While the blazers would have almost certainly won the game if not for the block being called goaltending (it's not completely certain... one missed free throw and a 3 pointer sends it to overtime too), there are a few other things that happened at the end of that game. After Aldridge hit a pair of free throws to go up by six with 2:17 to go, the Blazers missed 5 of their 6 shots. In the 18 seconds before the bad call, the Blazers failed to secure three defensive rebounds. That's 8 opportunities to win the game that would have made "the call" irrelevant (or even nonexistent).

This seems more to me like Memphis losing the 2008 NCAA tournament. A team that was in position to win ends up losing in painful fashion in overtime because of a flaw that everyone already knew they had. In Memphis' case, they couldn't shoot free throws. In Portland's case, they don't have a reliable closer.

There was a lot of movement in the trade today, but the real meat and potatoes was Andre Miller for Raymond Felton.

It seems pretty clear to me that it's a downgrade for next year, but Miller is 35 and Felton is only 26.  My "things I kinda sorta remember hearing on SportsCenter" recollection is that Felton is a solid PG, certainly good enough to be a starter on a contender... as long as he's not one of your best couple players.  I don't like trusting a hazy memory though, so lets see how he compares to both Miller and other guards in the league.  I'm a big fan of advanced stats, so that's what I'm going to use for most of the comparisons.

Continue reading this post »

As we all know, our orange clad rivals love to tout themselves as Lunch Pail U... as the team that find the recruiting gems in the rough and turns three star recruits in to five star performers.  I gotta admit that subjectively, it seems to be pretty true, but my subjective brain seems to also remember a lot of Ducks outperforming expectations as well.

Not satisfied with the subjectivity, I decided to dig up a ton of data on recruiting rankings vs final rankings and compare it all together to find an objective answer to the question;  Who is "Lunch Pail U"?.  I initially set out just to compare the Ducks and Beavers, but decided if I'm gonna do it, I might as well do it right and include all of D1.

Continue reading this post »

Lets go back in time for a second here.

It's nearly one year ago.  The Blazer's just hit free agency with a great young team and one year with a ton of cap space before the rookie contracts start to end and the cap space goes away for the foreseeable future.  There's only one problem... we don't have nearly as much cap space as we expected to.  We thought we would have the space for a max contract and the ability to sign whoever we wanted, but Darius Miles and the Grizzlies saw to it that it wouldn't happen.

Well, it turned out there were two problems.  The second problem was that there just weren't many marquee free agents out there.  The biggest names were guys like Shawn Marion, Ron Artest, Hedo Turkoglu, Trevor Ariza, Ben Gordon, Andre Miller, and David Lee.  There's some good players in there, but nobody that knocks your socks off to complete a championship team... still the Blazers had needs...

Both the PG and SF positions were being staffed by committee with some good fillers and role players, but nobody looking like a solid championship level starter.  The SF position in particular was a major hole as Outlaw played his best as an undersized PF, Webster was questionable coming off his year long injury, and Batum hadn't shown the offensive prowess to be an asset near the end of games.  Outlaw usually closed games simply because we desperately needed another dangerous crunch time scorer that could create his own shot on the floor, to take some pressure off Roy.  At PG, Blake was at least usually dependable in crunch time or we could go with a Roy/Rudy back court with Roy handling the ball.  Backup PF was also a need, but it's hard to spend big free agent bucks on somebody you know is going to be a backup.

Still, the space was going away whether we used it or not so we better at the very least get a tradeable asset out of it...

Continue reading this post »

In the comments of one of another fan post, somebody said that the Blazer's have top five talent.  My initial thought was "woah, no way"... but after some more thought, I wasn't so sure.

I compared the Blazers to every team to see how I see it all shaking down.  There are a couple rules:

• It's based on how much talent the players have this year and this year only.  I intentionally used the word "talent" rather than "performance" or "production".  Current potential counts, but future potential doesn't, so if you feel Batum would be better in another system, he gets rated accordingly, but if you feel Bayless is a couple years from being a mega-star, he only gets what he's worth this year.
• This is for rosters as they are right now (after the trade deadline).  Season ending injuries count, but short term injuries don't.
  

I compared the starters of every team (mostly from the ESPN NBA depth chart, I made some changes I knew were due to injuries, probably missed some others) to the Blazer's starters, and then compared the benches as a whole.

One last note:  although this was inspired by a "fire Nate" post, it's not intended in any way to say where our record should be.  That would require a much closer look at injuries/schedule/trades/etc and that's more than I want to get in to right now.  It's just a current talent level comparison.  Anyway, on to the comparisons:

Continue reading this post »

... a computer.

According to Jeff Sagarin's rating system, Portland is the 9th best team in the NBA, and every team we have played is a "top 16" team.  According to basketball reference's SRS rating (basically opponent adjusted point differential), Portland is the 6th best team.

In both cases, a surprisingly strong strength of schedule is the reason for the slack.

The sky isn't falling.  It's just a good team going through a tough stretch.

I'm pretty sure I started this JD just so I can complain about an off topic subject.  As a Detroit Lions fan, I can't believe they are about to give the most guaranteed money in NFL history to a QB that's never played a single NFL down.  My full rant is posted at the Lions blog though...

I like to think of myself as a pretty level headed guy, but I've slept on this one and I'm still pretty unhappy about it.  Maybe I'm just level headed around here because being  Detroit Lions fan puts a few minor gripes about an actual playoff game, on a team that is still improving at an incredible rate, in to perspective.

