With Aminu this year, we are 5-3. We had won 3 straight before he went down. We were 3-1 on the road. He had 3 games of double figure rebounds, 3 games of 2 or more steals, and one game of 3 blocks. He was a +12. In our first loss to Clippers, he was a +2. All of this and he was shooting poorly. Get him back, get him shooting better, and we'll be back on track. More: in our last 2 games with Aminu, we held our opponents to 95 and 94 points respectively.
Jazz, Nuggets, Mavs, Grizz, Suns are who we beat. 3 of those teams are below .500, including the second to last and last place teams in the west. One is 1 game over .500. Memphis was a good win.
Sure his defense would help, but this is a team-wide collapse on that end of the court. If the Blazers entire hopes for success rest on a single player, then that is not a plan worth having.
Aminu scores well on Defensive Real Plus/Minus - 27th in the league, far ahead of any other Blazer. (Notice, however, that his offense has been so bad his overall RPM is negative.)
Chief and Mo have defensive chemistry...Chief keeps Mo in the right place on defense..it's glaringly apparent we're sucking on that end of the court without him..hope he comes back stronger and doesn't rush it...on the plus sign we got to see Layman play more
Definitely, the blowouts and Aminu's absence gave us a good look at Layman. It's good to have that info going into trade talks.
Sadly, the Blazers haven't been tough to beat this year. Getting blown out in over half their losses. I can take losing but it's the not even being competitive part that is tough to accept. It is HOW they are losing that is very disappointing.
Are you happier if we have 10 close losses where we fumble the ball and collapse in the final minute? Would that really make you happier? A loss is a loss. They're all bad.
I was "happier" with the losses early last year (aside from that abysmal road trip that was punctuated by the Philly blowout) because the team was sure as hell trying. I do not remember seeing so many wide open layups/threes/jump shots as I have this year. Last year, we could see that even if we did "fumble it in the last minute" that it wasn't for a lack of effort... This year, it's clearly part of the equation - lack of effort.
Dude it's not black and white. That's good performances in a loss and bad performances in a win. There's shall bad patterns that have developed win or loss.
I would much rather have a close loss than so many blowouts. At least you are competitive and not too far away from a win. Getting beat by 10-20 points means so often means you're not even in the ballpark for now. Close losses may hurt more emotionally but that means you were in the game.