Indeed; there are only a few things a young player can do to really shine during his rookie contract that will up his value and prestige. ROY is one, an All Stat game appearance is another. 20/10, +10 wins for his team... Lillard is close to all of them.
Actually ROY is pretty prestigious award in the NBA, especially since its pretty much the top honor a rookie can realistically win and every player only has one chance to win it. Also I would guess that the Blazers organization has a lot of vested interest in Lillard winning the award as its a huge marketing tool, and a major bright spot in an otherwise lackluster year. In fact my guess is that at the beginning of the year the two major unoffical goals of the franchise were to get LA to the allstar game and get Lillard the ROY.
Two posts = worked up? I think the national media is annoying with their incredibly biased opinions. There's no legitimate reason for Davis to be ahead of Dame. Not one. If there was a good argument I would have no problem with it at all.
Two posts? You've been playing defensive soccer mom since the beginning of this thread. And this "national media" is one person. One person. Lillard won ROM for February, and he's #1 virtually anywhere else you look.
Laugh out loud huh? "Ludicrous"? Really? He's averaging 12/7 right now. Ya, my opinion of him averaging 15/11.......13/10........14/11.......14/11......13/11 like Okafor did his first 5 seasons......Ya, that's "ludicrous".
Comparing him to Okafor IS ludicrous. It's actually a really bad comparison. Davis is putting up 12/7 in 27min per game at the age of 19. Okafor was 22 his rookie season and averaged 35min per game.
ROY matters. I bolded previous ROY's who have gone on to be NBA All-Stars, and this list covers the last 35 players to win or share the award. It's a pretty good barometer for future NBA success, be it by coincidence, or that those who win it tend to be good freaking players.
That's fair...... but I am one of the few that could give a fuck about PER 36 or 48 or whatever. I go off of what they average, that's it.
Care to point some out? Thorpe represents the national media, and this isn't the first case of national bias. Just the most recent example. Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
per/36 numbers were used by the Bargnani honks to try to say he was a legitimate challenger to Roy for ROY. As in: If Bargnani played as many minutes as Roy, he'd score almost as many points. Fortunately, ROY voting is based on actual performance (what somebody did) not hypothetical potential (what they might have done, if only...). And Brandon Roy won by a huge landslide with Bargnani's only first place vote attributed to a sizable overdose of home cooking courtesy of Raptors TV announcer Chuck "The Dumb Fuck" Swirsky. BNM
Monty Williams needs to stop being such a hard ass and give his #1 pick more minutes. His team sucks and Davis is their only real chance as a future contender.
I didn't say anything about Davis not being better than Wright, I said they'd be similar players, and that Davis isn't a cornerstone player. On a good team, I don't see him being more than the #3 guy. Wright's career PER is 19.4, and I think Davis is better. Not so sure why that's laughable. After looking at those numbers for a long time, it seems to me that they are very similar.
Davis can't stay healthy. He's the skinniest 'banger' in NBA history at this point. He needs to put on weight or his career is going to be filled with nagging injuries.
BTW, to me, per/36 numbers are as useless as PER when evaluating rookie performance. A player that misses 1/4 of his teams' games, and has his ass glued to the bench for >20 MPG when he is healthy enough to play simply isn't contributing as much to his team as the guy who hasn't missed a game, plays an extra 10 MPG and has superior numbers. Again, ROY is based on actual performance, not future potential. BMM
If Davis wants to play more he needs to stop getting injured. Perhaps Monty has nightmares about the oft injured Davis becoming the next Greg Oden - talented big man with tons of potential that had his career completely derailed by injuries. I'm sure Monty has many unpleasant memories of all the injuries Oden suffered while Monty was an assistant here in Portland. Maybe he's just trying to prolong Davis' career. After all, if Davis is the future of the franchise, turning him into the next Greg Oden would be a huge setback for NOH. BNM
25min a night the past two months is still too little. And Kevin Garnett was every bit as skinny as Davis at one point in his early career
Yet, Davis has another nagging injury and has missed 3 more games. Looks like maybe 25MPG might be too MUCH for the fragile Davis. BNM
True. Garnett has managed to stay healthy. I hope Davis has a great career. I like his game. I just find this thread to be a bit too much, because barring a miracle, Lillard is going to be ROY, and that usually means great things for a player's career.
There's obviously no doubt Lillard should win ROY. I only started talking about Davis because I saw he was being criminally underrated in this thread and was compared to Brandon Wright. That's just ridiculous.