Anyway, here's to hoping I'm wrong about Stafford and that the Lions pick up sleepers with every other pick.

If you're trying to avoid depressing thoughts or trying to make yourself feel better about Stafford, this isn't the fan post for you.  I need to rant right now and I'm not going to pretend to think anything other than what I really think.

Now I gotta admit, I really like Jim Schwartz.  He's impressed me from the day he was hired.  The rest of the head staff, on the other hand, has me worried.  Both the O and D coordinators got their reputations only team with very impressive talent and heve since bombed in other places without that talent.  I don't know if you've looked at the talent around here, but it's only very impressive in how much we don't have... as in less than those other places where our coordinators have already bombed.

Then their's Lewand and Mayhew.  When they were promoted, 83% of us thought it was a bad move.  Since then we've somehow managed to talk ourselves in to the idea that, even though they joined the Lions at about the same time Millen did (i.e. have been in the front office for all that time), that Millen just never listened to anybody.  These guys are totally innocent of anything that happened with this franchise over that span.  Well, I'm just not drinking that Kool-Aid.  Case in point number 1:

We just gave an unproven quarterback that's never played an NFL down the most guaranteed money in the history of the NFL.  Some people point to the jacked up contracts #1 picks have been getting, and that's certainly a part of it, but we just upped the ante by 25% over the second biggest rookie contract ever.  Really?  That's the best you could do?  We're not talking about a Peyton Manning "everybody is drooling over him and thinks he's going to be great" quarterback here, we're talking about somebody that has been primarily been talked about, by #1 pick standards, in pretty luke-warm terms.

He's not exactly dropping in to the best situation either.  Situations like the Lions eat up and spit out promising young QBs with ruthless efficiency.  Here's the way I feel about his chances:

10% - Star (8+ pro bowls, maybe HoF)

25% - Solid starter (goes to a some pro bowls, has a great year or three, never seen as a weakness)

45% - David Carr-like career (shows potential greatness up front, but lack of offensive line, an average-ish running game, and only one good receiver ends up killing his career)

20% - Straight up bust

It's the David Carr comparison that seems all to close to me.  The Lions have expansion level talent overall.  Megatron = Andre Johnson (super stud receiver on a crappy team).  Kevin Smith = Dominick Davis (solid, but not great running back).  Lions crappy O-line = Texans crappy O-line (self explanatory).

It's a bigger deal than just this draft though.  As I mentioned in the title of this fanpost, I'm not from Detroit.  I grew up in Portland, OR.  I'm also a huge fans of the Portland Trailblazers and Oregon Ducks... but those make sense.  They are my home town teams.  They represent my home.  As for the Lions, I just picked them up because Portland doesn't have an NFL team (Seattle is the closest, but it's not "my home" so it doesn't count).  The exact reasons why are beside the point right now.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'll stick by the Blazers through thick and thin.  I stuck with them through all the Jailblazer years and through their recent run of not making the playoffs, including a year with the worst record in the NBA.  I stick with them because they represent my home, and therefore me.  I may stop following the NBA altogether some day, but if I follow the NBA, I root for the Blazers.

With the Lions, I guess the only thign that's kept me a fan in plain old loyalty.  I've even got DirecTV, just so I could get NFL Sunday Ticket, just so I could watch the Lions for most of the past decade (seriously, 18 months ago I moved in to an apartment that can't get DirecTV and I haven't even bothered getting any kind of sattelite or cable TV, the Lions were the main reason I had TV service at all).  I sucked it up through the tough times.  I joined in on the fire Millen chants.  I even went along with the whole "the Lions need 0-16 to finally hit rock bottom so we can start building our way back up" thing, but I'm losing hope.

Even if Stafford does pan out, we're probably going to need to go through a few more years of sucking to find out.  A few more years of watching poor QB play, to maybe have a good QB, or maybe find out we're screwed for four years at $10 million a pop with Joey Harrington 2. It's such a boom or bust pick, and now we as fans need to go in to "well maybe he'll pan out later, we need to give him the benefit of the doubt for a few more years" mode.  Why take a risk on somebody that's not really considered to be a super-stud QB prospect when the downside is all but ensuring four more years with a crappy team?

Seriously, what's wrong with just picking the guy who fills one of our biggest needs and is pretty sure to at least be a solid contributer for years to come?

CENTER

Portland:  We know our guys.  Przybilla is a rebounding/defense machine that's good enough around the hoop at the offensive end that he can't be completely ignored.  You won't ever see the ball intentionally passed in to Przybilla for a post up move though.  Oden is also a rebounding machine, but hasn't fully regained his quickness after the microfracture surgery which hurts him defensively.  His offense also suffers from his loss of quickness and currently relies heavily on overpowering other players.  He has shown a few extra tricks near the end of the season, but his offensive arsenal is still pretty limited.

Houston:  Yao Ming isn't a typical center.  He very big (7' 6", 310 lbs) and very skilled.  In particular, he is an outstanding shooter inside 18 ft.  He is a capable and willing passer and makes a very high percentage of his FTs (87% this year) which makes it so you can't just foul him like you might with Shaq or Dwight Howard.  His biggest weakness is that he is a liability on the defensive end when defending other centers with at least average skills and quickness.  His help defense is solid though.  He also is a good rebounder, but doesn't get quite as many boards as you would figure a guy with his size would (14th in rebs/48).  Mutumbo, even at 74 years old, is a solid backup for 10-12 minutes a night.

