How do you succeed as an organization? You can't just draft the 25th best player when you're drafting at pick #25. IMHO, you have to 1) Take chances on high upside players (Neil) 2) Create an environment where players who wouldn't succeed elsewhere succeed with you (Stotts/Lillard) That's why Neil/Stotts/Lillard has been so successful. That's why "reclamation projects" succeed here. NSL are strong believers in SUPPORT: Hood: "I missed the shot. Maybe I shouldn't have taken it." NSL: "You were open. We WANT you, no, we NEED you to take that shot 100 times/100. We know you'll make most of them. Not only do we have confidence in you, we trust you. Trust yourself, it'll all work out." Contrast, this SUPPORT system to The Miami Heat. It's not that NSL is great, and that Riley is bad. On the contrary, Riley is fantastic, but their system is based on something different - DISCIPLINE. Whiteside has always been immature. Not in a junior-high-wearing-rainbow-sunglasses-inside kind of immature (that's Biebs), but more in a junior-high-punkish kind of way where the kid has home problems that lead to attitude problems at school. IMHO, a system of SUPPORT is exactly what Whiteside has needed his whole career. It may also be that DISCIPLINE is exactly what Biebs needs to succeed. This could actually work out well for both teams, instead of just a trade of expiring contracts for each other. #dropsmic
Kind of hard for a center to do that, because he needs his teammates to get him the ball. A center goes for his own by going after offensive rebounds. About the ONLY way he can pad stats is by trying to block every shot and getting out of position. And people around the league know when a guy is doing that. GMs aren't going to be snowed by stats. They see what a guy does and how he does it.
I think he understands that WINNING is his best shot at another 100-million dollar contract, not stat-padding. He's already posted a video about how excited he is to come to Portland.
On a bad team that’s not even winning in the east, I could see that kind of attitude. I still don’t even know why they brought him back in the first place. They were already looking like a lottery team that summer.
Always nice to have someone who is motivated to prove himself and someone who wants to be here. I keep remembering the press conference with Walter Berry when we were surprised he dropped to us and so we took him without much research as he wasn't expected to be available. In his press conference he was saying how he planned on playing out his contract and moving on before he even touched foot on the Blazer floor. Well, he was moved before the season started and that's what landed us Duckworth and Berry lasted 3 years in the NBA.
Curious if he is their Jason Quick? Can you imagine somebody on another forum quoting a Blazers fan named KingSpeed???
See your point If Whiteside gets selfish, and pads his stats by pulling down 15 rpg instead of his avg of 11+, the Blazers are going to suck. (Don't know how to apply green font from cell phone)
I’ll say this. If Dame/Portland can’t get the best out of him (speaking mainly mentally,) no one can. I don’t think he’s as bad as Heat fans/media want you to think though. Wade likes him a lot and posted this yesterday
Neil is so loyal and dedicated to Lillard, if anyone even comes close to hurting the culture they have created he’ll be gone in three minutes
Maybe I missed this somewhere, but when Barkley heard about the trade on Cowherd's show he said "MIA got a steal. Meyers Leonard can be a star in this league." I swear on everything, no green font.
Woj on his pod just mentioned that the Whiteside deal almost happened 10 days ago, and only happened now because Miami needed to shed salary.
