at least we didn’t lose to Fenerbahce Ulker (I could’ve probably spelled that Fenesdgfalsj Ulkadkf and Rasta would’ve most likely been the only one to notice). Worst team in the league, my foot!

As always, let me know what you like and don't like and it will likely be incorporated. Suggestions always welcome. Opinions and comments below. See you Thursday night for the Warriors!

 

Quick thoughts:

Frazier and Harkless really surprised me with their shooting last night, but since it was only one game...and it was the Kings...I reserve judgment until a larger sample size can be examined.

The defense was quite strong for the first three quarters...you know, when we were actually trying.

This team would drive the Schonz crazy. You've got. To make. Your free throws!

Ed Davis needs to thicken up if he's ever going to be more than a backup on a decent team.

 

You do not want to make an enemy out of me.

- Sly P Dog

 

Or three, because he didn't want any of the important players on the floor risking injury in a game that meant nothing, against a team that obviously wanted to win the meaningless game a lot more than we did, when we had already clearly demonstrated our team's superiority.

 

It might have something to do with his awareness that he shoots a lifetime 27.6% between 3 and 23 feet. I wish I was joking about that.

What are these men running down the lane toward the basket that you speak of?

Even though Coach Stotts says that the defensive principles won't change, this BlazersEdge article does a great job running down how some turnover-forcing things can change even with similar principles in place with some minor tweaks.

 

I'm by no means a physical therapist, but I was under the impression that after a player has been playing a while, then sitting for a long time, it's tougher on the body to bring them in cold off the bench again.

 

Oh yes, that Leonard-Lillard pass was beautiful, as was his alright of hand with the ball preceding that pass.

Leonard's ball handling impressed me last night.