Matchup:  Unfortunately for Gregzilla, Yao is just about custom built to outplay them.  Yao's shooting touch, height, and post up abilities allow him to score on almost anyone.  The best bet is to get in his face and try to frustrate him, but don't get too in his face or you might send him to the line.  If the refs call it loose, our guys should be able to hold him down on the offensive end.  If they call it tight, he's going to get his points.  The ideal situation would be to then return the favor by taking advantage of him on the other end, but Pryz doesn't have the skillset and Yao is one of the few people Greg can't just out muscle to the hoop.

Verdict:  Somewhere from small to solid advantage Houston, depending on how it's called

POWER FORWARD

Portland:  LaMarcus Aldridge is a man of very few weaknesses.  He is a great shooter, a freakish athlete, has solid post up moves, is above average in both one on one and help defense, is a capable passer, and rarely leaves you thinking "what the heck was that?!?!?!"  His main weakness is that from time to time he slips in to "finesse mode" and then out hustled by the other guy.  I consider Frye the 10th man in our 9 man playoff rotation and expect Outlaw to get the backup minutes (who I'll cover at SF).

Houston:  Houston has a three headed "kinda small, but really really scrappy" monster at PF.  Their two main guys, Luis Scola and Carl Landry, are also great shooters that tend to put themselves in the right place at the right time.  Chuck Hayes is only 6' 6", but makes up for it with physical play and energy.

Matchup:  There's no readily apparent reason LMA shouldn't be able to dominate this position, but the Houston trio have a habit of out playing themselves.

Verdict:  Advantage Portland, as long as LMA keeps playing like he has for the past several weeks

SMALL FORWARD

Portland:  Here we have two guys that are almost opposite of each other.  We have the quite, focused, and intense Batum with his pesky (i.e. good) perimeter defense and "good enough to burn them if they let him go" offense as our starter.  He's not afraid to get his nose in anywhere and tends to come up with a lot of energy and hustle plays.  "Backing" him up (with backing in quotes because he plays more minutes), we have the laid back, super-freak athlete Outlaw who can get his shot off against anyone and seems to play the last shot of a tied game the same that he plays a random play in the second quarter (and I mean that in a good way).  He is really hot and cold on the defense end (sometimes shutting down the opposing team's best player, sometimes going in to full on matador defense) and, while it's gotten a ton better from the beginning of the season, still has a few more... situational awareness lapses than most of our players.

Houston:  Some folks might say one of these two guys should be a SG since they both start and both play starters minutes (in fact they are #1 and #2 on the team), but I say Houston just defies normal convention and plays two SFs.  The two guys are the crazy, intense, and intimidating Ron Artest, and the no stats all star, Shane Battier.  They are quite possibly the two best perimeter defenders in the league and are, in order, crazy enough and smart enough to do all the little things that help teams win.  Both can shoot the 3 (40% and 38%) while Artest is also a solid post up and driving threat.  There is nobody on the depth chart behind them, but there doesn't need to be.

Matchup:  Purely at the SF position, I think Portland does fairly well here.  Both Outlaw and Batum should be able to hold their while defending, while Outlaw should still be able to get his shot off enough for everyone to remember that he's there and Batum doesn't really need to get much offense in to affect the game.  The real problem here is that both Battier and Artest (especially Artest) have a good track record shutting down Brandon.

Verdict:  Huge advantage Houston, when you consider that one of them will be hounding Brandon all night long

SHOOTING GUARD

Portland:  Brandon Roy.  Smooth.  Poised.  Drives.  Shoots.  Posts-up.  Passes.  Rebounds.  Defends.  Leader.  Clutch.  He's not perfect, but it's hard to find anything to criticize.  His backup aint too shaby either.  Rudy has mostly been an outside threat for us, but has shown excellent passing skills and an ability to get to the hoop when he needs to.  He's also good for a good scrappy hustle play or three a game.

Houston:  With Tracy McGrady down and two SFs starting, the only SGs with any notable playing time are Brent Barry, and a fellow by the name of Von "The Baron" Wafer.  Recently Wafer has been getting the bulk of the minutes and seems to be doing a decent job picking up a little of the scoring hole left by T-Mac.  He's not as good on the offensive end and is certainly not as good on the defensive end, but he's playing much better than the guy we remember.

Matchup:  Most, if not all of the time, Roy will be guarded by one of Houston's SFs.  If Wafer/Barry see much time, they will probably be guarding Rudy or Batum.

Verdict:  Ginormous advantage Portland (since the defense factor was already considered above)

POINT GUARD

Portland:  For the playoffs, I expect our three headed PG will be trimmed down to a two headed PG (sorry Rex).  Blake won't blow anybody's socks off, but is exactly what this team needs at PG.  A good passer/playmaker (5 ast/gm) that can make an open 3 (43%) that doesn't make many mistakes (1.6 to/gm).  His defense is solid, but quicker guards can get around him.  Sergio is a passing wizard (75% of Blake's assists in half the minutes), but is still a little too error prone (100% of Blake's turnovers in half the minutes) and his defense is clearly the worst of any of the nine guys that I put in our playoff rotation.  Both of those negatives have been getting better this season, but there's still a good distance to go for him.  As for scoring, his outside shooting is merely average (33%) and, while he has the quickness to get to the basket, he isn't a great finisher.  Both his and Rudy's paly pick up when they are both on the floor, which is probably the difference that keeps him ahead of Rex on the chart.

