Because they were in section 304. Seriously, the scruffed out jackasses behind me thought the height of humor was repeating every word they heard from the jumbotron in a funny voice. Dickwads. I bet one of them posts here. Hey, jerkface! Singing "do dee do do do" through the national anthem doesn't make you Dane fucking Cook!
We learned..... Nate is an idiot if Miller and Oden don't start. Roy was on cuise control Aldridge looks great. Batum is resting Miller is easily the best PG we have had in Portland since.....maybe Strickland Oden, at close to 100% is going to be a pretty good player since he has a PG who will get him the ball Rudy is resting Martell is a little rusty, but works his ass off Outlaw is still nothing but a chucker Blake is a very good specialist off the bench Joel needs to accept a back up role Bayless is still learning, but might be ok in spurts on a good team
agree with mediocre... and god its painful to think i need to watch outlaw look like a deer in headlights for another season. 3 guys i couldnt stand last year... sergio frye outlaw
I agree a bit on the "chucker" part. If only Outlaw could rebound the damn ball. For someone with his athletic ability, having 2 rebounds per game is embarrassing.
Thanks for the great summary! It's funny how similar Miller and Roy's games are. They're the "All-Sleepy" back court. I like everything I've read and heard about Blake so far. I'd written him off as a quality but somewhat stagnant role playing backup on this team in much the way Joel is. You know what you get from him. Be glad with it and keep expectations down. When you think about it, this is the first time he's been really pushed by a quality veteran PG. In the past he's focused on fitting in around guys like Roy and Carmello, and beating pretty borderline talent like Boykins, Telfair, Sergio and Jack. He had to know going into this season that if he had any hope of starting (or even playing significant minutes, with Webster coming back and Fernandez taking off) he had to bring a lot more to the table. He's still not going to beat out Miller for the starting job. But it's great to see that he's not going down without a fight. Miller has averaged about 35+ mpg since he was a rookie. If Blake keeps it up, this will be the first year he drops significantly below that.
Cream always rises. Somebody has to get his minutes significantly chopped this year. We added two guys who normally combine for about 63 mpg (Miller and Webster) and dropped two guys who combine for about 27 mpg (Sergio and Frye). That's about a 36 mpg swing. That's huge. I've been thinking all along that Webster was one of the guys to see his minutes severely cut. But if Martel is really going to come back to life with hustle and determination, maybe you do some small ball and run him at backup PF instead. He's shorter than Outlaw by a couple of inches, but he's got to have about 15-20 pounds of muscle on him. Hell, he's got to be bigger than Chuck Hayes. There really aren't a lot of backup power forwards in the NBA you'd really run your offense through to expose that matchup in the post. So really it'd boil down to whether Webster could be an effective rebounder and help defender. He'd always be playing beside a shot blocker and would get the easier defensive assignment. On offense, I can really see us running four guards with three point range and Przybilla in there to rebound. That could definitely work. What if we benched Outlaw and tried running Webster at PF?
Another observation I really liked was watching Webster cover every position from 1-4. He's not going to cover most teams PFs,but smaller backup PFs will have just as difficult of a time with Webster as they would with Outlaw. And he was effective staying in front of Sergio, Evans, Nocioni, Martin, Udrih, etc. I loved seeing that. Love the flexibility that offers, if we want to play, say, Rudy, Roy and Webster together.
Went to the game last night but was too tired to post after. I agree with most everything said. One thing that I did want to say, is when Oden turned to face up for that shot the guy (do not know him) next to me said "this is going to be good" and I started to say well he has been practicing it and then Greg just let it go and it was a very nice confident shot and swished. It was a telling sign of his growth and pratice habits. Dre is the real deal! He is going to help this team immensity. Both the Fan Fest and this first game showed to me that Nate again is trying see if he has the horses to run a more up-tempo game. Judging from what I have seen, this is going to be much more a factor this year. Last night the whole team was trying to up-tempo and it looked to me like they have some horses. That small ball team he had out there near the last, looked like it could do some damage to soem teams. he was playing Web, Rudy, Dre, Oden, and Travis. Prodably sub Batum for Travis and we have a very quick defensive and offensive team. Thoughts? Fun time.
It's a good thing Outlaw averaged 4.1 rpg game last year, then. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=2015
Webster is so quick and fast down court (one of the fastest on the team). If he can learn to use that speed for good defense, and he seems to be buying in to Nate's philosophy, both in words and court action, he is very likely to supplant Outlaw. My guess is that they will use Travis early in the season to showcase for a trade. Then after the all star break look out for Web and Batum. This could get really good.
We also learned that Rudy is a Teacher. He taught the crowd how to say "free throw" in Spanish I presume, since I forgot what and how to say it. Ha.
Actually he taught us how to say it in Catalan. He's from the part of Spain that speaks Catalan 1st, Spanish 2nd. And that language lesson was from last season.
I think my main point from before still rings true. That being that if nobody in the starting unit lineup changes, we can expect the same slow starts from the team offensivly. I was hoping Batum would bring some scoring this year, but at least in this game, nothing. The starting unit struggled to score as per last year, and the year before. Nate is going to need to move some talent into the starting lineup to produce at least one more weapon. Oh and Steve Blake may be in great shape, but he is still Steve Blake. A couple of fast breaks showed nothing has changed, he still can't space well on the break, and he still can't make the pass.
Very cool. Thanks for your game break down, it was much appreciated from the many of us who are stuck with studying the box score. I'm looking forward to seeing what Miller, Webster and an improved Oden can bring to this team.
Here's a write up of the game (well, mostly just about Miller actually) from Wendell Maxey. http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2009/10/game-notes-kings-at-blazers/
