Sympathetic to most of this except Aminu. I think it’s a recency bias, he had a bad showing v Denver and GS this year. Back Before last year His stats were as consistent as anyone’s.
roughly speaking: Curry = Simons Turner = Bazemore Layman = hezonja Collins >>> Labassiere Kanter >>> Gasol (even Meyers is likely better than Gasol at this point). the only position our bench arguably got better is the guards - and our big guys are a huge step down. Im actually pretty ok with the moves re the starters overall. I’m VERY concerned with our bench THIS year (not 3 years from now when Simons comes to full form).
not that there aren't other factors but if you go by winshares: Jusuf Nurkić 7.8 Al-Farouq Aminu 5.8 Maurice Harkless 3.4 Jake Layman 3.1 Meyers Leonard 3.0 Seth Curry 2.4 Enes Kanter 2.1 Evan Turner 2.0 That's 29.5 of Portland's 53 wins....56%. Based on winshares, Blazers will be missing 5 of their top-7 and 8 of their top-11 guys when the season starts tomorrow night obviously, other players are going to accumulate winshares as they fill the minutes of the missing players. Can they match what those missing players did? career winshare/48: Whiteside .198 Kanter .147 Nurkic .111 Meyers .106 Curry .097 Hood .088 Harkless .084 Aminu .078 Layman .075 Zach .072 Turner .053 Bazemore .052 Hezonja .022
Labissiere is going to do well on the 2nd unit with consistent minutes this year. He’s going get noticed this year.
Search playoff Aminu on this board. This is wrong. As he only disappeared in last years playoffs. Before that? Search the board.
I actually think the key won't be who we brought in this season, but the growth of Simons, Collins and Skal. If they improve the way we think they will, we'll be more than fine. If not, then we'll struggle. Simons will have to take the place of Curry and Collins and Skal will have to play D like Moe and Chief. Here's hoping that Collins and Skal are living with Gasol soaking up everything he can teach them.
I think we are way better. Bazemore is a significant upgrade over Turner, Hood is better than Harkless offensively though not as good defensively - individual defense will not be good anyway, we may have decent team defense if we work on that though. Collins is a year older and should be better. Simons should be ready or close to ready to contribute. Whiteside is much better than Meyers. Extra depth from Hezonja, Gasol and Tolliver may come useful too.
I'm happiest with getting Bazemore for Turner. Don't think there was really any way to keep Curry or Layman. (Also not sure if coach maximized usage of both). OK with losing Kanter since it meant we could keep Hood. Aminu isn't good enough to take the financial hit. Not sure about Whiteside for Harkless and Leonard; loved it when it happened but just haven't seen much from Whiteside, hope that changes. We don't have a true SF now (who can also play PF) and we lost shooting in Leonard.
Winshares is a problem because it directly correlates to team wins, which might tell how you integral a player is to a winning team, it doesn't compare very well with performance from a player on a losing team. Hezonja as an example is really hurt here because he was on some really crappy teams. Of course, part of that could be his fault, but then there is whole rest of the team that factors in. Devin Booker has a lower winshare/48 for his career than Layman had last season. Notice the disparity in their contracts. Not saying Booker is deserving, just the perception across the league of their value resembles nothing from what might be perceived from winshares/48.
yeah, I know. It's why I didn't list career winshares. it's also a cumulative stat; the more games and more years you play, the higher the winshares. That's why I just listed winshares for Portland last year, and it was to show what Portland was losing from last year's squad I then listed winshares/48. While winshares is a measure of cumulative production, winshares/48 is a measure of production rates. Obviously, that can still be skewed by team success. Two players can have about equal production and efficiency; if one is on a 25 win team while the other is on a 50 win team, the 2nd guy is going to have about twice the winshare/48. More win to go around but looking at the players I listed, there may only be about 2 players that has much skew. Hezonja and Bazemore. But Bazemore, in 7 seasons, has played on teams that won 47, 51 (2/3 of a season), 60, 48, & 43 games. It's only the last two years (and 23 games with Lakers) that he's played on crappy teams. So I don't think there's a lot of skew with him. In Hezonja's case, he's played on crappy teams for sure; but he's also posted some pretty crappy numbers I think people are underrating what Portland lost in players that left. Now, maybe the new guys can offset the losses and more, but I thought it was worth noting that when the season starts, the Blazers have lost: 7 of their top 10 players in PER, Winshares, winshares/48, box plus/minus, & value over replacement. Defensively, they've lost 7 of their 10 best in defensive winshares, and 8 of their 10 best in defensive box plus/minus. The 'new' guys have a lot of make up for
Winshares is such a poor stat, particularly for young players who are underutilized, have their roles jerked around, in a bad situation, or are still trying to find themselves in the league. Some examples off the top of my head: go look at ws/48 for Harkless, Napier and Nurkic before coming to Portland. Or guys who have had significant changes in their role.
there is a big difference between winshares and winshares/48. The first is a cumulative stat gauging total production over time. The 2nd is a gauge of production rate. I also have explained why I was using those numbers. I said I didn't use career winshares, and that's the case you could say the same thing about any stat...the same criticism. I agree that players with limited minutes can have some skewed results. do me a favor and point out where the numbers I used was a poor use of stats. Keep in mind my reason for using them. I'm not trying to be combative here. If I've made some bad assumption, let me know
I really hope to be proven wrong, but... I see a series of downgrades over last year's roster. We have a couple of young guys who should improve, and that's awesome, but the OP asked if (setting aside money issues) would I rather have last year's roster or this year's, and last year's is much better IMO, since the young guys would still be able to improve and our team would just be better/deeper for it. Again, I hope I'm wrong.