Houston:  The rockets split time between Aaron Brooks and Kyle Lowry who are both young borderline NBA-level starters.  Both are skilled players, with Brooks having a more polished scoring game and Lowry having a more polished passing game.  Neither are still learning one of the most difficult positions in basketball and could use work in the decision making department.  Neither is a standout defender, although both at least put in the effort most of the time.

Matchup:  Brooks is exactly the kind of quick guard that tend to have career games against Portland.  They may also prove to be pesky enough on D to disrupt our guys.  While I feel Blake is the best all around PG on the floor, this is another place where matchups just don't fall our way.

Verdict:  Small advantage Houston, mainly because I can already see Brooks exploding for an out of nowhere 26 point night on 8-14 shooting and 8-9 from the line (probably during a game in Houston).

FINAL THOUGHTS

I consider Houston the worst possible matchup for Portland.  They seem to be custom built to stop our strengths as exploit our weaknesses.  I would give us a much better shot agianst any other west playoff team from 2-8 and I change my mind every 30 seconds on whther the Blazers would have a better shot against the Rockets or the Lakers... and I mean that in a bad way.

Even a month ago I would have seen this draw and figured it was already over, but with the Blazer's improved play over the past month (particularly LMA and overall team defense) and home court advantage, I'm feeling more optimistic.  My head still says Rockets in 6, but my heart says the Blazers pull it off in 7.

GO BLAZERS!!!

You may or may not have seen that according to Wages of Wins' Wins Produced metric, LMA is a well below average player (and Przybilla is having a Hall of Fame year).  For those not familiar with the stat, .100 is an average player's production.  LMA is at .032 and Pryz is at .356 (Roy is .226 for comparison).

This intrigued me because, while no stat analysis can ever be completely comprehensive, Wins Produced (henceforth called just WP) is usually much better at separating real contributors from the Stat-Bo players.  To figure out what this meant, I first had to figure out how WP is calculated.

Calculating Wins Produced:

The actual process is very complicated.  Here's my attempt at simplifying the process.  You can skip to the analysis below if you don't care how it's calculated.

Preparation Step:  Figure out the correlation between offensive and defensive efficiency (i.e. points per possession) to the number of wins each team has.  Once you know that X points per possession is approximately worth Y wins, you can calculate the value of each individual stat that goes in to calculating points per possession.

Step 1:  Use the values from step 1 to asses production of each player.  The stats that go in to this calculation are 2 pointers made (2FGM), 3 pointers made (3FGM), free throws made (FTM), field goals missed (FGMS), free throws missed (FTMS), offensive rebounds (REBO), defensive rebounds (REBD), assists (AST), turnovers (TO), blocks (BLK), and steals (STL).  There is also an additional value that takes a players percentage of the team's total fouls and penalizes them for that percentage of the oppenents free throws made (FTMO).  The exact values change because of how they are calculated, but it is roughly equal to the following:

(2FGM + 2*3PFGM - FGMS + .55*FTM - .45*FTMS + REBO + REBD + .55*AST - TO + STL - .55*FTMO) / 3

The formula above gives total production.  This is divided by minutes played to get production per minute and then multiplied by 48 to get production per 48 minutes (i.e. per game).

This model has rebounds, turnovers, and steals equal to a 2 point field goal (i.e. 2 points) rather than the usual model that has them worth half the value of a 2 point field goal (i.e. 1 point).  3 pointers also end up being worth double what 2 pointers are worth.  Here is a chart (from Wages of Wins) with the exact values from 91/92 through 06/07.

Value of Player and Team Statistics

1991-92 to 2006-07

Step 2:  Adjust each individual's score based on how much they benefited from their teamates blocks and assists.  This is done becuase blocks create rebounds (that may otherwise have been a made shot) and assists increase other player's chances of hitting shots.  I skip the exact process and just mention that the adjustment is fairly small (usually less than .01 WP/48 minutes, rarely more than .02).

Step 3:  Adjust for team defense.  WP does not calculate individual defense.  Instead, it holds every member of the team equally responsible for their team's defensive efficency (points allowed per possession).  Again, I'll skip the exact process and mention that this adjustment is also fairly small (usually less than .015 WP/48 minutes, rarely more than .03).

Step 4:  Adjust for position played.  This is one of the main things that sets WP apart from other metrics.  WP acknowledges that the big men get more rebounds and have less turnovers, not because of their skill, but because of the nature of their position.  There are three adjustments:  one for PF/C, one for SF, and one for SG/PG.  A player that splits time between areas will ge the average of their two positions (e.g. Outlaw would get the average of the PF and SF adjustments).  The adjustments are calculated by a brute force "add up the numbers and divide by everyone in the league at each psition and compare" process.  Here is the chart for the 06/07 season:

Value of Adj. P48 Across Positions

The values on this chart are just plain ol' subtracted from the production/48 number that we've been adjusting through the process.

Step 5:  At this point we have each player's value relative to "the average player" (i.e. an average player will be equal to 0.0 at this point), but the average player is worth more than 0 wins because an "average team" wins half of their games.  An average team has .5 wins per 48 minutes, so the average player is worth .1 (.5 divided by the 5 players on the court).  The actual average wins is actually about .099 / 48 minutes because of overtime games.

To finish the process, all we do is take the value that came out of step 4 and add .099 to it.

Analyzing Wins Produced:

There are several things that jump out from this model:

- WP loves rebounds

- WP loves making the most of your minutes on the floor

- WP has a defensive adjustment, but still doens't really nail down the hard-to-quantify value of an individual's defense.  It can even end up adjusting a player up/down when they really deserve the opposite because of their team's defense.

