A bit of honest truth about our Blazers. Fun but irrelevant. https://sports.vice.com/en_us/artic...anti-relevance-of-the-portland-trail-blazers/ "Maybe Noah Vonleh, Meyers Leonard, and Allen Crabbe will turn out to be good players who help Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum return Portland to the playoffs, or maybe not. For now, it doesn't much matter to anyone, and that's exactly how the Blazers play basketball. There is an offensive scheme here—McCollum and Lillard do a lot of dribbling—and, less noticeably, a defensive one too. But tactics only matter on teams with playoff aspirations. On the Blazers, the system is a placeholder. The called sets happen in the space between the good stuff, and the good stuff is psychotic."
Interesting, but the Blazers are currently headed for a top 5 pick. Maybe that isn't intentionally tanking as hard as the 76ers, but any time you are getting a top 5 pick you aren't in mediocre land.
I'm beginning to think Stotts is letting them win 3 qtrs and resting everybody in the 4th which in itself is a classy way of tanking..sucks for the fans though..interesting read
I think we have little drop off with our starters to bench players but a below average "crunch time 5 man unit" compared to other teams. We are able to build leads when subs are in during the middle of the halves or keep a game close at some point in the 4th. But when both teams are trying their hardest at the end we are inferior. The last few years with our strong starting five it was basically the opposite.
I loved the article. I think the writer came as close to nailing it, as far as the team and this season goes, as anyone possibly could. Thanks for posting it.
Tanking is cheating, and a criminal act of fraud against paying fans and gamblers. There's no classy way to do it, and I don't think Paul Allen would allow it.
I'm no fan of it but in the real world, they do it..they admitted to it the first year Stotts coached here. My post was written as sarcasm
Well it sure is an effective form of cheating. It saved the Pittsburgh Penguins franchise.... twice! Listen, I would like a system where there was more talent, no fully guaranteed contracts and trades were more common but that's not going to happen. And since we can't attract big name free agents, this is as good as it gets. So don't hate the player, hate the game!
If only he was! I would LOVE to see the deep bench players playing the fourth. Instead, Lillard and McCollum are being run into the ground.
"I cannot overemphasize how little a Meyers Leonard jump shot means, both to the future of the team or in the present NBA landscape"
Have they dropped the price for season tickets? That should be a given but it wouldn't be surprising if they stayed the same.
Sorry, but The author lost me with this... "The Blazers don't always shoot good shots because you need good players to shoot good shots, and instead of those unqualifiedly good players, the Blazers have Meyers Leonard and Mason Plumlee" Im sorry, but Meyers is a very efficient shooter and rarely takes bad shots. But.. PLumlee is even better at only taking high percentage shots. He knows his game and knows where it isnt. This author is off his rocker if he thinks these guys dont take good shots. This article stinks....
Nah, he's right. They are marginal players taking good shots, but not good players taking good shots. #semantics
"Portland will shoot any three they want, which may not seem an unusual approach in the Age of Curry, but these are different. Steph shoots a three because it will probably go in, and he wants to win. These Blazers shoot threes because it's super-fun to shoot threes. It's the difference between eating a smart breakfast to start your day off right and waking up and chasing a stack of pancakes with some sausage links." This paragraph shows this joker is more impressed with his own glib-ness than he is in researching his topic. Yes, CJ gets out-shot from 3 by Thompson (.365 vs. .385 ) and Curry is out-shooting Lillard .441 to .375. That said, if he'd bothered to check the stats for the first 5 games of the season, before he got his thumbnail ripped off, Dame was shooting nearly 49% from 3 pt. range. I'd say the difference in efficiency is pretty minimal.
Yeah, there's stuff in the article that makes me think the guy gets it, and then there's stuff above that makes me think either he doesn't or he's trying to overthink or he's being too cute. If you follow Stotts' history, you'd know the Blazers are going to shoot 3s. Stotts thinks that's a big part of a successful offense. The other part is that these guys aren't just chucking up any shot. We don't so Plumlee and Ed Davis firing up 3s, or Kaman. We see guys taking legitimate shots in a legitimate offensive framework. Leonard and Vonleh shoot 3s because they have the ability to make that shot ... it's part of their repertoire. The people that have described this best is as an extended preseason or a tryout. It's a bunch of young players looking to get better and an organization looking to see who might fit into a playoff team. That means trying to do things the right way consistently on both sides of the floor, working, sometimes messing up, but hopefully learning and getting better. It's not a playground game with no system where the team is trying to find who is worth developing. Olshey's already identified those guys. Now we're seeing who actually develops.
