Blazers @ Grizzlies 3/1/10 GAME THREAD

When Oden went down, Nik said we'd win only win 30-35 games.

 

I think it's odd you picked a post of mine that was neither negative towards the team nor Nate. I simply pointed out that offensive efficiency is an overrated stat.

Had you read the thread, you would have seen that I actually said I thought Nate did a decent job with his 2nd half rotations. Despite his man love for Howard.

While I am more negative than some, I can't stand fans who think nothing is wrong with the team, and every player is better than every other player in the league. Be real for fuck's sake.

Nate's rotations are questionable at best.
ISO's aren't a very good way to run an offense.
Oden over Durant looks worse by the game.
The handling of the Miles situation was a joke.

Getting Roy and Aldridge out of a weak draft was brilliant.
Getting Batum, Rudy, Bayless and Sergio was great.
Signing Howard was a great move.
Trading for Camby was a great move.



Some good, some bad.

As for Nate, I think he is a shitty in game coach. He has poor substitution patterns, and his play calling "is the easiest to defend in the league." That according to a scout friend of mine. What Nate does well is motivate his guys. He is very good at taking an undermanned group and getting the most out of them.


I have been a season ticket holder since 1987, and my family has had season tickets since day 1. I now live in Houston, but still hold my season tickets for friends and when I can make it up there. So maybe you can shove your opinion of my allegiance to the team up your ass, and focus your posts somewhere else. If you don't like my posts then block them by putting me on ignore. You won't be the first, and you certainly won't be the last. Maybe the most insignificant though.

 

No, that was after Joel went down.

 

Ouch! MM layin it down.

<smack>

 

Offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency are anything but overrated stats. There is a good reason the better teams in the league excel in both. What they are, however, is a clean way to look at where a team really is and understand what it is trying to do - and those that have no concept of how important they are - as usual, attack them.

 

I don't need to ignore your posts. You're basically a macro-poster at this point. I know what the post is going to say before I read it. Nate sucks. That's about the depth of it. You have to resort to ignoring and criticizing efficiency numbers because they fly directly in the face of your opinion of Nate. I really don't care if you're a season ticket holder; that doesn't make your opinion any less unrealistic.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change or challenge the facts. Nutshell.

 

So let's say this. I am honestly asking because you are Mr stats man.


If team A has a lot of motion and gets wide open layups, only to brick them, and team B shoots a lot of off ballanced shots that all clank off the rim, but that team gets the rebound and puts it back in, who has the more efficient offense? On paper the piss poor offensive team does, but in reality, the team that gets layups has the more efficient offense. Isn't that right?


I think the most important stat out there is point differential.

 

Exactly. Refusing to accept valid statistics in order to continue an opinion-based argument speaks more to the poster ignoring them than it does to the statistics.

 

The Blazers, under Nate, were 5th in the NBA last year in point differential. While that number has dropped this year for obvious reasons, it is still +2.7.

 

So Nate is a better coach than Phil Jackson, SVG, Jerry Sloan and Pop? And he's worse than Mike Brown, Sam Mitchel, Mike Woodson and Alvin Gentry?


I just don't think it's wise to judge a coach on his teams offensive efficiency.


As for Mr Sonic, he was about to be fired in Seattle before his team went off for 1 year, then he resigned. He is certainly not the worst coach in the league, but he simply isn't a very good in game coach.

 

Well, what is a good "in game coach"? Last year's team came back from double-digits to win games 18 or so times. Was that the product of the team listening to Nate to begin games, sucking, and then ignoring him to play better as the game progressed? Or, was it Nate and his staff making adjustments as the game progressed?

I actually do think Nate is a better "in game" coach than Stan Van Gundy. Hell, former players have basically said that Van Gundy is a choker. As I posted, I get it. You can't stand Nate, but bashing statistics that favor him paints you into a corner that you may not deserve to be in.

 

If the goal is to score points - the one that manages the score the ball more thanks to the offensive rebounds will be more efficient.

Efficiency is not hard to describe - how many points do you get per possession. What you are trying to argue is that the style is more important, which is not true.

No, if you have open layups and consistently brick them - that's not an efficient use of your players. When you have a large sample size (which we do, at this point in the year) - if your players can make layups and you get them these layups consistently - it will be reflected in the offensive efficiency. If they consistently can not make a layup - then getting them these open layups is not efficient.

