Maybe Blake needs to play more

Thanks. The one thing I will say on this is that Blake stays in the game longer than Miller does, in Nate's substitution pattern. I think Blake gets the benefit of playing with, arguably, the best 2nd unit in the league against other teams second units.....At least for some of his minutes.

 

I'm curious, who on the 2nd unit do you think is good besides Rudy?

 

It means Nate plays him against second units as well. Thus overusing him.

 

Thank you. This explains what I tried to explain much better and more clearly.

Maybe I am better at Math than at English. (When I say maybe, I mean, for sure).

 

It's a good mix.

Joel plays very good defense at the rim

Travis shoots a lot

Rudy is very good

LA or Roy is usually on the floor as well

 

Maybe, but it is hard to correlate it with the fact that Miller played more with the 2nd unit for 5 games (when he did not start) and his win% is 61%, it is also hard to correlate it with the fact that Rudy's win% is a miserable 39%, Joel is at 50%, Webster is at 52% and Travis was at 63%.

There is something more to it, I think.

What it is, I honestly just do not know. I would not be surprised if the team has more specific advanced stats that we have no access to - you heard it from the Rockets about Battier last year - they had some propriety stats that showed them that they were better when he was on the court, even if his individual stats were not great.

 

So you think Joel, Travis, Rudy along with LA or Roy is the best 2nd unit in the league.

You're coming a long way MM. I remember when you didn't think Joel was anything special and overrated and I thought you weren't an Outlaw fan. I guess I was wrong about what you thought of those guys.


Will you be for resigning Travis and Joel this summer to keep this stellar second unit team together?

 

So if your 7-year-old played against the other team's second unit he would have the highest win% on his team?

But if he DID have the highest win% this would mean that he should be played LESS?

Good one, man!

 

blake needs to play more betterer.

 

Joel is not a FA this summer, although he can opt out if he chooses. Like Blake, I don't think Joel is a legit starting player in this league.

Travis should be traded if possible, and if not, then let him walk.
Outlaw sucks, but he can score if he is on.

It's like the Blake thing. He works ok, but I think there are better options out there. In Blakes case, that option is Rudy.

 

Two words:

Sample

Size

 

Like any other stat at this point in the year.

Still interesting to see.

 

One issue I just noticed while looking at 82 games, and it doesn't affect the win% at all, btu affects looking at many other advanced stats for Blake is, they show absolutely no time spent at the SG position this season. They show all of his time at PG.

 

I am guessing they go by who he guards. He usually is the one running around/in front/behind the opposition's PG.

 

I'm not trying to say at all it invalidates anything in this thread. Just annoying more than anything. He covered Joe Johnson a deecent amount. He was covering Ben Gordon.
I don't know, other than watching every single game, a better way for them to determine it, but it's a annoying when trying to see a difference between what Blake has done at SG versus at PG, and it lists him at PG the entire time. Does that then give Joe Johnson, Gordon, etc. time at the point when they cover Blake? Oh well.

 

I don't know the reason. It's definitely weird to see a guy with such a crummy PER have such a huge win%. Even with such a small sample size.

Maybe a few guesses:

We are at our most competent when we have don't have either Webster or Outlaw on the court at SF. When Blake plays, Roy is at SF.

We are at our best when Oden is fresh and out of foul trouble. He's most active and aggressive then. That happens at the beginning of the first and third quarters more than at any other time. Blake is always playing then.

The 3 guard lineup actually works, at least defensively. Yeah, it's wearing down Roy, but our ability to quickly switch on every screen when Blake is out there improves our perimeter defense. When Rudy comes in, we go away from that and play more zone. When Webster/Outlaw went in, we didn't switch as much.

A lot of our blowout wins seem to start at the beginning of the third quarter. The other team puts a valiant effort to stay in the game early on, but that's the point when we often run off a 10-2 run as the other team starts to crack under pressure.

Blake plays extremely conservative basketball. When he's in the rotation, turnovers are at a minimum. We may not score that well with him missing threes, but our offensive rebounders can clean up his mistakes, and his lack of turnovers reduces the opponent's transition baskets and allows us to set up our highly effective half court defense.

Or, as Masbee says, it's just a small sample size.

 

What the fuck does that stat even mean, becauase there is no way that the Blazers won 90% of the games Blake played in.

 

Not the game, just the time he is on the floor.

 

It's an interesting phenomena and it completely flies in the face of reason and what my eyes are telling me when he's on the court (although I will say that he's playing pretty solid team defense by funneling his man into the interior of the defense ... though his man-to-man D is atrocious). I don't really know what else to say except that a lot of his other statistics and advanced statistics are abysmal right not and when I watch him on the floor in fourth quarters handling the ball getting trapped and having to heave up prayers at the end of the shot clock or turning it over I can tell you without statistics that he's certainly not helping this team close out games.

This will bear watching for the rest of the season but my strong suspicion is that at this time his suspiciously high win % is an anomaly or an outlier. At the end of the day all performances on the court are boiled down to one thing: Does your play help the ball go through the net or does it help prevent the other team from putting it through the net. On the first count I don't think there's any real good evidence that he's being particularly helpful on offense (increased turnover rate, lower assist rate, significantly lower shooting percentages), but on the other end maybe his contributions to team defense are just that good? Tough to say.