Looking over the team stats up to game 4, there's obviously a lot of sample size issues. Chili P is not going to be the lone member of the 50%/50%/100% club, for example. But the Blazers are leading the league in offensive and defensive rebounding. I don't think I see that changing this year.
Our rebounding is legit. We will win a lot of games simply because of that. Tonight's game being the perfect example. And no, Chili P will not keep those averages, but I'm pretty damned happy to see him confident and contributing. He helps the team while he is on the court and that is pretty much all you can ask for from a second round pick.
Will CJ lead us in scoring? I think it's quite likely, although I hope Lillard's fg% go up and his struggles so far don't have anything to do with him working harder on D, because I want the latter to continue but not the former.
Maybe Dame is working real hard on defense and that takes away a bit of his energy on offense. He's not really taking a massive number of shots - he's down 3 per game from last year. This is perhaps because the rest of the team is playing so well that he can facilitate more. Also the defense leads to turnovers which lead to fast breaks and Dame isn't necessarily going to be finishing most of those. His .400 FG% from 2pt range is far below his career average. Will his 1.8 steals per game be the same 4 months from now?
So far Dame minutes been down then the past years. He bern getting 32-35 minutes in the game. Past years what he was averaging 38 plus a year.
I had a feeling Nurk’s shots would come from Dame rather than anyone else. I think Dame is going to try to be less Allen Iverson and more CP3 this season, as long as it’s working for him and the team.
Dame was shooting 50% before his clunker last night. Small sample size. But the team trends are a bit more indicative. We'll dominate rebounds no matter who we play against. And that will make our offensive efficiency better. I wish we'd increase the pace though. Our ast% is in the tanker and playing faster should help in that.
I called it early (preseason), but it wasn't that hard to see. This season we have 3 rebounders (Nurk, Davis, Biggie) that are basically better than anyone we had in the first half of last season. It's a big deal. Adding Nurk, Davis, Biggie to Dame and CJ is going to net great results. It's not surprising. Adding Nurk, Davis, Biggie to Josh Jackson, TJ Warren, and Booker would net great results. Adding Nurk, Davis, Biggie to Ben Simmons and Fultz would net great results. Adding Nurk, Davis, Biggie to a lot of teams with talented scorers would net great results. Again, rebounding (and defense) is a big deal.
I've been thinking a lot about Tony Parker lately. It's funny how overlooked the guy is, considering he's basically won more than any other point guard in the past 15 years. He gets overlooked because he never put up massive assist numbers or only once averaged more than 20ppg. But I think some of that is also that he was a 30mpg guy for much of his career. The Spurs, the smartest team in the league over that same stretch, consistently kept him year after year around that 32mpg mark, and then bumped it to 36mpg in the playoffs. Just look at the numbers, especially in his prime--it's the same pattern year after year after year. No accident here. Now go look at Chris Paul, the best point guard of his generation but with pretty well-documented playoff failing: 36mpg regular season, 38mpg in the playoffs. I'm not sure what the right number is for Dame, but we're like the Spurs in that we've got another guy who can run the offense (Manu/CJ). There's no reason the team can't succeed with him on the bench a few minutes more. I'd really like to see Portland move more towards the Popovich style of time management for Dame.
Well said. I've posted the same thing in other threads. Cutting CJ's minutes to 32 might be good, too. Play them all 48 minutes in the playoffs if that is what it takes to win, though.
Especially with guys like Napier and Patty who can fill the starter roles pretty well for short stretches. I really think Napier is underutilized for how good of a player he is. Stotts is known for running his best players ragged and I dont expect that to change as much as we all want it.
