Alright Blazer maniacs, you claim you're smarter that the average bear. Well with our powers combined we are RipCityTwo! The only rule is that you must have watched at least 3 quarters to give your analysis. And it's free rep points! What I'm looking to see is some specific player analysis (Damian Lillard started flat because...) or some play calling decisions ( I am worried about the way we let Thomas get so many back cuts). And I bet there are a few other categories I'm forgetting.
I posted this in the game thread but I will add it here: Ok, so a couple things I see from last night that I wanted to put out there: 1. I know it sounds like a high school coach and will probably never happen but I really wish we would box out instead just relying on athletic ability to get rebounds. I hate it when the other team gets those rebounds that we could have easily had. and more importantly 2. We won the game we should have and thats what contenders do BUT another thing that contenders do that I hope we dont keep struggling with is avoiding starting games slow (mainly on defense). It drives me nuts. Im hoping it was a first game of the season kinda thing. Also contenders finish quarters well, meaning the last 2:00 of each quarter. I see these things as the next step to move to elite status.
I was pretty happy for the first game. Nic and Wes look really good. LMA looked like a superstar. Dame struggled with foul trouble, but he started to regain his form in the 4th quarter. Rolo had another double double. Not much to complain about honestly. The bench didn't look too bad. Kaman is solid. Blake did everything I could ask except score the ball, but I really only want maybe 5-6 points from him. I would rather see him creating looks for other guys. CJ or Barton need to step up. Beyond that, I was pretty happy.
Thanks Boise! I literally started doing these threads because the game threads can work into tangents and I don't want to wade through them.
I love the idea! Keep it up. This was a total trap game; it's not like Kevin Durant plays defense for all five guys, or gets every rebound. This is a team with dangerous parts that is missing its hub. So it can't tranform into Voltron, but it's still four robot lions. So in that respect I think they caught us a big off guard (which shouldn't happen, but I remember the Rose Garden premiere against the Grizzlies back in the 90's...) We took care of business but did look flat out there. That can't happen again if we expect to go 82-0! I really liked the intangibles that our bench brought last night. I think (though I lack the stats this early in the morning) they were a net positive in the first half. We were down five when Rolo had to sit and last year that would have been it. This is where targeted pickups help: Kaman came in, man... Anyway! Having a player like Chris was a boon. He plays Rolo style ball when in with LA and LA style ball when in with Rolo. This one acquisition made our bench pass the eye exam last night; OKC had to play their end of bench guys and we outclassed them. Again, OKC is built to be a finals team. This isn't Durant and scrubs. They all scrapped hard, and are better than the average bench. That we held our own and kept it close was HUGE. When the starters wake up and play into form, this team will punch some teams in the face because the bench can keep up the good work finally.
I think the King's game may give us a better representation of what we can expect from the bench. Throw out first game rust and jitters and add in more of a true bench vs bench and I am curious to see how they respond.
Bottom line: we played sorta lousy for the most part for the first 3 qtrs and LMA kept us close, then a combo of Westbrook tiring (plus putting Nic on him) and our team doing what it should against a depleted Okie team kicked into gear in the 4th - that simple
It seemed to me the Blazers outplayed/outscored the Zombie Sonics when our bench players were on the court, in both halves.
I posted this in BFWA's Forensic post: Love that we won this game. But I don't love how we played the game. The offense mostly looked like dog shit, and we won not because we changed how we played but because OKC wasn't able to sustain their defense throughout the game - we simply outlasted them, which was to be expected. There were only 3 good offensive plays last night. Starting with the best and working our way down: (1) Wes passing to Kaman in the post curling around a screen at the top of the key and diving down the lane to receive a beaut of a pass for a lay-up. (2) Side pick/pop between Nic and Rolo to kick off the game. (3) LMA's first post move of the game ending our first mini-drought. That's not to say the rest of the game sucked, just that our offense is not built on sound fundamentals. I really liked LMA's first 3. Was disappointed we didn't go back to it a few more times. Even though he made a fair amount of those contested long jumpers, I never like seeing that as the staple of an offense. Kaman is our most skilled big man. I haven't watched him play since his days with the Clippers, but aside from the shaved head and being a tiny bit slower he looked the same as he did back then. I like that we give him the ball and trust him to create his own scoring opportunities. It's something he's quite good at. Pulling Kaman and inserting LMA was a bad move. I understand wanting to get LMA back in the game, but at the time Kaman was a big reason we grabbed a lead. Given how Kaman was playing Lopez should have checked out when LMA came into the game. Wasn't too worried about Lillard guarding Westbrook. I think it's smart to throw different defensive looks at the opponent's best scorer, and it seemed obvious that Stotts would shift Nic onto Westbrook at the end of the game. I think Stotts made the switch earlier than he would have liked, but overall I think it was the one thing Stotts did well. CJ. Yup. I like that after two straight TOs Lillard gave him the ball on the next possession. CJ brought it up and QUICKLY passed it back to Lillard. But it was good of Lillard to not freeze CJ out for being an idiot of two successive plays, and actually FORCE him to touch the ball again. This game did nothing to change my opinion of the CJ pick (thought it was crap at the time, still do), but we HAVE to play this guy and get him to start showing some promise so he'll have some amount of value by the trade deadline. All in all, that was pretty much what I expected from this game. Hot garbage resulting in a win. Hopefully we won't always rely on good offensive players to free-lance our way to wins, but I'm not holding my breath while waiting to see a well structured offense.
