NBA / Blazers Thread

[UOducksTK1]

Not gonna lie, I was a little afraid we'd lose to the Nuggets without LMA. Good win.

Got a 3 game winning streak going into a 4 game home stand that we really should sweep.

[dd10snoop28]

dude, lopez's DRtg is 108 in what is almost universally considered the best season of his career. asik's DRtg this year -- in what is universally considered a waste, given his mopping/inconsistent minutes/playing behind howard -- is 103.

last year, when he was the show down low in houston, it was 99. it's not even in the same ballpark. his WS is not going change much from last year's 4.1 -- asik's was 8.2. these are wide, wide separation marks.

It was actually not 99, it was 103. So no I wouldn't call those "wide, wide separation marks". Here is a comparison of Asik + Lopez' defense rating compared to the respective teams. Not a big differential at all:

Houston Rockets: 106.67 DRTG
Omer Asik: 103 DRTG

Portland Trailblazers: 108.6 DRTG
Robin Lopez: 107 DRTG

and that's really not even taking into account asik being #1 in the nba in rebounding last year. that's numero uno. lopez, right now, is 21st. which isn't bad, and i wouldn't knock him for it, but it is again -- continuing the theme -- not in asik's stratosphere. lopez's DRB% in -- again, his career year -- is 15.6%. asik was @ 28.6% last year.

Nice how you choose to show Asik's DRB% because that's where he excels, while you fail to recognize that Robin Lopez is currently #3 in the ENTIRE league in ORPG% at 14.0%. While I think that Asik is the better rebounder, I would argue that there is not as big of a separation as you think.

Why? Because Asik played on a team full of scrubby/poor-rebounding PF's so this allowed him to clean up on most of the rebound attempts that came off the rim last year. At the same time, Lopez' partner is a guy that averages 11.1rpg per 36mpg. Not even close compared to the Houston's PF's last season. Also, it's no coincidence that LMA's rebounds per game went up by 2.3 per game this year. ROLO's impact on the boards has been HUGE. The stats don't show it, but I think that the gap is not substantial between the two on the boards.

Houston PF's:
-Patterson: 6.5rpg per 36
-Morris: 6.8rpg per 36
-D-Mo: 6.2rpg per 36
-Greg Smith: 10rpg per 36

vs.

Portland PF's:
-Aldridge: 11.1rpg per 36

I do give Asik credit here as I think he is a better rebounder than Lopez and makes him slightly more valuable OVERALL than Lopez.

i said asik was a little better than lopez offensively, but i'm willing to call that a wash. asik shoot's the higher % and crashes the boards on another level to create easier buckets, but portland runs more stuff for lopez than houston did for asik. i would rather have what asik would bring to pdx, but i'm not going to berate the point because if you simply meant robin is more gifted athletically/making something happen offensively i would not disagree. a matter of preference.

Field Goal % is a terrible reason for why Asik is the better offensive player. Tyson Chandler is one of the all-time leaders in FG%. Does that make him better than Shaq (who has a lower career FG%)? Nooo. If you actually watched Houston's games last year, you would know that almost all of Asik's buckets came off drives and dishes which resulted in easy dunks for him. The big difference between the Blazers and the Rockets is that we don't have players that penetrate like Houston does. Harden, Lin, and Parsons get to the rim at a frequent rate and set up Asik for a bunch of easy dunks. Who does that for Portland? Nobody. So really the FG% differential means absolutely nothing. And you even noted that Portland "runs more stuff for Lopez than Houston for Asik" and yet Asik averages 1.0 more turnovers than Lopez. That should be a sign to you of his terrible hands. As I said before, Asik is inept with the ball in his hands. He struggles with anything other than point-blank dunks.

Lopez is the better offensive player by far.

as a rocket fan, i'm surprised you were so against the proposed move simply because last year's rockets and this year's blazers are not wholly disimilar. both teams were weak on the defensive perimeter, the biggest difference being asik was able to clean up a lot more of houston's mess than lopez can do for portland. the occasional block -- while neat -- doesn't cut it. here's an excellent take written after last season on asik being one of the nba's best defensive centers. as a rocket fan, i would have assumed you had seen this?

I don't disagree that Asik is the better player (slightly), but the separation is not nearly enough for me to want to add my starting SG in a deal. I keep thinking that Asik is really young and still developing, but ROLO is actually 2 years younger. I'm content with Lopez at this point. An Asik/Lopez tradeoff wouldn't make a huge difference for the blazers this year.

[UOducksTK1]

Good post, dd10snoop28.

[oregontrack]

i think you misread what i said about asik being the better offensive player.

[oregontrack]

I'm fairly certain mo and barton outscored Brooklyn's starting 5.

[pudgejeff]

They really needed this, with how short the bench is the extra rest for the starters was huge!!

[dd10snoop28]

What has gotten into our bench lately?

[UOducksTK1]

We doubled their score in 2 quarters, pretty impressive.

Barton and Mo Williams were crazy good. Nice to see Claver do well too. Only his 5th game of the year getting more than 1 minute.

[dd10snoop28]

Claver is the one guy that I think has the potential to stick around for a while. Decent defender and very high IQ on offense. He just needs to become more confident/better with his 3pt shot.

[thomas time]

I don't know if this has been posted earlier but I just found this.

http://www.nba.com/dleague/idaho/ej_sin ... 02_15.html

Nice to see him hit the last 3 shots, the moneyball ones to win by 1.

[thomas time]

The South Medford product and former Oregon Duck has been shooting the ball very well lately for the Stampede. He has made as many seven three-pointers in a game this year. He is shooting 53-108 on the year (49.1%). That is the highest percentage of any player in the NBDL.

[dd10snoop28]

ROLOOOOOO

[Phenom]

King James.

[UOducksTK1]

Went to the Lakers game last night, sad way for Blazers to lose. Got out hustled for 40 minutes, then made a good comeback, and had the game handed to them.

Bad loss.

[oregontrack]

brutal defense against the worst laker team of many of our lifetimes... yuck.