Not to prolong this, but I find it fascinating that I'm seemingly the only one with this opinion. Dame had instant chemistry with Nurk. He had terrific P&R chemistry with the likes of Hickson and Collins/Rolo/etc. Hell, he even had decent timing down with Joel Freeland. Dame unequivocally is terrible at throwing lobs-- definitely agree with that, but he also had far better spacing and open lanes with nearly every other big he has played with.
Nurkic is an elite screener (so was Rolo) maybe the best in the game (it’s either him or Adams imo) and has plus agility for a player his size. Collins has had his own struggles in the pick and roll, I don’t agree that he’s better than Whiteside, or that he sets better screens. Whiteside had his struggles early but has gotten a lot better over the season and their chemistry is fine now. We’re not losing because the offense isn’t good enough. They’re right outside the top ten in ppg and in the top ten in 3PT %.
that's you wanting to isolate on one single stat that confirms your bias last year, Nurkic was playing with Aminu, Harkless, Zach, Turner, Curry on a team that had a .646 winning percentage while Whiteside has been playing with much lesser players like Tolliver and and Hezonja on a team with a .425 winning percentage. Of course Nurk is going to post better numbers in a stat that is gauging wins
RPM ranks Dennis Schroeder as the best PG in the game this season. Just FYI. I get its premise and it's prolly a better catch all stat than others, but it too has its flaws. Here are the SG rankings:
now there's something I agree with all stats are going to have noise and produce outliers. comparing stats for a player averaging 35 minutes with a player averaging 19 minutes is going to produce skew. Same with comparing stats for a starter and a backup because the competition will be unbalanced. If you're using stats to inform, it's better to look at a wide variety of stats and use them to augment the eye test
Individually, without a doubt. On this team, with the rest of this roster, I think I'd take all of them and our guy Plums ahead of him.
That's a rather flawed list as I would eliminate anyone with under 20mpg as well as Doncic as he is clearly the Mavs point guard, not shooting guard.
I think that Lillard is having such a "great" season because he has to do so much more. He has the ball so much because we have one fewer player who knows what to do with it on offense. Before he could give it to Nurk and have him create. Give it to Whiteside and he's shooting or turning it over. So yes, Lillard is scoring more and getting more assists, but his RPM and WINS are well down.
So long as you remember that correlation is not necessarily causation... What it measures is how well the team does with you as opposed to without you, so (I imagine) starters look better if the bench is crap and so on. I did notice that one year Kris Middleton was the king of DRPM and he hasn't been particularly exceptional since, so clearly there is some noise. But I think it can also show what big name players aren't as good as their numbers suggest.
Do you watch the team when Whiteside is subbed out for rest? They're typically abysmal. Most of the time, I'm hoping that he gets subbed back in ASAP.
"Blazers have arguably the best pick and roll guard in the league and Whiteside can’t play pick and roll and doesn’t move on defense. Terrible fit" I assume they are talking about offense when they mention (Dame) being the best PnR guard in the league because if they are talking about defense, that is just dead wrong. So they talk about Dame on offense and then switch to Whiteside on defense? That makes no sense. What does one have to do with the other. Whiteside was a terror on lobs off the PnR with Dragic in Miami. By contrast, he may have got his first dunk off a PnR from Dame just last game for the first time all season.
In many decades of following the NBA, I have arrived at the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of "addition by subtraction" cases involve coaching failure! Whiteside doesn't do everything well - but he does some things well. (in other words, he is like every other player) Isn't it the responsibility of the coach to come up with a plan to take advantage of his strengths and cover for his weaknesses?
Hassan is having arguably the best year of his career. Keeping him near the rim defensively and cutting out most of his post ups is a large reason for that. A lot of people want to bring up the lack of lobs. I think there are a couple factors are at play here. Like a lot of people have already brought up, Dame is a poor lob passer. But I also think Terry's ball screen philosophy has a huge effect. Our bigs are asked to hold their screens longer than most teams to help our small guards gain the maximum scoring advantage. This limits the pressure the roll man puts on the rim / effects the timing of lob plays as the roll is a bit more delayed.
They're saying Whiteside's not good in the P&R on offense, and that he doesn't move his get on defense. Essentially saying that he doesn't really help the team as much as he should on either end of the court.
