Honestly I think if Asik was in Portland and Lopez was on the other side of the fence that Asik would be our fan favorite.
Honestly, I think that if LeBron James played SF for the Blazers you'd be thinking up ways to trade him for Rudy Gay.
hahaha.... hahaha.... hahaha... yeah, we have a track record of supporting whining crybabies. Sometimes, man... sometimes..
Serious pet peeve of mine as well. Freeman and Chris Haynes are notorious for this mistake. How the hell do editors not catch them?
Worst article ever. Is this what the online geek boys refer to as fan fiction? In what world do we let three of the starters from a 54-win team walk for nothing and improve to 64 wins? Seriously, he's proposing we let Lopez, Matthews and Batum all walk and replace them with an overpaid head case, a second year back up who just came off a disappointing rookie year and a future late first round pick. When his three step approach to this mythical record setting season starts with: "Ensure C.J. McCollum is ready to start next season." you know it's not going to end well. C.J. isn't a starting NBA SG. He's just too small. He's a tweener, which makes him a potentially good 3rd guard/6th man, but he hasn't even proven he can fill that role, yet. Never mind that Asik is 3 years older than Lopez and only played in 48 games last year. And exactly what "advanced metrics" is he talking about? I think he means the ESPN Trade Checker. Just look at the advanced stats for Lopez and Asik. Lopez: PER = 17.7 ORtg = 128 (led the entire league) DRtg = 109 OWS = 7.0 DWS = 2.6 WS = 9.5 WS/48 = 0.176 Asik: PER = 14.0 ORtg = 109 DRtg = 103 OWS = 1.0 DWS = 1.5 WS = 2.4 WS/48 = 0.121 From 82games.com Lopez Net Production = +2.0 Net On Court/Off Court = +5.4 Simple Rating = +3.2 Asik Net Production = -0.3 Net On Court/Off Court = -2.3 Simple Rating = -1.0 Notice the plus sign in front of Lopez' stats and the minus sing in from of Asik's. Both players played for teams that won 54 games. So, it's not like Asik was in a significantly disadvantaged situation compared to Lopez. I know PER isn't THE be all and end all of individual stats, but Asik has never once is his career posted a PER =>15.0 (considered an average NBA player). How does that make him a "dominate" center. Lopez has started all 164 games the last two seasons and put up PER = 18.9 and 17.7. His career PER is 16.8 compared to Asik's 13.9. Lopez has started 258 games in his career. Asik has started only 103. And, did I mention Lopez is 3 years younger? Asik is a career back-up/borderline starter. The year Asik was a full time starter, his team won 45 games. Again how does that make him a "dominate" center. His career scoring average is 5.6ppg. Again, that does not scream domination to me. Asik's career FT% is .544. That's worse than Dwight Howard's .581 career FT%. If Asik is our starting center, get ready for Hack-an-Asik. Lopez is a career .757 FT shooter and he continues to get better. The last two season his FT% was .778 and .818. Lopez is an asset at the FT line. Asik is a liability. Given the fact that Lopez is better, younger and a great fit with this team, I wouldn't trade him straight up for Asik. I wouldn't even consider it. Replacing Robin Lopez with Omer Asik is NOT the ticket to winning 64 games. But, neither is replacing Wes Matthews with C.J. McCollum and Nic Batum with a late first round draft pick. Sounds more like the recipe to win 34 games to me - and even less when both Aldridge and Lillard get tried of losing and walk/demand trades. BNM
i see "dominate" all the time here, maybe autocorrect? but i saw it so often i thought maybe i was wrong and the word "dominant" didnt actually exist other than inside my dominant brain i feel better now
Could be, they just announced a handful of new contributors. http://www.blazersedge.com/2014/8/25/6068513/meet-your-new-blazersedge-staff
