Game Thread 2023-24 Game #2 - BLAZERS VS MAGIC - OCTOBER 27, 2023 - FRIDAY - 7:00 PM PST - ROOT

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Walker should have played more than Camara.
Scoot with 2 assist and 5t0's?

 

It seems we gave Nurkic more touches down low than we give Ayton, and Ayton is much more efficient on his shots in the paint.

I don't get it. They obviously wanted to acquire Ayton to be a piece of the future Core. Let's see what he can do. We need more team oriented ball.

 

I don't get it either. It would be great to feed him a lot in many ways. Some of those ways are: that he is likely our most efficient scoring option, we could get him very confident and energized which could build him into an all star level C going forward, we could get our young guards more proficient with entry passes, we could get our young guards more experience running high low action, if Ayton is getting those shots on the roll we could get our young guards experience running the P&R, we could get our young guards more proficient dumping the ball off to bigs on penetration and lastly among the things my limited perspective sees... we could attract attention to Ayton in the post and that would give our young perimeter players more room to operate on the perimeter and less attention when taking it to the hole.

 

This also has me baffled. I guess opponents are just shutting that inside pass down because of POR inexperience. Otherwise it makes no damn sense. He is totally underperforming under Billups. Makes no sense to me but I am happy to be told why this is so.

 

Just a fyi: Grant had better TS & eFG marks last season than Simon's; the difference is he was a 2nd/3rd option playing off Dame. When Grant has acted as a first option he sucked Blazers will miss Dame in all kinds of ways this hear

 

We don’t have shooting. So they’re clogging the paint.

They’re taking away lanes from Scoot. They collapse on Ayton. When we try to feed him in the post he gets swarmed by 3-4 guys because they’re not scared of Scoot, Thybulle, Grant or Sharpe. We don’t have shooters.

 

My read on things is that Portland’s system is set up around Dame (and now, Ant), getting into the PnR and then either attacking the rim or cashing 3s.

Now they have neither, so there’s no current player to easily plug into that system (Ant and Sharpe are different players). I suppose you could try to run everything through Sharpe but he doesn’t seem like a seasoned enough decisionmaker to make those kinds of reads—though I agree that Sharpe should get loads of touches and PT/experience now that Portland’s featured player is out for 4-6 weeks.

My hope is that Brooks and Chauncey can implement some simple actions that turn Ayton and Grant into featured offensive players where they can get the ball in spots where they’re comfortable and can get open looks, and, have guys running off of them—because just giving Grant the ball in isolation, or trying to force feed Ayton in awkward situations, is resulting in bad shots for Grant and turnovers for the guys trying to dump it into Ayton.

I say that as someone who is not a huge fan of Jerami Grant, specifically the Detroit version—but it’s better than <gestures wildly> whatever Malcolm Brogdon is trying to do by himself.

 

They’re trying to get Ayton the ball but opponents are surrounding him and forcing Portland’s meh shooters to fire away. It‘ll take some creativity by Billups to run some DHO actions for Ayton, because it’s nearly impossible to jam it into Ayton right now for a variety of reasons—one of which is that Scoot and others aren’t that good at it, and that Ayton’s hands aren’t fantastic.

 

Awful shooting last night and no Ant

 

Fire Stotts!

 

Exactly!

 

Most improved player

 

Whoosh!

 

I want to know what Mod changed my post I think I can guess since a mod made a post after mine but want to be sure.

Also what i said was not that bad so you want to moderate me when it's not needed -- after all the BS that happened in the summer THIS is what you chose to moderate -- ROFL

 

But why is Grant a first option? Is Grant coaching the team?

Grant should be taking 3-pointers, and driving to the hoop when there's an opening.

Grant should not be dribble-dribble setting himself up for a long 2-pointer.

 

No shooting? Grant shot 40% on threes last season. Brogdon shot 44% on threes last season and is shooting 45.5 as a Blazer.
Walker and Camara are shooting 50% on threes.
If Grant can't hit his threes, take him out of the game.