- WP doesn't care too much about total points as much as it cares about efficent points.

WP Strengths:

- WP is completely objective.  There is no tricky "how many points is an assist worth?" guess work.  It just analyzes data to calculate that X stat has been worth Y wins.

- WP isn't impressed by large inneficient point totals.  If you need to jack up 25 shots to make 10, WP is gonna give you the smack down.  You better make your free throws too.

WP Weaknesses:

- The objectivity is good, but the lack of subjectivity can also be bad.  More on this below.

- The defensive adjustment is very crude and probably only marginally effective.  It probably gets it right more often than it gets it wrong as good defensive teams are going to have more good defensive players and bad defensive teams are going to have more bad defensive players, but this also means that when Glenn Davis was warming the bench on the Spurs, he was picking up a nice fat WP team defense bonus.  The adjustment is fairly small, but it's still something to consider when WP is way off from conventional wisdom.

Wins Produced vs LMA (and Przybilla)

So what's up with LMA?  The following are all factors:

- The Blazers have a below average defensive efficency this year (109.5 vs 16.9 league average) so he losing a little there whether he deserves it or not, but not a lot and other players are able to overcome it just fine.  LMA is usually one of our better defenders so he's probably unfairly penalized here.

- He doesn't rebound a whole lot for his position.  He is 35th among PFs in rebounds per minute (and WP loves rebounds).

- Since he is mostly a jump shooter, his field goal percentage isn't that great for a PF either (21st among PFs in field goal %, 17th in free throw %), but his position adjustment still has it's curve set by guys that primarily shoot lay-ups and dunks.

I don't think it's time to hit the panic button yet.  He is still young, he's learning more post moves, and even just this year his shot has started falling a lot more.  His defense is also improving quite a bit each year.  He also gets a lot of minutes on some nights when the offense isn't going through him, which hurts "per minute" stats like WP... but he could make up for that with more rebounds though.

Considering his age and experience level, and the prgoress he's made so far, I'm not too worried.  It would be nice to have more and I expect more down the road from a #2 pick, but all things considered I'd call his performance pretty normalwhelming.

As for Przybilla, I like that this shows how superb he's been this year... but .356 seems a little crazy.  Dwayne Wade, for example, is at .350.  I think the efficiency loving WP gives him too much credit for his 75% shooting.  To a math equation, all 75% shooting is the same, but we all know that vast majority of his shots are wide open dishes from a driving guards or putbacks.  Yes, most post players can say that to some extent and that's what the whole position adjusment is about, but Pryz takes it to the extreme.

First a disclaimer... I have no particular expertise in this area and intend only for it be an interesting thinking point.  Take it with a grain of salt.  That said, I'll start with my own story.

About a week ago, I got contact lenses for the first time in about 15 years.  I am mainly nearsighted, but have alittle bit of astigmatism.  Normally a small amount of astigmatism can be corrected by overcorrecting the nearsightedness, which, because of the complexity (and expense) of correcting astigmatism with contact lenses, is usually tried first (with glasses, it's all the same so they just do right the first time).

It turns out, I'm one of the weird ones who's eyes just won't let the overcorrection make up for the astigmatism.  Over the past week, my eyes were trying though.  My vision seemed to go in an out throughout the day.  If I ever just let my eyes relax though, my vision would always go out.  I wasn't ever conciously trying to make my eyes adjust, but there was definitely something subconcious going on.

The interesting part to me was noticing that I was so much less aware of everything around me.  This was not only true of the times when my vision seemed to be the best, but was actually most true when my vision seemed to be at its best.  Somehow putting the mental effort in to self correcting my vision (even subconsciously) was reducing the amount of mental capacity I had to analyze what I was seeing.  While I could look around and see everything around me, I just didn't have that natural awareness of things like "while pulling out of this street, I need to be aware of the cars 10 seconds out to the left" and lost even more mental capacity as I had to make a conscious and deliberate effort to compensate.

The first time I saw the optometrist when getting my contacts, I was able to finagle my vision in to being close enough to 20/20 for the optometrist to let me go, but on the followup today, I just let my vision be where it wanted to be and they gave me some of the fancy astigmatism contacts.  My vision is very very nearly as good as it is with my glasses and the awareness problems are gone.

So how does this relate to basketball?  I've heard so many times about players who "just see the court better".  It's been said about ever great passer that ever played.  They clearly have it going right already, but what about those less fortuante players that just can't ever seem to be aware of what's going on around them?  The Z-Bo and Trout's of the world?  Is it possible that they have natural vision problems that the "vision control part of the brain" is working overtime to correct, thereby robbing them of potential court vision?  Or perhaps they already know they have astigmatism (or somethign similar) and just don't have it treated properly.

Some people are just blessed with natural ability.  Usain Bolt was just built better for sprinting than Bill Walton.  Some people are just going to have better vision.  As far as I know though, what I've described in this post isn't something the normal optometry community considers, and we may have some players that are unnecessarily hold thier own "court vision" back.

I was upset about losing two in a row, but then I realized how cool it is to be upset about losing two in a row.

I admit that is somewhat mood voodoo and not very championshiply of me to say, but I'm only worried about being playoffshiply this year so... meh.

Of course if we lose to the Clippers, all zen bets are off... but that's not gonna happen so I don't need to worry about it.

