Comments on: Pre-Game Jitters

By: Oregonguy

Oregonguy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:58:19 +0000

Post game: Well I was right about a big having a career game; who knew it would be Chris Hunter. LOL. And if there was anything lopsided about the officiating it was WAY in favor of the dubs. Well I guess turn-about is fair play. A very nice win.

By: feltbot

feltbot — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:05:27 +0000

HDD: What I support is a coach and a team that values team play over individual play. And as a fan, I want a coach who will play the players who have those values, and bench the players that don’t.

Randolph has had no bigger supporter of his talent than myself in the last two years. I was incredibly excited to see him take the court this season, which you can see if you take a look at my pre-season posts. But if he continues to play with boneheaded and selfish abandon, with no regard for his teammates or his coaches, then I support benching him for however long it takes to get through to him.

Having said that, I expect AR to average at least 18-24 minutes a game regardless of whether Biedrins and Turiaf are healthy.

And beware of statistical analysis. Rebounds per minute is a useless stat except when comparing players who play exactly the same number of minutes. It is easy for a role player of limited minutes to get more rb/min than a starter who plays all game.

By: high dribble dribble

high dribble dribble — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:26:02 +0000

Feltbot: I’m sure you heard DN’s KNBR interview yesterday – sounded to me like unless AR gets better fast that he’ll be on the bench when AB & RT come back.

Do you support that?

It’s pretty clear he makes lot of mistakes on the court right now but i think it’s also clear that the more he plays, the better he gets (witness end of last year). Further, when you factor in how the Ws are unlikely to be a play-off contender this year and the fact that DN’s stated goal is to make this team competitive in 1-2 years, it seems crazy to not play him at least 18-24 minutes every game.

Don’t the Ws have to play him to at least see how he improves? It’s really hard for me to imagine any other franchise in a similar situation not playing him.

BTW: AR is currently 9th in the NBA in rebounds per minute.

By: Oregonguy

Oregonguy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:19:45 +0000

One big, probably Aldridge, but maybe Oden, will have a season-high (maybe career-high for Oden) game tonight. However, I don’t think Portland will have an easy game. They’ve lost some players and cohesiveness so far this year and are winning ugly. And hopefully the game will not be officiated the same way it invariably is when GS plays in Portland: incredibly lopsided in favor of the richest owner (in all of sports?) Paul Allen. By the way, real sorry to hear he has cancer, I wish him the best.