Notice Blazers draft Greg Brown!

well, that's really surprising because I always make nearly perfect inferences. Might want to check you inferometer

 

fire.

 

Speaking for myself only, I would LOVE to have Greg on my rat ball team!

 

Nice video on what happened to Greg Brown to drop to a second round pick:

Really excited to see how Billups works him in on the second unit during the season for defense. He's got some pretty good defensive instincts. He reminds me of a young Batum who started for us his rookie season.

 

He was the first player to come to mind.

 

Yeh, that was a good review. I always like when they show the good and bad plays. Guy did say that his defense improved as the season went on. If I was him I would focus on D and shooting threes, looking to cut for dunks or lobs. Also work on getting stronger and being a better rebounder. I wouldn't want him driving much unless he saw a wide open lane. It did look like he left the bench and went to the locker room once when he got pulled from a game.

 

Tolliver took minutes from Little. So did Hezonja.

 

so did Ariza, and so did Zach, and so did Melo

 

Huh? There's an argument to be had that those guys should play in front of Little. What argument Stotts would have for playing Tolliver or Hezonja in front of Little?

God only knows. And, I don't even believe in him.

 

I like the Isaac comp.

 

I mean, that season, Tolliver & Hezonja had better TS%, reb rates, assist rates, & BPM than Little...the truth is all three were quite bad. And of course, Trent & Simons were only in their 2nd years and got plenty of consistent minutes.

I think there are plenty of reasons to criticize Stotts, but Little's playing time as a rookie seem a long ways down the list

by the way, Little started 5 games as a rookie, and these were the minutes he played over a 16 game stretch in Nov. & Dec:

18:44
6:36
5:50
22:44
31:50
29:12
22:32
16:37
12:48
17:08
10:13
10:55
16:07
12:05
10:55
12:14
11:26

then he got injured and missed several games, came back, and averaged around 10 minutes over a dozen game stretch. Then played these games before another injury:

20:26
14:30
11:56
18:28
11:14
12:56
19:24

and came back from that injury to log these minutes:

17:33
7:22
11:27
11:39
10:11
8:07
3:21

before yet another injury ended his season a few games before the bubble. I'm just not seeing him buried on the bench like you imply, and I'm also remembering that he was very undependable in terms of staying healthy

 

I have a strong positive feeling about GB3. Him and Nas could end up making a pretty nice Front-court for years to come.

Elleby sucks though.

 

It's not that complicated. Compare his minutes to Tolliver and Hezonja. DNPs. Usage. Etc. It's not enough to give a player minutes as it is to actually develop them. Little was told to stay in the corner ala every other small forward we had.

 

Madness. Madness I say!

 

It's a pretty good design but it could be great. My attempt.

 

If I were advising him, I'd tell him he needs a complete reworking of of the mechanics of his jumper and to start that process today. Doing so would take at least a season but adding a reasonable outside threat to his arsenal would increase his earning potential over the next 10+ years exponentially. Does he want to sit or play?

STOMP

 

Yeah, that hitch needs to go away. A lot of players are still successful with it but he is young still so I would hope they can get rid of it.
With a dependable 3pt shot, Brown can become, at the very least, a really good 3 &D player. Which is how he will see action the soonest.
The other offensive skills might take a little longer to develop. Either way without injures to the team, his minutes will be limited this year.

He also needs to gain about 10 lbs of muscle to play SF and 20 lbs to play PF, which should not be too hard to do overtime.

 

I think Brown's future is at the 4. We don't really have a 4 on the team so the spot is wide open. I think he has the length and athleticism to play there. We'll see how it goes.

 

I don't really disagree completely with your argument about Little. He probably should have got a little more burn considering how poorly Tolliver and Hezonja played. I do think him getting injured 4 different times that kept him out of the lineup for 1/3 of the season had quite a lot to do with his inconsistent minutes. If he hadn't been in street clothes in the bubble when Ariza sat out he could have, and probably would have, played quite a bit

but you seem to be arguing that Little's rookie season shows that Stotts wouldn't play rookies when they were the better alternatives than what else was available. I think you'd have a weak argument for other rookies in the Stolshey era that prove Little was 'victim' of a rule rather than an exception. For example, in the rookie seasons of Trent and Simons, not only did Dame and CJ stand in the way of minutes, so did Hood, Curry, Turner, Harkless, and Layman. And yes, you have to account for SF minutes because if you couldn't slide Trent into some of those, than both Trent and Simons were competing for the same limited minutes at SG

Stotts had plenty of flaws as a coach and probably should have been fired after the Pels series...if the Blazers had a GM worth anything. But in the list of sins for a head coach, a preference for veteran consistency over rookie inconsistency is a sin just about every coach has. If Mike Dunleavy hadn't been such a sinner, Portland could have spent a decade with Jermaine O'Neal as the starting center. Another example is Rick Adelman; about the only rookie he trusted was Cliff Robinson. Drazen Petrovic, Robert Pack, and Tracy Murray all got the same treatment as rookies Stotts gave Little

 

Roco is a 4