Exclusive Vote; Do you enjoy watching the 2022-23 Blazers?

I really enjoy the young players. The league is filled with exciting young guys. I would much rather watch good rookies than another regular season Lebron/Curry/KD game.

 

I think everyone knows what needs to be done but can’t get themselves to admit it

 

Look forward to watching, and then it is so painful....again. This reminds me of so many versions of Blazer teams in the recent past.

 

Regular season I think much of this is correct, Stotts offense was way more effective than what were seeing now. But a huge problem was playoffs, opponents trapped DameCJ and it was basically game over.

All the Dame off the ball and others initiating seems that it would do better against elaborate and trapping schemes.

I'm not convinced this current offense would be better anyway. But I life the idea of something more than guard ISO. Just seems like we don't have the needed personnel and or schemes to complete that next step.

 

Nice post.

I would be interested in seeing # of Blazers passes per game over these years. I suspect it's much higher now.

 

What's the "next step"? MAKING the playoffs?

 

I'll admit a bit of jealousy watching OKC and ORL

 

We’ve been awful and they have an even worse record than ours.

 

Yikes you think people melt down in here now. Try missing the playoffs as many years in a row as those teams and try missing on as many high draft picks as both have. I don't envy the fans of those teams and they do have promising young rosters but those rosters still haven't proven for a second that they can make the step from a group of talented prospects to a playoff team, let alone a team that can win in the playoffs.

 

Last year's tanking games were at least a enjoyable, because we knew what was gong on and it was a chance to watch some of the young kids develop.

This is the core veteran's going out and digging massive holes that make it very difficult to come back and win a game.

 

totally agree, I have not been able to make it through a whole game in a while now because of the pathetic play of this team

 

i didn't find last year enjoyable at all. we let guys like Brandon Williams and Keon Johnson play 30+ mpg. Ben McLemore was getting regular minutes. It was awful basketball.

Tanking is nice in theory, but we shut down our one young guy with any talent that we wanted to develop.

 

ok....I'll post what I find and compare this season and those two other seasons I used earlier as gauges:

passes/game (league ranking)--->assists (league ranking):

2018/19 - 281.7 (26th) ---> 23.0 (25th)
2020/21 - 244.6 (30th) ---> 21.3 (30th)
2022/23 - 287.5 (16th) ---> 24.2 (20th)

potential assists (league ranking):

2018/19 - 42.1 (24th)
2020/21 - 39.3 (30th)
2022/23 - 43.2 (21st)

assist to pass% (league ranking):

2018/19 - 8.2 (19th)
2020/21 - 8.7 (17th)
2022/23 - 8.4 (23rd)

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/passing?dir=A&sort=TEAM_NAME

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* the first thing I notice is what's missing: there is no mitigation or offset for turnovers. That's a pretty essential missing factor

* if you're using 2020/21 as the baseline the Blazers are averaging 43 more passes a game...which is a lot. But if 2018/19 is the baseline, Portland is averaging less than 6 more passes a game. That year was most likely the best offensive team under Stotts in the Dame/CJ era

* that last category may be the most revealing though. You'd hope that a focus on motion and passing would generate a high assist rate. But this year's offense isn't significantly better than those other years. And factoring the rest of the league, it looks like this year's offense is making more passes for less effect. And considering the significant spike in turnovers, it's pretty obvious, at least it is to me, that Chauncey's passing offense and running Dame off the ball is not generating the efficiency in the floor game needed
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since NBA.com didn't do it, I'll go thru the numbers and add...

turnover/pass rate (passes/turnover):

2018/19 - 4.9% (20.4)
2020/21 - 4.5% (22.0)
2022/23 - 5.5% (18.2)

I guess we kind of knew that before I did the math. But it is more evidence that Chauncey's offense is not generating the type of efficiency it need to. Looks like it's a long way from doing so

I'm wondering if this is Chauncey trying to force a square peg roster into a round hole. Coaches need to tailor their schemes to the personnel and I'm a long ways from convinced that the Blazers have the kind of facilitators that would make a passing offense work well

 

I always love watching the Blazers but of course wish we were a bit easier on the eyes.