This is going to be a great year. Meyers is going to have a breakout season, i'll finally get to bang Kate Upton and Kim Jong-un is going to win the Nobel peace prize.
Yeah, I have trouble agreeing with the breakout label, but he should be better than last year and hopefully be a playable back-up center option. Basically pretty much what he was the 2 years prior. More than anything though, I just hope the coaching staff can find some positive bench combinations this year and I have a good feeling they will. Along with Meyers, I think Aminu, Turner and Ed Davis are all fairly safe positive regression candidates and Collins and Swanigan will provide different looks up front. And I'm not worried about filling Crabbe's minutes. Aminu will play more 3 and if Layman can shoot 35-36% from 3 he has a chance to be a viable 10th man in the rotation for 12-15 mpg.
The only way I'd see Nards having a breakout year is because this is the first season in 2 or 3 years he's been healthy in the off-season. We'll see I guess. Rumor was he had nerve damage which limited him late last season/post season. But that rumor fell through? who knows. To me this is Nard's last chance to prove he can contribute for the Blazers.
Isnt that damn near a physical/chemical impossibility? I mean in smoking pot, shouldn't it alter you to forget about the first time smoking pot? Unless it was also your last time?
I very clearly remember my first pot smoking incident. Prior to that day, I never knew that you could burn ramen if you let it boil dry, but that pot was burned beyond recovery.
The challenge with Meyers is figuring out how to use him on defense. He has two issues: poor defensive IQ and not being strong enough mentally. When he has confidence like before the injury he can be great, last year he just didn't find his place from start to finish. But I think if he can regain his confidence and imroves his team defense or plays in the right lineup to optimize his ability, that he could be a very productive player for us
I've often felt like Meyers' biggest problem--on both sides of the court, but particularly on defense--is overthinking. Nothing is instinctive for him. He's too busy trying to remember the proper positioning of himself on the court, or his hands based on the ball's location, trying to make the correct fundamental choice, that he's constantly late in his reaction to what's going on around him. I also wonder if he suffers from tunnel vision on defense; being so focused on either "his man" or on the ball-handler that he fails to see how the entire offensive play is developing, thereby preventing him from being able to properly recognize angles and flow and anticipate where he needs to be. Honestly, I think the pattern-recognition aspect of defense is underrated, and is a lot of what some posters (I'm thinking... @Minstrel in particular?) refer to when discussing defense as more a skill-set rather than simply a result of effort and athleticism.
It's not that hard for a guy his size to play defense. Just stand there and be tall. That's what Thibs and PJax said about getting their bigs to play D.
Although that seems like a highly-simplistic view for either of them, that might be a viable thought process if our perimeter defense could effectively keep opponents out of the lane and funnel them down toward the baseline like Thibs' schemes dictate. In the Blazers' defensive scheme, however, the center needs to bring a lot more than just height/length.
If they're not at least standing there and being tall, they're not playing much D at all. Likely harming the defense, no matter what the perimeter guys do.
Yeah, obviously. But there's a HUGE difference between saying "The big guys need to at least stand there and be tall in order to play good defense," and, "To play defense, a guy his size just needs to stand there and be tall." Playing big is just a single necessary condition, not a standard for competence.
I don't think we need another thread for this, but I am curious as to which statistics you have seen that show he is a very effective shooter around the paint?
http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203086/shooting/?Season=2016-17&SeasonType=Regular Season Last year was his worst by far, but he was still 54% inside 8ft. A couple years ago (when he was healthy and effective), he was 65% in that range. If he could return to his 2015 form, he'd be a very useful player.
I am not really worry about him on the offense end due to that he going to have some good games on that end. My biggest worry about him is the defense end due to that it not natural for him. He can guard the slower type of center head up but his problems is the rotation from his guy to another guy that may be driving to the hoop. But as long he has these mental lapses you really can't expect to much of him at the defense end. The other thing that on his mind and this is mental thing is getting hurt due to him being hurt the last two season.
Standing there and being tall is exactly the defense taught by PJax (Luc Longley) and Thibs (Asik) to guys who weren't competent at defense. That's just my observation. If you have the big guy chasing 3pt shooters around the perimeter on switches, it's doom if the guy isn't able to do that effectively.
That's surprising for me. So, is the 54% a combination of the restricted area and the paint, because he is only 38% in the paint area outside the restricted area? And how does the 62.5% in the restricted area compare with other centers?
The overall paint % is actually slightly below 50 for 2017, so I imagine that also includes some shots near the elbow that are technically in the paint but outside 8 ft. As for comparing to other centers, I don't know, but I'd wager that comparable information can be located for other centers at that link, so I'll generously leave that research for you.
