Trail Blazers Shun the Pass, and It Costs Them in the Playoffs

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/sports/trail-blazers-raptors.html

I endorse the "copy the Raptors" idea

 

Me too. And they did it without breaking up their team. But let's be real too. The Blazers would be up 2-0 on the Wizards too.

 

This article is damning for Stotts.

 

The weird thing is it wasn't always like this.

2013-2014 season: 9th in assists with 23.2
2014-2015 season: 12th in assists with 21.9
2015-2016 season: 21st in assists with 21.3
2016-2017 season: 23rd in assists with 21.1
2017-2018 season: 30th in assists with 19.5

I see a trend somewhere in there.

 

I think Portland could get as high as 35 th in assists next year.
All I need to do is believe that Stott's is a good coach.
Did I do that right?

 

Agreed. I'd like to see what the Stotts supporters have to say about this

 

Honestly, it doesn't take a magician to figure out that our ball movement is probably the worst in the whole NBA. Both our guards are ball hogs.
Watching CJ rebound the ball and come down on offense, dribble, dribble, dribble ... and shoot crappy shots is not a secret. It happens almost all the time.
Why our coach doesn't stop this nonsense is beyond pathetic. And this is where Stotts lost this team. Whether CJ scores on those plays is irrelevant. He needs to play within a structured offense. And our coaching staff needs to insist of it.
We always make fun of Westbrook. Our backcourt is Westbrook light.

 

That doesn't matter....."just have to make shots."

 

Here are the passing numbers per game:

2013-2014 season: 18th in passes made with 295.5
2014-2015 season: 19th in passes made with 287.6
2015-2016 season: 26th in passes made with 281.8
2016-2017 season: 25th in passes made with 277.4
2017-2018 season: 28th in passes made with 271

What happened the summer of 2015? This is the reality of a Dame/CJ heavy offense.

 

Exactly! It takes the rest of the team out of their rhythm because they don't touch the ball as often and when they do, often it's just to hand it back to the guards. Flow offense my ass!

 

Players move. Ball doesn't.

 

All of this is well and good but we finished THIRD IN THE FUCKING WESTERN CONFERENCE! If our backcourt is so shitty, explain that!
Maybe (bear with me here) Stotts has worked out how to maximize the personnel we have. Maybe if you have a beef, it should be with the guy who ASSEMBLED THE PERSONNEL.

I think Stotts is a flexible guy. If he decides that his strategy only works for the regular season, then he should be prepared to start from scratch. Of course, we'll have LeBron next season, so we'll need to change our offense anyway.

 

Here is a perfect example of Stotts stubborn offensive philosophy. Blazers have trended down in the last 5 years to be dead last in assist. Compare that to.....

"Consider that 9 of the last 10 NBA champions ranked in the top half of the league in assists. More to the point, 3 of the last 4 champions led the league in assists."

Stotts thinks he is smarter than the rest of the entire NBA to go the exact opposite way of teams having the ultimate success? I've said he should be gone for that last two years and this does nothing but affirm that opinion. Nice guy, player coach, fun style.....but results that aren't getting you anywhere close to being a contender or developing the team into such.

 

I don’t think Stotts believes he is smarter... he just doesn’t have the balls to hold Dame and CJ accountable... CJ gets out of control with his hero ball at times and it really hurts this team. I know Dame passes but he also takes many I’ll advised shots. Having one guy like that is ok, but 2 players with the hero ball style as the centerpiece of the offense completely kills any chance of rhythm and flow... hence the last place assist ranking

 

"Believes he is smarter..." was a poor choice of words. That he advocates or designs that style of offense and allows players to play in a way that is not conducive to long-term success is highly questionable in my opinion though. Then again, I've questioned this about him for years.

 

For me, the nail in the coffin was when he said his defense was designed to give up mid-range jumpers because they're the least efficient shot in the game. But then his offense was designed around the mid-range jumper.
Yeah, the nail in the coffin is old and rusty as fuck.

 

This dual philosophy is a big part of the problem, IMO.