There has been a lot of talk recently about who's getting how many shots next year.  It's nice to say Player X should get more or Player Y should get less when looking at them individually, but how many shots are there to go around?  Specifically, people are wondering if there is room for Trout to get a few extra shots this year.  Lets first take a look at how many shots Portland took last season as well as some other teams for comparison:

Team  - Total Shots Taken - Per Game

Portland - 6545 - 79.8

San Antonio - 6424 - 78.3

Phoenix - 6782 - 82.7

Denver - 7038 - 85.8

Boston - 6286 - 76.7

One interesting side note is that our number of shots per game is right about in the middle of the league despite our noteworthy slow "pace".  I can only assume that the fact that most of our games were low turnover games, on both sides of the ball, led to a few extra shots per game despite the slow pace.  That said, I don't think our pace will change a whole lot next year.  It will probably be a bit faster with our extra offensive weapons and a few more defense triggered fast breaks, but not a ton.  Here is the player specific info from last year.  First lets look at how many "shots/82-games" we will definitely open up.

Outbound Players:

Jack - 7.6 shots/82-games

Jones - 4.0

Green/Wafer/McRoberts -0.6

Total - 12.2

So far we have 12.2 shots to distribute to our new players.  Here are last year's players and their shots/82-games and some notes about expected changes in shots:

Roy - 14.3 - May get less shots as the offense doesn't have to run through him all the time.  Rudy in particular seems to be in position to take shots that Roy would have got last year... we'll add an extra 1.5 shots/game to the bin

Aldridge - 14.2 - See Roy, but substitute Oden for Rudy, add 2.0 to the bin

Outlaw - 11.7 - err... we'll see if there's anything extra left for Trout at the end

Webster - 8.0 - Jones gone = win for Martell, Rudy and to a lesser extent Oden = loss for Martell, overall = push

Blake - 7.8 - If Bayless proves to have a more reliable overall game than Jack or Roy/Rudy start runnig  the point more often, this could go down, add 2.0 to the bin

Frye - 5.5 - May lose some to Diogu, but maybe not... will be addressed below

Przybilla - 3.0 - I don't think Przy's minutes (23.6/game) will go down much with Oden on board, at least not until Oden has had a good year of "real 82 game season" conditioning under his belt.  I expect similar shots/game because of that

Rodriguez - 2.4 - I think he's officially an odd man out this year, add 1.5 to the bin

LaFrentz - 0.7 - With Oden and Diogu added to the front court, he's the new Victory Dance player, add .5 to the bin

Total - 67.7

That leaves us with 19.7 shots to distribute among our new players, and those players are:

Oden - 8.0 - About the same number of shots that Martell got last year (i.e. enough to say we're letting him learn, but not enough to let his inexperience kill us)

Fernandez - 5.5 - about what Jones got if looking just at the games he played in

Bayless - 5.5 - See Fernandez

Diogu - If he gets any shots, they are probably mostly taken from Frye's total, but between the two it will still probably be an extra 1.5

Total - 20.5 - That's 0.8 more than the amount that had "freed up" above, but this where the "we'll probably have a bit faster pace next year" comes in to play.  Unfortunately that doesn't leave anything left for Trout to pick up, but if things go as I predict, his 11.7 will be right in line with Roy and Aldridge.

So what do you all think?  Who's getting more or less shots than I predicted?  How about the team as a whole?

There has been a lot of discussion lately about which positions "win championships".  Conventional wisdom has always been that big men win championships.  Over the past several years, there has been a big counter movement that it's actually guards that win championships.

During the early years of the NBA, the former was almost certainly true.  If you had a top 7 footer, there were only a couple other teams in the league that really had any chance of defending you.  There's a reason that Wilt averaging over 50 points and 25 rebounds per game one year seems so unimaginable today.  In today's league, almost every team has, at the very least, a couple defensively competent big men.  The addition of the 3-pt line also swings the power away from the big guys.  Now shooting 40% from range is just as valuable as shooting 60% under the rim... and that's not even counting all the changes the NBA has made over the years to help space out the game for quick guards (hand check rules anyone?).

So what about those guards then.  Are they taking over the championships?  Three of the last four Finals MVPs were guards... but lets take a look at all of the dominant teams since 1980 (implementation of the 3-pt line and talent levels are comparable to today).  Dominant teams is defined as three or more chamionships:

80s Lakers - Led by PG (Magic Johnson)
80s Celtics - Led by SF (Larry Bird)
90s Bulls - Led by SG (Michael Jordan)
00s Lakers - Led by C (Shaquille O'Neal)
00s Spurs - Led by PF/C (Tim Duncan)

So that's two two votes for guards and two votes for big men and... wait a second... how did a SF sneak in to this one?  That's pretty inconclusive so lets look at the other teams that won championships:

Bad Boy Pistons - Led by PG (Isiah Thomas)
Mid 90s Rockets - Led by C (Hakeen Olajuwon)
'83 76s - Led by C (Moses Malone)
'04 Pistons - Led by... PF or PG depending on who you ask
'06 Heat - Led by SG (Dwayne Wade)

That's 2.5 more votes for big men and 2.5 more votes for the guards.

Of course none of those "led by" players above did it alone.  Magic has some pretty good big men on his teams (Kareem/Worthy) and Shaq got some help from a SG that's done pretty well so far.  Also, we can't forget that last year's finals MVP wasn't Duncan, it was Parker and the Bulls teams never really needed dominant big man.  They always had a hard-nosed cleanup man (Horace Grant/Dennis Rodman), but never a true dominant big man.  On the flip side though, the 80s Celtics were front loaded with the big three being SF/PF/C.  Sure, Danny Ainge and Dennis Johnson didn't suck, but nobody would mistake them for irreplaceable keys to their championship runs.