I had to do a midnight viewing so I was tired but 2 things struck me: 1. I was shocked at our lack of energy out of the gate. I know 'hard to get up for a depleted team', 'trap game', etc, but it was opening night and we were getting out hustled big time in the first half. To take the next step toward being a great team the Blazers have to come out at home breathing fire more often. I think we lost 10 games at home last year, to some weak teams, and one sign of better mental preparation would be to see that number dwindle. 2. Probably having something to do with item one, our D on the P and R in the first half was atrocious. Nobody was stepping up, fighting through picks, and stopping the OKC players from turning the corner. That was disappointing given all the info about defensive work in the pre-season. Fortunately, the Blazers did a much better job in the 2nd half. Loved what Kamen and Blake brought.
Kamen's passing ability is very underrated. We can potentially run part of the offense around him and his ability to hit cutters. I liked the signing at the time, and I like it even more now.
1. I was surprised that our defensive plan against their second unit wasn't to just abandon the paint entirely and allow Telfair to take it to the rim. As was to be expected, he was 0-1 at the rim last night. 2. Kamen's passing makes me think we could effectively run the high-low game for the first time in years.
The problems last night were pretty clear, early fouls destroyed rhythm for 2/5 of our starting lineup. If Lopez doesn't pick up two early fouls I believe we rebound a lot better because of his ability to box out. When it comes to Lillard we as a team just cannot have him guarding the opposing teams best guard, guys like Westbrook, Kyrie and Curry are just too hard for him to cover, Wes and Batum should be taking those kind of players right away until Lillard develops on the defensive end of the ball. I'm loving the bench play, Blake and Kaman are two dudes who just put their hardhat on and go to work, they may not be the most talented but dammit they're the hardest working. CJ had a rough night but he is a volume scorer, he will have nights like last night where he is off but then another night he will score at will... Just gotta take the good with the bad and know when to pull him when he is clearly off. Defensively we made adjustments and that's what you want to see after allowing 34 points on ~60% shooting in the first quarter. Still need to play tighter on players, too many times we see someone having to recover and run to a shooter, that shouldn't happen. The best stat of the night was only 10 turnovers, very low for a team like us. Despite Lillards poor game he only turned the ball over once and dished out 5 assists in a game where he had zero rhythm until the final quarter. Bottomline there is work to do but it's the first game and mistakes are made, at the end of the day we are 1-0. Finals or Bust.
Good point - I was trying to think of who had run it effectively lately, but the only centers I could think of were Pryz, Ratliff, etc.
My 2 cents from the riverbank Opening night at home against a 9 man OKC division rival, remembering taking Phoenix for granted had me with fingers crossed hoping not to repeat that start. The first quarter was dominated by Westbrook doing his best Kobe imitation He made 2 quick buckets in a heartbeat and LaMarcus answered with his first bucket of the season...a 3! Wes got the assist. Even though LA finished the 1st qtr with 15 points, Westbrook led them to a 34-29 lead after 1. 2nd qtr things settled down a bit. Rolo and Kaman tightened up the defense. CJ had a beautiful drive in the paint and Kaman hit a jumper for the lead. Kaman battled to a 20 -20 draw through the 2nd quarter and we were down by 5 pts at halftime. Damian struggled with his shot and was definitely a step slow guarding Westbrook all through the 1st half. Didn't start out firing from the tipoff but turned a very slow offensive effort into a closer game with Kaman, LA and Rolo leading the way. Seemed like every Blazer player underestimated Ibaka's shot blocking ability at the rim and he kept us from finishing most of the drives to the hoop. We were outrebounded by about 6 boards at the break. Coming out of half time, Batum started to take over guarding Westbrook with better results. Dame had picked up two early fouls and had 4 by the second half limiting his aggression on defense. Wes and Nico quietly put up double digits and Nic did a little of everything a Swiss army knife can do. He is so good at feeding the bigs in the post or kicking out to Wes at the 3. Ende the 3rd with a 25-23 advantage. Great to get a win on opening night. Blazers 106 Thunder 89. 14 home open wins ties the NBA record with the Celtics. Love the new court and enjoyed Sly's behind the scenes thread. This is a game to build on and a wake up call for our point guards 4th quarter Damian found his stroke. He ended up with 10 pts, CJ lost his and couldn't throw the ball in a swimming pool all game, losing his handle on back to back possessions and not looking promising. Blake had 5 dimes and 5 board in about 7 minutes of play. 3/4 through the 4th we were cruising, getting pretty much anything we wanted and Westbrook was toast. He was obviously gassed and although he had 38 pts, he was a no show at the endgame. We seemed like we could play another couple of quarters after the buzzer. Again, looks like we're a 2nd half team but Kaman and LA got their points early and often. Our perimeter defense was not very good in the first half and hopefully that'll get addressed before the next game. After all is said and done, without Kaman we lose this game. He gets the gameball
