Small sample size -- Two games: PER: 9.8 DBPM: -1.2 BPM: -2.0 DWS: 0.0 VORP: 0.0 Zach has stated numerous times that he prefers playing center (pre-draft/exit interviews) -- early season jitters or would he flourish in Whiteside's role?
Serious question: What are His and Whiteside's combined numbers when they are playing together? Zach's play is allowing HW to do his thing (39 PER after 2 games). Zach is just fine.
Exactly, Fez is not taking out the times where he's played center this year which is where the negative numbers are coming from so this thread is extremely misleading.
I'd still rather see the Blazers with another starting PF option and let Collins be the backup at both the 4 and 5.
if anybody is interested, 82games does a breakdown by position, but they are only updated for last season. for Zach: http://www.82games.com/1819/18POR15.HTM how accurate they are I'm not sure but they seem to match the eyeball test for the most part over the years I've been checking. Zach was quite a bit better offensively at C than he was at PF. He was worse defensively though
This is how I feel as well. I think he's perfect as the backup 4/5. I think this offense was at its very best when we had a power forward like LMA. But with that said, having Zach and HW has made our interior defense fucking amazing.
82games is constantly wrong. I need to see how it’s coded in the backend, but I’m pretty sure they just take who is on the floor, and categorize positions by height (tallest player center, etc). If you want proof, look at 17-18 where Collins played most of his minutes with Davis. It says that season almost all his minutes were at center while Davis played 21% of the Blazers minutes at PF. That’s a load of horse shit because Davis definitely guarded the centers on the opposing team. I think second spectrum has position data supported by camera tracking, but that’s hidden behind a paywall. Anyways, what I’m trying to say is, the data on 82games is highly inaccurate.
yeah, but you would think if Whiteside was that much of a positive he would be playing in crunch time minutes. I mean, he’s a huge mismatch on the other end. Nurk would get constantly benched in crunch time until last season where he earned Stotts trust that he was good enough overall as a player that you could live with some of his defensive shortcomings guarding the perimeter.
I actually talked to them via email about 3 years ago. They said their player/counterpart 'data' was based on video replay and on who the player was defending (that's why, they claimed, they don't update season data till about March). They did say it was harder to assign position for low minute players off the bench, so Zach would fit that distinction I'm not sure believe they are as "inaccurate" as you're claiming. For instance, they say that Zach played 19% of Portland's PF minutes and 14% of the C minutes. BBref, said Zach played 46% of the time at PF and 54% of the time at C. Those two sets of number are fairly close if you allow for some disagreement on who was playing what, when. Now, it could be that both websites are inaccurate at the same time. But frankly, from what I saw last year, 82games matches my eyeball which is that Zach was better offensively at C but worse defensively. A lot of that was because he was so easily uprooted by bigger players and couldn't hold position inside; meanwhile, his length helped him against generally shorter PF's.
I don't think we should use Stotts' shoddy decision making as the standard. Tolliver continues to get minutes over a guy like Skal for no reason. Last season he was doing the same thing with Meyers when it was clearly apparent that he shouldn't be on the court.
I suspect that Zach's desire to play center is because it's comfortable for him, but I think he has the tools to be a very good power forward. He just needs to hit shots.
Zach specifically said on media day that he really doesn't care about what position he plays and that the center thing was overblown.
I was watching Dame's highlights from last night and I noticed a trend. Zach is setting some nice screens this season.
That's what I noticed as well, which is probably for the best because it lets HW stay in the post to clean up and look for lobs.
