At some point, a PG who can at least stay in front of the ball defensively will be a must. Either that, or a PG who can blow by other PGs. I don't blame 'Dre, since that isn't his role, and Blake couldn't defend the chair I'm sitting in right now. I wonder if Mills could at least be a pest as a change of pace. Bayless and his stubby arms seem to be at best average on defense.
Rudy was a zilch tonight. Very depressing considering Martell was basically benched and Blake was shipped away to make room in the backcourt.
What difference would it have made anyway? "Wild 3 pointer" is what we run after 80% of our time outs.
Yep we drop to 1-5 in Overtimes. I can live this loss. You can't blame this loss or missed opportunities when you let the other team shoot over 50 percent in FG shooting in the first half.
I was just looking over the boxscore at ESPN, and I noted something /odd interesting. Roy 45 minutes +16 Camby 42 minutes +8 Miller 42 minutes +7 LMA 44 minutes -11 Now, unless this was an 8 quarter game, those 4 guys had to be on the floor together most of the time...so how could their +/- numbers be so wildly different???? It makes no sense. This is an example of why some of us don't put a lot of faith in this stat!
In small samples, there's way too much noise to put much value in it. Most stat geeks concede you need a full season+ of data to make any conclusions about a player's contributions on the floor.
It's pretty simple once you dig into the numbers a bit... LA stayed in with the bench unit (that sucked) the entire time in the 1st rotation. Brandon and Miller played a little. Brandon left @ 2:10 to go in the 1st, Blazers were down by 3. LA comes out at 10:15 to go in the 2nd and the Blazers were already down by 11...so this is an additional (-8) LA accumulated with the bench unit. This gave him a total of (-11) in his 1st rotation. Similar thing happened in the 3rd. Brandon went out at 2:57 to go in the 3rd. Blazers were up by 7. LA stayed in with bench unit...by the end of the quarter the Blazers were down by 1. So, LA accumulated another (-8) while Brandon was not on the floor. So, the numbers are right...the Blazers just tanked REALLY FAST while LA was on the floor with bench guys. That unit was -16 in only the 7 minutes I listed. That's where I see +/- having a little indirect value in a single game. It gives you a reason to dig into an obvious anomaly. In this case it jives with what you'd expect. LA is far more effective offensively when he isn't the primary option... when other teams don't have a Brandon/Miller to worry about they are very effective at shutting down LA when he is the defensive focus. It begs the question, do we have someone else that is better at creating their own offensive looks even when they are the primary focus? I guess I'd like to maybe try leaving Miller in with the bench guys to see if that sucks a little less than when LA stays in...
