Oden: US Mini Camp Updates

Signing Miller certainly upped his chances of getting those extra shots ... I'm getting pretty excited for training camp to start, this could be a really fun year.

 

I agree, it's going to help our bigs tremendously. I hope that the front office sees that Miller is almost at the end of the rope and they need to go for contention now. To take that step we need to acquire a good scoring vet at the SF position.

 

Whether the offense runs through Oden will depend entirely on how he develops his game. As far as I'm concerned, he has the potential to be a dominant low post player. If he gets there, of course the team should run its offense through him, despite Roy also being dominant. A dominant post player can collapse most of the defense around a relatively small area of the court. A perimeter player virtually never accomplishes that, due to where he initiates his offense. No defense is going to cluster up to three people at the three point line.

If he never pans out into that sort of presence, then the team's offense should continue to revolve around Roy and Oden can be an additional weapon off the attention that Roy does draw.

For now, the offense shouldn't be run through Oden, but he should get a fair number of touches in the post. He does draw double teams and fouls out of the post, not just on offensive rebounds and put-backs.

 

I like what I saw in the video. Oden moved his feet, didn't reach in and get stupid fouls. Did great boxing out and going for rebounds. Not spectacular on O, but not bad either. He's got room for improvment and he may never move up and down the court like LA, but I liked what I seen.

 

pine away if you want, but barring some unforeseen quality vet becoming available, the roster is set

STOMP

 

It's silly to speculate either way, there's just no way of telling based off what we read on the internet. If I had to guess, I don't think they're done but who knows.

 

Watching Greg I am reminded of Patrick Ewing. He was similarly clumsy-looking, but developed an offensive game that didn't require grace, yet was very effective. We already know Greg has a couple of duck-under moves. He's working on his jump hook (KEEP working...) and supposedly, although I didn't see it in this video, he hit a baseline jumper over Lopez. Just keep working on those three elements, getting the shots off quickly, with a minimum of dribbling (he gets stripped easily) and you have a good-enough offensive game. He'll never be Olajuwon, and he'll never be Shaq. But he could be Dwight Howard.

If I could, I'd have Roy, Blake and Prz play 3-on-3 against Miller, Oden and Rudy all summer long. OR: have a system where any non-Oden Blazer is paid $1,000 (or given a day off practice, whichever he values more) for every assist he gets to Oden.

 

You're telling me that if Oden is being guarded by Dirk or Amare we shouldn't go to him in the post? Of course we should. Those are two of the worst defending big men around, and they're so lethal on offense that you have to take every opportunity to go at them and draw a foul.

For now we shouldn't design our offense around him, but we should definitely run sets through him if there's a real mismatch. And when you've got a mobile, 7 foot 280 pound center, there will be a fair number of mismatches throughout a season.

 

Here you go:

 

Of course he should exploit mismatches. I was posting more to the not-so-small set of posters who want Oden to be the primary focus on offense, or who want McMillan fired because he didn't/won't run the offense through Greg. He's just not ready for that, and there is a chance he will never be that guy. In the meantime, he is an elite offensive rebounder who gets easy points on putback dunks. Why mess with it?