A team that gets tons of open 3s for 5 Andre Millers is not going to be efficient, a team that gets tons of open 3s for Reggie Miller is.

That's the same thing as saying that offensive and defensive efficiency are the important things - which is exactly what I have been arguing. I will point however, that I think you lose some resolution with this. I will show you why:

This team, before Greg went down - was a contender in my opinion, because they had the
"around 10th overall" combined offensive-defensive efficiency (which is a crude way to combine them).

For example, let's look at the last 5 championship teams:

Lakers O: 3rd, D: 6th - Combined - 9
Boston O: 10th, D:1st - Combined - 11
Spurs: O: 5th, D:2nd - Combined - 7
Heat: O:7th, D:9th - Combined - 16
Spurs: O:8th, D:1st - Combined - 9

Before Greg went down - the Blazers were 10th in offensive efficiency and 2nd in defensive - combined 12 - and it was clear that the team was adjusting offensively - Miller was not yet ready to buy into the philosophy of protecting the ball as much as Nate emphasizes, Roy was having problems adjusting to play off the ball, LMA had his usual slow start of the year. My gut feeling is - that if this team stayed healthy - you would see the offensive efficiency go up with the defensive efficiency staying low.

But, since we lost Greg and Joel - we are down to 15th in the league in defensive efficiency (we were down to 17th, but Camby's arrival is starting to pay a bit) - so 6 + 15 = Combined 22 - not a contender.

Let's take a look at the contenders this year:

LAL = O: 11, D - 1 - Combined = 12
Cavs: O: 2, D - 6 - Combined = 8
ORL: O: 7, D - 4 - combined = 11
DAL - O:10, D - 12 - Combined = 22 - but, of course, I do not think we have seen them enough after the trade - they were not contenders before, but the trade seems to have done great for them on both sides of the floor
Boston : O- 14, D - 2, Combined - 16 - good team, but clearly not a contender unless they catch fire.
SAS - O - 9, D - 11 - Combined - 20, not a contender.
DEN - O - 3, D = 17. Combined - 20, not a contender - they are a good team and clearly can catch fire - but I think their defense shows you that they will not go all the way in the playoffs.
Utah - O: 8, D - 10, Combined - 18, good team, but not a real contender based on what we have seen so far, and the trades have not really changed the outlook.

so,

Of course, we do not have the entire year - and some of the trades are more significant than others - but overall, it seems that the real contenders this year are the Lakers from the west, Cavs and ORL in the east, with Dallas gaining ground after the trade.

It will be nice to see what the data tells us after the extra 20-25 games after the trades - but overall, these are your real contenders there.

Have to remember that a team can catch fire at the right time (as happened to Miami in the year they won it all) - but overall, Offensive and Defensive efficiency are the best way to really get a handle on what teams do, and if you want, you can compress this to "point differential" - but I think you lose some resolution there - the Suns always had great point differential, but because they had mid-pack defense, the resolution was lost and they were not real contenders (no wonders they have not made the finals) . The two years they made the conference finals, their point differential was among the best in the league, but if you used their "Combined" offensive/defensive rating - you would see them in the 18-19 range, which is just not where most championship teams seem to live.

 

It was good to see this morning that they are encouraging Batum to try and score more, and that he feels he can average about 15 a game. This team is screaming for some consistent play from somebody outside of Roy and Miller.

 

LaMarcus has been consistent. He's basically been a 20/10 player over the last 24 games. Last night was out of the norm for what he's been providing over the past two months.

 

Very good to hear. Hopefully the team will run some plays for him to help him achieve this.

 

He has basically been playing at an allstar level the past several weeks with only a couple of duds mixed in. He seems to have been going inside more, and when he does that he plays very well.

 

Yep. When he plays inside everything goes well, and that definitly is not coincidental.

 

His rebounding has decreased since Camby entered the line-up. I guess that's going to be his game, and I'll have to learn to accept it. If he becomes a 20/8 PF with an elite rebounder in Oden, I can handle that.

 

Agreed. If you have an elite 12+ rebounder at center, 8 rebounds to go with it makes a dominating front line rebound wise. Hell most games a team gets a bit over 40 rebounds at best. That already makes up half of that.