Patty Mills wants to play in the NBA... http://basketball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/68473/20100801/patrick_mills_wants_to_play_in_nba/
Even though I see a little Damon in him (OK, a lot) I kind of hope he sticks if some kind of consolidation trade happens. Supposedly, there's going to some resolution between he and Armon this week. Brian T. Smith's tweets from earlier: http://twitter.com/blazerbanter
Offensively and running the team, I think Mills is the better player. Defensively I see Johnson as the better player. Unless we make a trade for a PG, I'd try to find a way to keep them both. To me, after seeing all the summer league games, neither have proved themselves as a better player than the other. It may take training camp and pre season games.
I wonder. One thing that struck me about Mills is how fast he gets rid of the ball in the set offense. That leads to those extra couple of passes which usually leads to easier shots. I can't recall if Johnson was as quick in getting us into our offense. I hear Johnson can run the pick & roll, but have yet to see it. I like both their games.
Most of the time he handled the ball he was looking for his own shot and it got worse as the week wore on as he reverted more and more to the tendencies he displayed at St. Marys (starting at 9 or 10 shots and progressivly increasing his FGAs to 18 by the fifth game while his assists steadily dropped and his turnovers remained relatively high). Johnson only ran the point about 30 maybe 40 percent of the time he was in the game, the rest of time he was played off the ball as a very low usage two guard. When he did run the point he used ball screens a lot ... maybe 60-70% of his possessions, where he either drove into the middle of the lane to put up his floater, drove the lane to pass out, or came off of a screen and dribbled into the lane, collapsed the defense and made a dump pass. If you purchased summer league broadband you can re-watch the games (if you can stomach that much bad basketball) watch just Patty and Armon to the exclusion of all others, it's pretty revealing stuff. Not to bag on Patty, because he was great in the full court with both his decision making and his ability to break a defense.
I can't believe Mills will go to Europe before trying to make it in the NBA. He'll be on an NBA team this season.
unless another season of injuries awaits us, neither Mills or Johnson will see much of any PT for Portland this season. who is the better longterm bet to develop into a decent NBA player is the question to ask of these two... I'd go with Johnson and have the assistants work on his J all season. With a reasonable outside threat he'd be pretty nice STOMP
