I know you are being conservative with the "one more" win estimate. I think it would have been easily two, three or more wins. Too bad the Bobs demanded Batum going back their way in the deal.
I was referring to the following: Which is, to be honest, a rather trivial answer if you do not think of it referred to as :THE: big problem. The way I read it is as such - otherwise - how is it any different from: I guess I read into it something more than the "well duh" answer - and if so, I am sorry. The point is that there are tons of ways we could have been much better than we were last year - better offensive production from the center position, better defense from the PG position, a reliable 3rd scorer (regardless of position). At the end of the day - we can and should get better at SF - but this is not the real culprit for this team.
1. The thread is about why we need a small forward. Why would I talk about our need at point guard here? 2. Some people--even very knowledgeable fans in this thread--were under the impression that we had an average starting small forward last year. I don't think that we had anything approaching that. Sorry if you consider my response trivial. Ed O.
Fair enough. I just found the phrasing very determined and assume it implied that this was THE problem - especially since we did get production from 15+ PER player other than Nic who was probably good enough to be an average player given his production - where you specifically added that: "which meant that we were relying on backups (who, presumably, are inferior players) for almost 2/3 of the game." By PER - the backups were also up to average standard - so overall - it just seemed like a rather forceful argument to me.
As I mentioned above, 15 is NOT an average PER for an NBA starter... it's the average for an NBA player. I don't know what the average for an NBA starter is, but I'd bet that it's better than 15. Ignoring Roy (because if we play him at the 3, it means that we had Rudy at the 2 most of the time), our small forward rotation looks something like this (in terms of PER, divided into thirds). 13/15/15 ... for an average PER of 14.33. If you had an average starting small forward that played a reasonable amount for a starter (let's say 32 minutes), and assuming we could get a league-average player to back him up, it would be X/X/15 If X = 17, that would put the average PER at 16.33. I don't know how many wins that translates to over the course of a season, but I would bet it is not an insignificant difference. Ed O.
Actually, Hollinger's rough guide to PER values is as follows: *A Year For the Ages: 35.0 *Runaway MVP Candidate: 30.0 *Strong MVP Candidate: 27.5 *Weak MVP Candidate: 25.0 *Bona fide All-Star: 22.5 *Borderline All-Star: 20.0 *Solid 2nd option: 18.0 *3rd Banana: 16.5 *Pretty good player: 15.0 *In the rotation: 13.0 *Scrounging for minutes: 11.0 *Definitely renting: 9.0 *On next plane to Yakima: 5.0 15 is average NBA per minute production - but because starters (especially very good players) play more minutes - Hollinger has pretty much defined 15 as an average NBA starter - for comparison purposes... 15 is not the average NBA player - because this ignores the minutes these different players play. I have read Hollinger articles that refer to 15 as the average stater because of this - and this is why I refer to it as such. If the average starter in the NBA was 16.33 as you suggest - and Hollinger calls a 16.5 PER a 3rd banana - the average starter in the NBA would pretty much be a 3rd banana - and this just does not make sense... (unless the NBA played 3 on 3 - which they only do during the all-star weekend and one of these guys there is retired and one of the players is from the WNBA...). So - going back to our original discussion - it does not seem that Portland's SF rotation is much worse than average starter quality...
Just an alternate point showing that Portland's SF rotation is not a problem - is taking 82games.com breakdown by position: Portland's production from the SF position is marked at PER 17.5 (above average - not a real surprise since Roy did spend a nice amount of time there playing next to Blake and Rudy), opposing SF PER is pegged at 14.9 and net production per game shown as +2.6 in PER or +2 in PPG.
I'm not sure that aligns with reality, though. Looking at the top 150 (which is 30 * 5) players in the NBA, as sorted by PER, gives us an average PER of 17.78. The 75th highest PER (which is half of 150) is right at 17. I don't see how 15 could be considered an "average" starter when 128 players in the NBA had a PER of over 15 last year... I asserted that if we had a better small forward, we would have won more games, and I still believe that our small forward rotation would have been markedly improved with an average small forward starter playing more minutes a game last year. Ed O.
You will have to take this with Mr. Hollinger, not with me. He invented PER and I am using his definitions, copied from his site. As for how this makes sense - the clear answer is that there are enough starters in the NBA that have a below 15 PER (Portland had 2 last year and they are among the better teams in the NBA, both teams in finals right now have at least one starter with a below-15 PER) and there are enough players in the NBA with good PER that see very limited time - which tells you that PER really makes very little sense with small sample sizes... For example - our friend IKE Diogu had a higher PER than Joel Pryzbilla - but it is clear that Joel is a starter level player while IKE is not. Again, The important thing is that the average is normalized to 15 using average per minute production - not average per player production - and because the better players will mostly play a lot more than the bad players - it balances out this way. .. and I agreed with it - but the issue is that it is true for every position - if we had a better PG we would have won more games, if we had a better SG (and yes, there are only 2 in the league that are better than what we have) - we would have very likely won more, same with PF and same with Center. The implication of the question "why do we need to upgrade SF" made the wrong assumption that Webster is what will get us over the hump (we already seem to be over the hump as is, without Webster) - but the implication is correct - SF is not a real problem for this team. We do not NEED to make an upgrade in SF. It would be nice if it happened - but for all practical purposes - this is not a real problem for this team.
Webster? So far in his career, his play has been mostly limited to standing around, waiting for a jump shot...which he has NOT converted at a great rate, even though his shot looks good. He has all the tools, but hasn't shown it yet. Batum shows up about once every 6 games...I think he'll be good, but we could sure use some production out of the SF position.
