Meyers swish3 shooting has been excellent each season, often leading the NBA as in the Jan 30 win over the Jazz in which he achieved 80%! And his screens are among the best in the NBA, I agree! In fact, Meyers holds the record for 10 or more made swish3s in the Playoffs with 10 of 13 (76.9% in the 2014-2015 Playoffs!) is bolded as the NBA record in Basketball-reference. Over 70% swish3 shooting should qualify for the Championship. The Blazer weakness is that we are not relying on him for 9+ swish3 points per game. Let's see what he can do in this season's Playoffs!
I think people sometimes don't realize how chemistry plays into team success. Meyers and Turner often get bashed ... usually because of their contracts outweighing their play. But I always got the sense that they both were very welcome by their teammates because they were excellent fits personality-wise. Lovable goofballs who make it more fun to play. I bet most guys on this forum who played on any organized team could tell you about teammates that made them eager to get to practices and work out and just put them in a great mindset, and I bet they can tell you tales of really talented teams on which they played that turned into horror stories, where they even dreaded going to the court or the park because of all the drama. Case in point, look at this year's Celtics. Or even this year's Warriors. All the stories about guys being unhappy, wanting out. What are the odds that the Warriors explode if they don't win it all this year? They start five legit all-star-caliber guys, have an awesome coach, but do they seem to actually enjoy playing together? Are they playing to their potential? I think those things are related.
I agree. The comments by Anf about Meyers coaching helping in the win over SAC supports the thought that Meyers is contributing importantly to the team chemistry. Meyers and Evan do add something to team communication, trusting each other, and teamwork that is vital for the Playoffs.
His defense and rebounding are awful. All he can do is hit threes when he has 10 seconds to shoot - and he passes/screens pretty well. Good guy, mediocre-bad player. His contract is THE reason we haven’t been contenders in recent years. You don’t need to sugar coat the truth just bc he’s a nice guy.
How is a giant bad contract holding a team back that just needs one more piece to be a contender? Hmm.
Oh yeah, I'm sure we're missing out on a star free agent that surely would've signed here if we could've gotten rid of Meyers' $10M a year contract while we were $20M over the salary cap. Makes perfect sense.
You better read up a little bit about the way the cap works. Using Meyers to get a better player in trade would be good yes. But blaming the 10 million on playoff success is kind of silly. Now if you would have said Turner you might have gotten a different response but not by a bunch really.
For the season, Meyers and Skal are tied for the best ORtg at 129. The Blazer bench has a lot of scoring power to improve our chances for winning the Championship.