A little good news and a lot of bad news. Good News: Lillard is playing much better than he has previously. His weaknesses have been defense, finishing at the rim, and shot selection. He's finishing WAY better, and this is partly why his shot selection has improved. He's a legit MVP candidate. Vonleh is looking energized. Bad News: Blazers are 6-4 with Margins of Victory in 6 wins: +9, +2, +10, +6, +3, +2. If we had the same Lillard as last season, we're 2-8. Offseason prognosticators predicted Blazers would play overall the same or slightly worse than their record last year. I scoffed, but so far it looks like they're right. We're nowhere near our offseason goals of top 5 offense, top 10 defense. Offense is down to 16th. Defense is 25th. The offense looks like it could easily improve. The defense looks hopeless. Offseason forumites desire of not trading for Boogie because of chemistry issues seem dumb. We need more talent in the big men department. We paid big $$$ for Turner and Crabbe. The first of these has been a disaster, the second of these seems questionable. The bench was supposed to be even deeper this season. Speaking of a disaster. Turner - 23.7 mpg: PER 7.2 Crabbe - 29 mpg: PER 9.4 Leonard - 13.4 mpg: PER 4.4 Davis - 13.6 mpg: PER 4.6 After a slow start CJ is playing better. However, more than ever he's looking like "not a PG." Harkless has somewhat returned to form after a slow start. Again, if he's not hustling, he's not making a contribution. Aminu is still playing good defense, but his 27.9 FG% has been killing us. PER: 8.4. Plumlee is looking meh. Turner's been ineffective. His ballhandling is overrated. Can't shoot. Not comfortable. Crabbe's been great when aggressive. He's not aggressive often enough. Davis's 20 lbs of muscle gain seems to have destroyed his game. Can't rebound, can't finish anymore. Biebs has been a nonfactor. Still can't play defense. Others not getting enough minutes to matter. --------------------- Bottom Line: This is definitely not a 50 win team. 10 games isn't everything, but unless things change substantially, we're back to losing 4-1 in the 1st round.
For me Ed, Chief, AC and Turner all need to step it up ....I think the other rotation players are doing a good job
I think you're right about the two bits of good news. We can probably toss in Vonleh's sporadic minutes in the bad news column, so that negates his good news some. However, in Lillard's case, anytime your best player gets even better, that's borderline great news. I don't watch the Blazers as much as I used to, so upfront apologies for likely stating the obvious. Applying the old eyeball test and comparing this year to last: we're not moving as much on offense, not stroking the three nearly as well, and we're not playing loose. As a consequence, we're not as much fun to watch. Last year's team was one of the more entertaining teams in the franchise's history, and this year's...not so much. So, put that in the bad news column, too. Even when we win, like tonight, it wasn't all that entertaining. Save for Nards and his highlight dunk and facial animations.
Harkless should be in the good news department and so should CJs scoring, as he's even more efficient now. Also, Jake Layman should be good news because I expected nothing out of him.
The good news is we're not playing great but are still winning. It would take more time to figure out the rotations. Meyers only started getting real minutes. I think it's absolutely essential Napier starts getting minutes. Playing just two real guards the entire game (Dame and CJ, but still) simply isn't working, the experiment with Crabbe or Turner as guards simply isn't working and is hurting both players' effectiveness. There are some things we can't control, like Ezeli's injury but Plumlee, Davis, Vonleh, Meyers should get regular minutes and start finding their rhythm. I think Crabbe and Turner are SFs, Harkless I preffer as a small ball PF. I'm not worried. The season to me hasn't even really started. We're only going to get better
Harkless has been very efficient though with his offense. 40% from 3 56% from 2. If this guy only had a Jerome Kersey type motor he'd be awesome. But yeah, not much more needs to be said about the disappointing and horrendously over-paid supporting cast.
Fairly accurate but not enough credit to harkless. He is hitting his threes. That's a non hustle contribution for one. Most of my concern for his team are Davis and turner. Hey are supposed to be part of our core rotation and we should have the best bench in the league. This is the most surprising and dissapointing to me.
I thought about a "Meh" or neutral category. IMHO, Mo and CJ aren't playing better than last year, but they're definitely not the ones hurting us. Love JL, but he's a nonfactor.
In the bad news category, to me, is Lamar. Not saying I regret Mike Rice. I don't. But every time he screams "Moe Harkless, no problem" I want to switch on the other commentating crew. Totally annoying to me.
Didn't think of the broadcasting crew! Mike and Mike will always be a favorite, but I'm starting to like the new crew - they've started complaining about the refs!
What you said except that I don't hold out hope for Vonleh. He still can't play team ball, which is why he doesn't get minutes. Didn't Stotts insert him into the starting lineup for the Clippers' game? He was gone the next game, for GOOD REASON. (As I've said before) he's a Shareef Abdur-Rahim player: will put up nice stats if you make him a centerpiece, and your team will SUCK. Well, he's not anywhere near as good as Shareef, but you get the idea. I also think that CJ may be part of the problem. Yes, I love to watch him play, but he's a bit that way too. He's much more talented than Crabbe, but Crabbe requires so much less usage, and is larger and a better defender. I honestly think we'd improve by giving CJ's SG minutes to Crabbe and (God help me) giving Napier CJ's PG minutes. I'd prefer to give CJ's PG minutes to a better PG, but I think we got rid of them because we have to find minutes for CJ and we find them at PG with the bench. And that's a big part of why our bench sucks.
I disagree. You can't expect him to never have a bad game or bench him 2 games for any off-night. You see he doesn't fit a specific match-up, we have other options, that's one of our strengthes with so many options in the front line. I've said it again and again but in my opinion Stotts is our biggest weakness
More good news... Last year, we didn't get our 6th win until the 15th game of the season. So, by simple math, we're 5 games ahead of last year's pace. More simple math... 6 - 4 = .600 winning percentage. .600 x 82 = 49 wins = also 5 games ahead of last year's pace. BNM
His expression (combined with his hairdo) after that dunk was definitely the highlight of the evening.
Not sure, but we lost to some pretty bad teams, including PHO twice, before we won our 6th game last year. BNM
