Dviss1, this does not make sense to me. When you have the exceptional talent to repeatedly score more than 75% of swish3s, that is right there with Steph and Kyle Korver for the best of the NBA, and have the NBA Playoff record for swish3 % scoring, yelling not to shoot swish3s is rooting against the Blazers. Meyers scores with hammer dunks, gets shots for teammates, and hustles to make major contributions, but you must recognize has excellent talent to score swish3s that secured us 15 points on 5 of 6 shooting in WCF Game 4, and in previous games and his NBA Playoff record. The dunks are welcome, and should be included in game plans along with emphasizing him in the high post to get open shots for teammates as well as to score 12-15 points per half from the arc. The only reason not to have the advantage of 30 point per game scoring from Meyers is not running an offense that relies on his powerful scoring combination of swish3s and dunk2s. And Meyers is becoming increasingly effective on defense, with steals and dunks as well as bothering the shots of Dray, Looney, Steph, and others. He is certainly not "clueless," which is a prejudiced disrespectful comment. Meyers is working hard to improve, hustles to stay with his man, rebounds, boxes out, screens, and contributed effective defense in the Playoffs. He does hear and respond to fans, and will help win Blazer games more with fan cheers than with jeers. Let's focus on the positive and move on to win the Championship!
Yes, I do understand. But the contract decisions are entirely under the authority of the GM, and really unlikely to be influenced by fan opinions expressed here or anywhere. While you may enjoy the Walter Mittey thoughts of how you would distribute the salary cap, it does not influence the GM and my point is that belonging to a Championship team is the important motivator for players, rather than current salary. These players are always focused on winning and the future. What we can do is to encourage them to be their best, and the coaches to recognize and rely on the best.
I love @swish3 . He is the best kind of "personality" account on this board. The takes are always put a smile on my face.
You're exactly right. I was wrong about Meyers. I will place my faith in his swish3 capabilities from here on out. Just maybe at 5 mil a year tho...
Meyers is exhibit L or P or somewhere in that vicinity of what bothers me about Stotts. Meyers isn't what he should be at this point in his career. A rebounding shot blocker who can hit an open 17 footer and catch lobs for dunks all day long.
"Leading blazer Playoff Scorer" Damian Lillard 430 CJ McCollum 395 Enes Kanter 182 Rodney Hood 158 Maurice Harkless 134 Al-Farouq Aminu 118 Zach Collins 109 Seth Curry 90 Meyers Leonard 85 Evan Turner 43 minutes/game: Damian Lillard 40.6 CJ McCollum 39.7 Enes Kanter 28.8 Al-Farouq Aminu 24.9 Maurice Harkless 24.3 Rodney Hood 23.3 Seth Curry 20.4 Zach Collins 17.2 Meyers Leonard 15.5 Evan Turner 15.3 assisted FG Rate: Meyers - 94.1% Harkless - 73.1% Kanter 54.7% Hood - 51.9% CJ - 33.8% Dame - 21.0% context actually has some meaning assisted FG Rate: Dame: regular season 28.6%....playoffs 21.0% CJ: regular season 46.6%....playoffs 33.8% might be that Stotts needs to mitigate his reliance on iso and develop some more dependable offense
The point is the scoring efficiency, which is shown here ranked by eFG%, where Meyers has 63.1 that is well above his teammates. Meyers also led the WS/48 with 0.154, and TS% of 61.6, despite his limited number of min and number of shots. <PRE> Rk FG% 3P 3PA 3P% 2P 2PA 2P% eFG% 1 Meyers Leonard .523 14 33 .424 20 32 .625 .631 2 Rodney Hood .468 18 51 .353 34 60 .567 .550 3 Zach Collins .506 7 21 .333 34 60 .567 .549 4 Enes Kanter .514 1 4 .250 74 142 .521 .517 5 Maurice Harkless .477 7 28 .250 45 81 .556 .509 6 Damian Lillard .418 59 158 .373 79 172 .459 .508 7 CJ McCollum .440 46 117 .393 108 233 .464 .506 8 Seth Curry .366 21 52 .404 9 30 .300 .494 9 Al-Farouq Aminu .349 15 51 .294 23 58 .397 .417 10 Evan Turner .326 1 1 1.000 14 45 .311 .337 11 Skal Labissiere .250 0 2 .000 1 2 .500 .250 12 Jake Layman .143 0 5 .000 1 2 .500 .143 13 Anfernee Simons .000 0 2 .000 0 5 .000 .000 </PRE> Provided by <a href="https://www.sports-reference.com/sh...irect&utm_medium=Share&utm_campaign=ShareTool">Basketball-Reference.com</a>: <a href="https://www.basketball-reference.co...=Share&utm_campaign=ShareTool#playoffs_totals">View Original Table</a><br>Generated 5/22/2019.
c'mon man. of course Meyers is going to have high efficiency. His role is to stand in one area set screens and occasionally shoot if he has a ton of space because of his slow shot wind-up. A player with a 94% assisted FG rate is naturally going to have high efficiency. Basketball 101 you got that backwards. Meyers didn't have those numbers "despite" limited opportunity. He had those numbers because of limited opportunity. The defense never accounted for him and his teammates created all his offense but that's the story on Meyers. He got "better" when Stotts started to regulate and throttle down his minutes. In his 4th and 5th seasons, Meyers played 1333 & 1222 minutes. His TS% in those two seasons was around .540 and his winshare/48 was around .075. Over the next two seasons he only played 11oo minutes total, less than half the minutes of those previous years. His TS% was .675 and his winshare/48 was around .175. But Meyers only played in 94 games those two years, a little more than half of the games Leonard's efficiency jumped because Stotts made him a part-time member of the rotation and only played him when a situation wasn't a disadvantage. That's what he has been the last two years: a part time member of the rotation that averages less than 15 minutes. That's not a situation where stats mean much. Meyers gets credit for improved BBIQ and limiting his offensive mistakes. But he's still a straight-line slow-twitch basketball player with bad defensive instincts and no ability to create his own offense.