With Stotts' (and Olshey's) mindset, the first "good" shot all too often means a quick, semi-contested shot off the dribble from Dame or CJ without an initial pass. And the percentages will tell you that that is just not sustainably good enough to get the job done against a playoff level defense.

 

There seems to have been a fundamental disconnect between the plan and the reality, perhaps a miscommunication or difference in philosophy between the GM and the coach.

During the summer of 2016, Olshey's big plan was to overpay Evan Turner to give the Blazers and additional ball handler, freeing up Dame and C.J. to play off the ball more (because it's a well know fact that players shoot higher percentages, especially from deep, off catch and shoot opportunities than they do shooting off the dribble).

In theory, this would have reversed the trend shown above, but it was also directly a response to opposing teams blitzing Dame and C.J. It's what the Clippers did in the first round (before CP3 got injured) and what GSW did in the second round of the 2016 playoffs. It's no secret that suffocating Dame and C.J. and daring the "others" to step up is a great way to defeat the Blazers in a playoff series. It's no coincidence that that's EXACTLY the strategy NOP has employed so successfully in going up 2-0 in this current series.

So, was Turner the wrong guy, or is Stotts just using him wrong? I think it's a little (ok, a LOT) of both. Stotts does not use Turner primarily to create for Dame and C.J. Instead, Turner backs down and posts up his own man to create shots. So, now instead of two players running ISOs, we have three. So, the ball movement and number of assists, didn't increase by adding Turner as a third ball handler, they decreased.

Was that Olshey's fault, or Stotts'? I say both - Olshey's fault for overvaluing Turner and Stotts' for misusing him.

I have never been on the "Dame and C.J. can't co-exist" bandwagon, and I'm still not. Until this year, it was always "they can't coexist because they are undersized and suck at defense". Now that that premise has been proven wrong, it has morphed into "they can't coexist because they both play too much hero ball". I call bullshit. Add the RIGHT third ball handler (Neil) and use him (Stotts) and they will coexist just fine.

We saw, at times, during the regular season a 3-guard line up of Dame, C.J. and Shabazz could be very effective - given the right matchups. Unfortunately, even that lineup started reverting to too much hero ball late in the season, but even more fundamentally, as tenacious as Shabazz is on defense, that lineup is just too damn small to be successful on a regular basis.

Wade Baldwin, due to his length, defensive ability and willingness to pass, offers a glimpse of hope for the future, but ideally, I think we need a 3rd ball handler at SF that is also a 3 and D type player. I know financially it may have not been feasible to keep him, and his play has fallen off so much in the past year he's now considered by many a worse contract that Evan Turner, but prime Nic Batum would have been perfect - you know the guy who was our secondary ball handler back when the team was 9th in the league in assists.

But, that ship has sailed (Nic has slipped and he is GROSSLY overpaid - the summer of 2016 was a BITCH). GSW is successful because they run much of their offense through Draymond (and Shaun Livingston) and let Steph and Klay play off the ball. In PHI, Ben Simmons is their primary ball handler, as is LeBron in CLE. Obviously, we aren't getting LeBron or Ben Simmons, either by trade, free agency or through the draft. So, the key is identifying the next Draymond, or player with similar potential, either as a young player we can poach (sort of a hybrid between Wade Baldwin and Moe Harkless) or through the draft.

I actually think this has been Olshey's plan all along. Seriously, if you look at the young guys he's poached for basically nothing (Harkless, Baldwin and Napier), if you could combine them all into one player, we'd have the perfect answer to all our problems. So, any potential diamonds in the rough who have the size to play SF (or PF) combined with the ball handling skills to become a third ball handler we could run the offense through to free up Dame and C.J. to play off the ball more, and most of all prevent teams from completely shutting down our offense by blitzing Dame and C.J.?

While some may consider this approach a long shot, to me, it has a greater chance of success than splitting up Dame and C.J. They are both very talented scorers and great shooters, they are both locked up long term and have proven to not be nearly the defensive liabilities many claimed. We just need the right complementary piece to maximize their strengths.

BNM

 

Dame isn't a great passing point guard, but he does pass.

CJ doesn't even know what an assist is.