Oh, well that I don't agree with. I think if Lillard works on just a couple things and in a couple years he will be better than Roy was.
Because of Nate "Low Stats" McMillan, Roy had lower stats than Lillard but a higher proportion of team totals. The rookie PERs are 18.0 Roy, 16.5 Lillard. http://bkref.com/tiny/othce
In comparisons, if you total an individual's deviances, the positive cancels the negatives and everyone is a zero. So what you do is square every deviance each person has, sum the squares, and compare total deviance. In this way you expand the large deviances and contract the small ones (if it's< 1, its square will be even further from 1 and almost disappear in the total). So yes, there is.
Some of the posts in this thread and the Aldridge thread really have me questioning this place. Just wow. Anyways [video=youtube;rhzUgZGge74]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhzUgZGge74[/video] [video=youtube;e0wmayvP3Cc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0wmayvP3Cc[/video]
At his peak, Brandon was considered the 7th best player in the league, right with/behind Deron Williams (when people debated his 20/10 years with Chris Paul for best PG in the league), and right in front of Paul Pierce when he was an all-nba player. Pretty ridiculous to say Lillard is better than Roy ever was. He's definitely gonna be super good though!
When will you guys understand that: A) Some people will always take the other side of a debate, just because. B) No matter what stance you take, someone will disagree. Is Lillard better than Roy ever was? No. Can Lillard be better than Roy ever was? Yes. But I think these numbers pretty clearly end the debate over who was a better rookie.
Roy made 2nd team all-NBA because Kobe/Wade/LeBron were all first team, and there weren't any other good SG's left. 7th best? You might be confusing his rank with his jersey number! Look over the list of who was playing at the time and there's no way Roy was top-10. Top-15 is iffy. This franchise became better in the long-run when Roy retired (the first time). No one wants to answer my question about which of Roy/Lillard Aldridge and Batum would prefer to play with? Oh, that's right, too ignorant to be worth responding to.
Biggest difference between the two. You could stop Portland, by taking the ball out of Roy's hands and force the other wings to set up the offense. Roy just wasn't as good with playing without the ball. Lillard, on the other hand, seems like he can iso, play off the ball and run great pick and roll games. I love Roy, but Lillard will eventually have a much better career.
This I agree with ... but he's not nearly as efficient as Roy was when B-Roy was in his prime. Brandon played at a near MVP level that one year when he was at his peak.
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think people are forgetting how good Roy was. For example, in his 3rd season, he posted a PER of 24.0. There are only 7 players better than that this season. Roy's 3rd season he posted a WS/48 of 0.223. That puts him 4th in the league this year. If we assume advanced stats are a reasonable proxy for league ranking, Lillard would have to be a top 7-8 player next year to have a better season than Roy ever had.
That's tough to say with Nate's offense, though. Had Batum played 3, 4 years ago like he has this year, getting 5 assists per game, it'd make playing off the ball easier for Roy. When Steve Blake is controlling it when you're off the ball, of course he won't be as good.
Here's the thing; we will never know how good Roy could have been because of his injuries and because of Nate McMillan. He had a terrible offensive coach for his career, and I wonder how good Roy would have been in our current system.