The larger picture is that your issue isn't really with s2 board members, it's with Stotts AND EVERY OTHER GM IN LEAGUE. GS: Leonard's efficiency is better than Draymon, yet somehow they won't trade Draymon for Biebs. SA: ditto with DeRozan and LMA. Every other team: ditto with many of their players. Biebs doesn't have trade value. Why aren't you launching a tirade against all of the "stupid" GMs out there? Doesn't he deserve to be on a team that appreciates him more? Just imagine what stats he'd have if he was playing 35 mpg!!!
Wizenheimer, you are ignoring the leading role that Meyers played in WCF Game 4 first half. Meyers scores swish3s from catch and shoot plans, much like Kyle Korver and some other leading swish3 shooters do. GSW, like MEM, did play defense against Meyers to try and stop him. But if Dame and Rodney had passed to wide open Meyers on the arc, we might have won that game. You can't just discount leading the team in shooting and ignore the offensive force that can bring 25 points per half against GSW in a Playoff game. But if you do, then you are making the major mistake that Blazer coaches made by not continuing to rely on the talented swish3 shooter with the hot hand. Can you name any other NBA player who is better than 83.3% in the Playoffs? Your arguments show the major improvement that Meyers has made in his 6th and 7th years. He is still developing both offense and defense, as might be expected for a big man and his age. If you recognize his team leadership in communication, selflessness, hustle, and continued improvement, you must conclude that he is much better than someone who does not make major contributions to Blazer scoring and wins. If you review his Playoff games, it is not accurate to say that he did not contribute to Blazer offense and defense.
Meyers doesn't want to play for GS or SA or anyone else, and has consistently been a hard worker who is loyal to the Blazers, so your question is an unanswerable foil. When you see swish3 scoring that matches Steph in the Playoffs, you could be impressed. I am. Yes Meyers should be starting and playing 24+ min in my view in all of the GSW Playoff games, where he has proved to be more effective than Enes and a major scoring factor for us. Meyers efficiently scored 25 points on 83.3% shooting in the first half! At this point, Meyers deserves better from the fans than to be dismissed while we waste swish3 scoring opportunities with missed shots.
1) B.S. 2) What about my whole point about other GMs? Neil doesn't care about what the player's destination preferences.
I'll give you this, in the Denver Series when Enes and Company were really struggling vs the size and thickness of Milsap / Jokic, I definitely thought they should've tried more ML. His one on one defense vs "big" bruiser types is good enough, and he is a big strong guy who could've frustrated Jokic. The one thing I saw vs GS was when ML had the confidence to shoot the freaking ball his release didn't look nearly as bad, but too often he seems to be thinking rather than playing. He's always been a really good shooter but you can tell he's thinking basketball instead of playing it. Which really makes him look like he's 2-3 seconds behind the rest of the players out there. I don't know if it's the lack of minutes, us fans, or just ML but when he's second-guessing should he shoot, should he switch, should he follow his man, he just looks lost especially on defense. When he doesn't shoot wide open shots because he's thinking, he also looks pretty bad at times on offense. I don't know about 24 minutes, but if you give me a confident, ML a guy who's just going to play basketball and not think basketball. I'd take him as a good solid role player any day. When we get the not quite sure of himself version it can get bad in a hurry. I thought last season he looked, "better" and this season he was on a similar trajectory, but to me, Nurkic is far and away from the best center on the roster and Zach / Meyers are almost polar opposites of each other.
You seem to imply that I think of trading Meyers to another team, but I don't. And I know relatively little about GM preferences, and find many of their decisions to be confusing. Neil and we care about optimizing available talent and that is my focus. Do you have an answer to my question: Can you name any other NBA player who is better than 83.3% in the Playoffs?
Given time they would've adjusted their defense and brought that down, say if the Blazers had of actually won a game... No doubt offensively ML had a really special couple halves of basketball though.
Yes, the confident Meyers is the one that we want to watch! And he is influenced by fans cheering him on. His swish3 shot is deliberate and he appears to be thinking carefully and choosing his shots. His defensive placement is good and constantly getting better. Meyers is benefiting from coaching and experience. And I think that Meyers and Zach are good influences on each other, have given each other open shots, and offer a strong big front that can win competitive Playoff games. I object to saying that he looks lost on defense, as this is a holdover comment based on previous seasons. He looked composed and effective in this Playoff series, and I think his performance merits dropping that often repeated phrase. Let' encourage him and look for more wins!
Its not about discouraging him, but he gets lost in what we like to call no mans land on defense. Even this year, its still a problem for him at times. He also hasn't quite figured out how to follow a guy driving and meet them and the ball at the rim. His offense the last two games was good. Id even say in game 2 when people blamed him for the bad defense it was more the weak side help that didnt do their job then Meyers. He’s got work to do.