The common theme here is that you NEED a dominant player, and if you don't want to wait on a down year, another dominant player or two is a good idea, but it doesn't matter what position they play a long as the rest of the team is competent.  Good news LeBron, you aren't doomed to never win a championship because the best player on your team will never be a PF/C or a guard.

If you haven't seen, Tyler Hansbrough is going to have his jersey retired at UNC.  The same Hansbrough that will probably win most player of the year awards.  The same Hansbrough that may have had them last year if he wasn't forced to wear the schnozaroo for the last part of the season.  The same Hansbrough that is known for hard work, great post moves, rebounding, and a nasty streak.  The same Hansbrough that, when reviewed as an NBA prospect, typically gets raved about for three paragraphs before the inevitable "but he's not super athletic so mid-late first round".

I am completely serious when I say that if we had the second pick and Derrick Rose went first, I would want us to take Hansbrough.  I'm not saying that he is the second best player in the draft, just that he is the second best player for the Blazers.  He would be our Shane Battier or David Lee (i.e. hard working cleanup man) and enforcer at the same time.  I know we are waiting for Oden to fill in our paint next year, but as much as he's a beast, he's not nasty.  He can be our mountain in the middle, but he's not an enforcer.

There is no Jordan, Duncan, or Shaq in this years draft.  There aren't even any really any Carmello Anthonys.  If ever there was a year that it would be safe to draft need without worrying about who is going to haunt you for 15 years, it's this year.  The fact that we're likely to pick 13/14ish just makes it that much more convenient.

Hansbrough in '08!

Lets settle this.                                                                            

The rumor around here is that the Blazers do a pretty good job at preventing other team's superstars from having huge nights.  I decided to do a little research to see if that is true.

First, I needed some kind of way of measuring a "huge night".  I decided to use the ESPN rating from its daily leader board -- http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailyleaders .  The usual stat heavy analysis disclaimer applies (doesn't take defense/attitude in to account, influenced heavily by team pace), but then again, the whole "huge game" mentality has pretty much the same flaws.  < insert stats of players that have worse records when scoring 40+ here >

I defined "huge game" as any game of 55 or more ESPN rating points.  There were 151 such games before today.  Of those 151, 4 came against Portland or 2.65%.  Average is 3.33% (5 games) so the Blazers are slightly ahead of the curve.  In case you are curious, here is the entire league:

New York - 12 games
Atlanta - 9 games
Charlotte - 9 games
Memphis - 9 games
Indiana - 8 games
Milwaukee - 8 games
Utah - 8 games
Dallas - 7 games
Golden State - 7 games
LA Clips - 6 games
Phoenix - 6 games
Washington - 6 games
Cleavland - 5 games
New Jersey - 5 games
Seattle - 5 games
Toronto - 5 games
Chicago - 4 games
Denver - 4 games
Minnesota - 4 games
Orlando - 4 games
Portland - 4 games
Sacramento - 4 games
LA Lake - 3 games
Boston - 2 games
Philadelphia - 2 games
San Antonio - 2 games
Detroit - 1 game
Houston - 1 game
Miami - 1 game
New Orleans - 0 games (had to go all the way to 233rd place to get to them)

To try to differentiate between the teams a little more, I tried weighting each spot on the chart.  Some teams have allowed a lot of their games up top, while others only allowed a few squeak in at the bottom.  Orlando, for example, has four games on the board, but that includes both 1st and 3rd place!  I gave 250 points for first place, 100 points for 151st place, and counted by one in between.  Here are the rankings again, sorted by points "earned".

New York - 2085 - 12 games
Memphis - 1931 - 9 games
Utah - 1587 - 8 games
Atlanta - 1564 - 9 games
Charlotte - 1555 - 9 games
Indiana - 1418 - 8 games
Dallas - 1266 - 7 games
Milwaukee - 1280 - 8 games
Golden State - 1072 - 7 games
Phoenix - 1014 - 6 games
Washington - 987 - 6 games
Cleavland - 979 - 5 games
LA Clips - 978 - 6 games
Toronto - 964 - 5 games
Orlando - 906 - 4 games
New Jersey - 748 - 5 games
Seattle - 745 - 5 games
Denver - 715 - 4 games
Chicago - 672 - 4 games
Minnesota - 643 - 4 games
Portland - 608 - 4 games
LA Lake - 578 - 3 games
Sacramento - 522 - 4 games
San Antonio - 429 - 2 games
Boston - 368 - 2 games
Philadelphia - 289 - 2 games
Detroit - 225 - 1 game
Houston - 164 - 1 game
Miami - 124 - 1 game
New Orleans - 0 - 0

In this view, Portland has 2.28% of the 26425 total points (3.33% or 881 points is average).

Conclusion: Portland seems to be a little above average at preventing opposing stars from having huge games.  I'm guessing it feels better than that because we've allowed a lot more huge games over past years.

Some other observations... the reason that Utah is underachieving seems to be pretty evident and New Orleans quietly has one of the best defenses in the league (3rd in points allowed per 100 possessions at an even 100.0/100).  Miami, on the other hand, is a complete enigma.

