Hard to pile up stats when you're always shining the pine. I don't think we know how good the bench is until they play a whole lot more. We've not exactly blown out many teams this season.
The bench is vastly improved over last year, so I see this as a big step forward in team development. Also, your stats are misleading as we play our starters a lot.
Comparing results to one of the worst NBA benches in history isn't a good baseline. And again, even on a per 48 basis our bench is at best bottom third.
Yes...last years bar wasn't exactly set very high. I just fear that the physical and mental toll on the starters will really show up as the season goes along. (You could say that has already started to happen) The starters are a great group but their combined total minutes I would surmise DWARFS any other starting unit in the league and there is no way that doesn't affect them as the season goes on.
Actually, I think it is a good baseline. It's what the GM, the coach and the fans had to work with going into the off-season. Why would anyone expect our bench to go from historically bad one year to "pretty good" or even "mediocre" the next. There's only so much progress you can really expect between last May and now. Most teams have the luxury of evolving their bench over several years, bringing along younger guys over 2-3 years, while watching more senior guys get demoted from the starting lineup or traded for other bench guys. Ours was so shitty last year we basically just nuked it from orbit (as we should have) and started scrambling. Not trying to make excuses, but Portland is still feeling the ripple effect of losing two franchise caliber players in Oden and Roy without getting anything in return. That's a ton of talent to just evaporate. We got lucky with Aldridge and Lillard emerging, but it's just plain hard to stockpile a lot of talent when you take that kind of a hit. The cupboard is bare because we weren't deep in the lottery long enough to rebuild, and we weren't able to trade either of those guys for other assets. So we hit the bargain bins, gambling that unheralded guys like Lopez, Mo Williams, Thomas Robinson and Wright can produce for us. Lopez worked out great, but the other bargains have proven to be bargains for pretty good reasons. Robinson may yet be ok some time down the road. Williams is destined for elsewhere after this year, I think. It's a bad bench, but it's an improvement. CJ and T-Rob have hope, Leonard has size (but no brains), and the second round picks are at least young (wish I could say more). I'd gladly trade our bench for about 20 others in the league, but I wouldn't discount at all where we were when evaluating where we are.
