Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the...

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Not cynical...realistic, tends to be more accurate\reliable than optimisitic.....

Duncan is a big game player, particularly in the playoffs...LA has not shown that...Lillard maybe could develop like a Parker...Batum is still the same inconsistent player that he has been since he entered the league...and remains to be seen if he continues to totally dissapear in the playoffs like he has before....

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

I agree...

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

How many 5x5 games has Leonard had?

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

LMA = Duncan Lite
Lillard = Parker (I think Lillard will be better)
FA = Ginobli

we need to sign/trade for someone who is equivalent to Ginobli if we want to be a contender... and I don't just mean talent-wise, I mean culture-wise too.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Oh please.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

I think the major differences are the two most important ones - LMA/Duncan and Pops. I don't believe that LMA will ever be as good as Duncan is currently. There's a reason Duncan is called The Big Fundamental. And I don't think we'll ever get a coach who is half as good as Pops.
I can see an argument for Lillard becoming as good as Parker is currently. And I actually think that Nic is currently equal to or better than Ginobli is (but don't think he'll become as good as Ginobli WAS).
To me San Antonio illustrates just how far off LMA is from having an impact similar to Duncan's, along with great coaching versus average coaching. Otherwise I think our roster is only moderately worse than theirs. Basically I think that realistic changes that could be made this summer could put next season's roster on about the same level as the Spurs team we're currently watching (aside from the tremendous gap between LMA and Duncan, and the not-as-tremendous gap between Parker and Lillard). Get a moderately skilled C (=Splitter), sign a good role player (=Neal), and make the right draft selection (=Green) and we're the poor-man's Spurs. And that team will never compete for a championship.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Terry Stotts is a far cry from Pop.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Wow.

So if a guy has a career high more than a better player it automatically makes the lesser player better? From one game?

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Show me where that is incorrect

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

In logic, that's called Ad ignorantiam, which basically states that a specific belief is true because we don’t know that it isn’t true.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

I think that's a pretty good assessment. Repped.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Wait, so all we need to do is
* Have Aldridge totally change his game
* have Lillard leap frog 7 other PG's
* Batum needs to play as one of the top 3 Sf's int he world
* Mathews needs to be a player he is not
* We need to find one of the most difficult things in the NBA, a good center
* We need one of the best benches in the NBA


It's almost too easy

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Whereas your plan seems to be to find a totally new team comprised of at least one elite player, two very good All-Stars, and a top defender. Maybe PA should just buy the Heat and move them here.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

It's not my plan, it's reality

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

Maybe, maybe not. I think that the Spurs are off to a pretty good attempt at winning a title without that formula.

I'm not saying that I think the Blazers current Big 3 is likely to achieve a title, but I do think that there's a whole lot of "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" attitude that gets expressed around here. There seems to be a near compulsion to magnify the perceived inadequacies of the players on our roster and overstate the attributes of players on other teams. I think that the idea that you keep tossing in your hand in hopes of drawing a straight flush in a series of drafts is a piss poor strategy for building a title contender. I think that NO needs to look to build on what we've got here and then trade/draft up over the next few seasons until we do have a team that is capable of contending. I also think that the ride for the players and the fans is likely to be a whole lot more enjoyable with that strategy over the next few years than the alternative of remaining a cellar-dweller in search of the next great player.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

I don't understand?

Duncan was first team all NBA and second team all defense
Parker was second team all NBA

How does that not fit the formula?

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

You got me there. I guess I was thinking of last year when Duncan didn't make the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd all NBA team and didn't make the defensive teams either. Which illustrates the point I was trying to make earlier...it's a bit of a chicken and egg argument. The guys who make those teams generally are on the most successful teams and benefit from the media attention they get as a result. To say that the championship contenders have to have those guys on their roster is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

Re: Are the Blazers big three good enough to wheel this team to a championship in the

This seems like a very simple and very complex question at the same time. The only real part of the question we can answer at the moment with the data on hand is that are LA/Lillard/Batum good enough to win a championship with how they played together and how our team looked this year . The answer to that is they are not even in the discussion to take the Blazers out of the first round let alone championship talk.

The question gets more complex when you start looking at data you do not have yet which is anything yet to happen. Drawing a conclusion from what you perceive will happen is in all honesty is more a guess then anything because nothing is set in stone when it comes to people. So here is my guess for the future.
Do I think our "Big Three" will continue to develop and be able to win a Championship in the next few years, the answer to that is yes I think they are capable of doing it if a few things happen.

LA: LA is a premier big in the league and has shown an ability to be unstoppable in the post but seems at times to want to settle for a nice 18 footer pick and pop shot. A shot he is going to make a little under half the time. It isn't going to be a great shot if its taken in large quantities (Last year he shot 7.3 of those a game). That is a shot that doesn't put LA in a position to grab his own miss nor is it a shot that results in FT's. Its a shot to keep the D honest but needs to be used by him as just that instead of a huge % of his shots. LA needs to move more into the post and go for shots with a higher % because if he is going to take the most shots on our team he needs to also be the best at making said shots. Defensively I don't think LA is really going to get a lot better, he isn't a great defender nor is he a bad one. His help D is very suspect and he isn't a rim protector but his freakish length does effect shots making him a good post defender (http://www.blazersedge.com/2013/3/4...arcus-aldridge-among-nbas-best-post-defenders). A good Defensive center that can protect the rim will help make up for LA's inability to stop penetration.

Batum: Batum is truly an enigma here. He showed for several months this year that he had a much bigger skill set then McMillian allowed him to use his first few years in the league. He showed that he can not only set teammates up but create his own shot at times, was very active offensively but even when playing at great had to many turnovers. This can be attributed to the fact he wasn't used to having so much responsibility on the offensive end but regardless of why it happened those turnovers need to come drastically down. Something happened a month before the all-star break and Batum's game shifted. He stopped attacking as much, would ignore open shots to instead pass the ball and became really passive about scoring the ball. Instead most of his shot attempts came from the 3 point line and even then he seemed to pass those shots up more then he should. You can blame his wrist if you want or you can blame pressure, whatever it is you want to blame Batum has to evolve and show us more of the player we saw during the first couple of months instead of the player we saw the last couple of months. Defensively he needs to body up on the defender more instead of his almost lazy style of defense which relies almost entirely on his long arms to effect the shot.

Lillard: This guy has me in a state of constantly hugging the person nearest me whenever someone mentions his name. Lillard has a very good offensive game already and likes to mix it up. He can beat his man off the dribble, pull up from just about anywhere and a deadly 3 point barrage seems to be waiting every game. I love his fearlessness at attacking the rim but he needs to learn how to finish better after contact and needs to work on his pull up mid range game. His court vision and passing ability is better then I assumed it would be but he has trouble figuring out how to get teammates involved on fast breaks instead seeming to either attack or wait and reset. Defensively he was a travisty, as a lot of young PG's are, and he needs to work hard on that. I'd like to see a large improvement on the defensive end in the next few years instead of him looking like Irving(who didn't seem to improve defensively at all from his rookie to sophomore year). Working with Payton this off season should help.

We need all three of these guys to top 10 at their positions in the league and two of them to be in consideration of top 5 as well as one of them to be in the MVP talk. I think thats a real possibility but time will tell.