Also, Roy shows up twice in the top 151 (74th, 84th).  LeBron is the king with 16 appearances including 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.  Dwight Howard has 8 appearances.  Allen Iverson has 6.  Caron Butler, Baron Davis, Yao Ming, and Dwyane Wade each have 5.

It looks like there is going to be a D-League HORSE game during All-Star weekend.  This is just about guaranteed to be my favorite event of the weekend.  I hoped it's televised.

See the Truehoop post at:
http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-29-59/H-O-R-S-E-is-Back.html?post=true
                 

Just about the only way we can avoid having Darius' contract on the book in '09 is to find another team that is paying somebody similar money to not play, but for a shorter period of time.  We could then throw in prospects/picks to compensate them for taking on the extra years.

Ideally it will be a team that needs a PG and/or is already going to be over the cap in '09 (and therefore isn't excessively concerned about the extra year).

Here are the teams that seem plausible and the key player we would receive (ordered from most to least likely):

Miami - Jason Williams: This year is kinda a wash for them and they need a young PG to bring up next to Wade.  I'm sure they wouldn't sneeze at a pick or two either and their cap is toast in '09 (Shaq's last year).  Heck, Darius would probably even get some decent play time with them.  Perfect fit IMO.

New York - Malik Rose: Marbury is getting old and I'm not so sure they're happy with Nate Robinson as their PG of the future.  It's also a perfect fit from the "gonna be over the cap in two years anyway" angle.  I wonder if their fans would riot if they took on another bad contract though.

Minnesota - Theo Ratliff: We would need to add in another player or two for the salaries to match (Darius + Jack would work).  I'm not so sure it really makes sense on their end other than in a "we're rebuilding so we can never have enough prospects/picks" kind of way... and ya never know with McHale running things.

Seattle - Kurt Thomas: Thomas is getting some playing time for them this year so it would require them sacrificing this year for the future even more.  On the other side I don't think they're sold on Ridnour as their long term PG solution.  They may be interested in picks, but this is kind of like Minnesota... doesn't really make a ton of sense on their end, but still plausible.

That's about it without getting in to multi-team stuff or stretching plausibility (next most likely was a deal similar to to the one with Miami with the Clippers and Cassel + cap filler which is a major stretch for several reasons).

It's near the end of this article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3150758

Interesting to see considering that both teams' fans have had plenty of reasons to be upset during Zach's stay.

I've seen a lot of the Tim Donaghy articles talk about some players getting ref favoritism like it's finally getting some credibility.

Now I'm no conspiracy theorist, but even from my early days watching the NBA back in the Drexler years it seemed as if it was always just known that some players got calls that others didn't.  TV guys talk freely about players like LeBron and Wade getting "MJ like respect from the refs".  Even the NBA seemed to "kinda, sorta, maybe" acknowledge it with phases like "keeping the players the fans paid to see on the floor" which is quite a lot for such a PR conscious league.

Did I just start on the Kool-Aid so early that I never realized that not everyone was drinking it, or are the sports writers out there just trying too hard to be unbiased?

For those that haven't heard, KG was traded to Boston for Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Gomes, Telfair, Theo and picks.  

I can't fault either team for pulling the trigger on that, but it really shows the difference in the way West and East teams are managed.

Most everyone agrees that Boston has a legitimate shot to make a few trips to the Finals over the next few years.  The problem is the phrase that almost always follows that statement:  "since they play in the East".

Now, as I said above, I'm not faulting Boston.  I actually really like the move.  If LeBron and a bunch of good players with flaws can make it to the Finals, throwing together a few superstars and hoping you peak at the right time against a team that just survived the brutal West is a pretty good shot at a title.  It worked for Miami.  If Boston can get a little bit of bench over the next year, they're in even better position than Miami was.

The problem is that the Boston formula is the easiest path to a title for Eastern Conference teams, but has a habit of producing second rate title contenders.  Was Miami really good enough to beat Denver, Phoenix, and San Antonio in consecutive rounds just to get to the Finals (which is fairly likely to be some poor team's situation next spring)?  Probably not, but out East they didn't have to.

Now lets look out West.  Minnesota had pretty much the same team Boston did last year.  One aging superstar, some good young talent, a few head cases, and a few bad contracts... but out West that means you're a bottom feeder.  Making some crazy attempt to field a second rate championship team and hoping they get lucky has almost no chance of success.  Heck, it even made more sense for Minny to go the star route since they had a better superstar and less young talent, but it was just too hopeless.  Out West you need a team that can make it through that Denver/Phoenix/San Antonio gauntlet and your only hope is to get a good solid young core and build them in to a first class team.

The West promotes building teams that can last for years.  It accepts nothing less than first rate title contenders.  Take a look at the promising young teams out West:

Portland
Seattle
Memphis
Minnesota
Utah

That's essentially a list of the non-playoff contenders (Utah excluded obviously).  Out West you have to either be contending or building a solid young team (or about to be blown up like the Kings and the Clips).

It can be done out East too as Toronto, Chicago, and possibly Altanta have shown.  Chicago, however, blew their cap space on an over the hill center (Ben Wallace) that doesn't address their biggest need (post scoring) and isn't at all on their time table, but hey!  That should still be good enough out East.

Tension over NBA reffing has been building up for many years and it seems this Donaghy scandal has finally burst it over the top.  Even if they get everyone to let go of the greater conspiracy theories and accept it as an isolated incident, all of the related issues aren't just going to go away quietly.

So the question is... what issues does the NBA face and what should they do about them?