SB Nation User Blog: Royster

Blall Don't Lie: BtBS

Royster — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:59:48 -0000

Blall Don't Lie: BtBS

Dwyer, not worried about the team. Re-opens the possibility of everyone's favorite trade target.

High Praise for Webster from Dwyer

Royster — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:07:04 -0000

High Praise for Webster from Dwyer

"41 points for Denver's go-to guy, mostly against Martell Webster(notes), a Portland wing who looks all the part of a first-team All-Defense guy. Webster was brilliant defensively, and it hardly mattered to Melo, who was potent from every conceivable angle."

Obviously better for Melo, but still, some national pub for Marty's efforts.

Starting 5 NOT set for opening night

Royster — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:17:05 -0000

Starting 5 NOT set for opening night

The money quote:
"McMillan did not say this would be the starting lineup for the Houston game, but like he has since training camp opened, he emphasized on Thursday that he wants balance offensively and defensively on both is first and second units."

Still sounds likely, but the door isn't shut yet for Greg.

Mythbusting the Rudy-Ginobili Comparisons

Royster — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:40:03 -0000

It seems that ever since a certain former European league MVP stormed into the Blazer team this past year, that we've been constantly bombarded with comparisons to another former European league MVP who plays for the San Antonio Spurs. These comparisons drive me insane, because, aside from being white SGs who played in Europe, there is almost no similarity to either their games, or their situations. In hopes of lessening the onslaught of these comparisons, I thought I'd take a second to punch holes in some of the most common axioms in this debate.

First off, though, I want to explicitly say that I don't mean to argue that Manu or Rudy are better than the other, just that they are two completely different players in two completely different situations. Saying they're very similar or in similar siutations would be no different than saying that Reggie Miller and Clyde Drexler were very similar players.

Myth 1: Ginobili was equally poor at getting to the rim as a rookie, so Rudy will develop that part of his game later.

Comparing their rookie seasons over at 82games.com (Ginobili and Rudy), it's apparent that even in his rookie year, Manu got to the rim a fair amount of the time, shooting 40% of his shots from inside. This is a similar percentage to Jerryd (48%) or Russell Westbrook (42%), both guys who were acknowledged to be excellent at getting the ball inside. At 16%, Rudy was much more similar to guys like Battier (21%), Ben Gordon (20%), or Webster last year (17%). The lowest % of inside shots that Manu has ever had was 26% (in 2007/2008), after he had slowed down considerably and was hampered by an ankle injury. Prior to that, he had never failed to shoot at least 34% of his shots inside.

Moreover, on those inside shots, Rudy was assisted on 67% of them, no doubt largely due to Sergio assists on alley oops. This isn't a bad thing, as one of Rudy's strengths is movement off the ball and taking advantage of defenders poor posiitoning, but it indicates that even when Rudy did get a shot attempt from inside, it didn't come from him beating his man off the dribble, but instead off of motion and backdoor cuts, indicating that he wasn't really able to effectively beat people off the dribble.

In contrast, only 44% of Manu's inside shots as a rookie were assisted, indicating that he was getting the ball, and even as a rookie, was able to put it on the floor and get inside for his own shot. For comparison's sake, here are Roy's (30%), Wade's (28%), Kobe's (37%), and Melo's (48%) assisted rates on inside baskets.

Finally, the other way to judge an ability to create a shot would be to look at how well they drew fouls. Rudy drew a foul on approximately 6% of his shot attempts last year, similar to Nic (6.5%), Battier (6.6%), Jameer Nelson (5.2%), OJ Mayo (6.6%), and Derek Fisher (5.2%). All good players, but all guys who were primarily jump shooters and didn't get inside a whole ton. As a rookie, Manu drew fouls on 15% of his jump shots, similar to Roy (13.8%), Wade (16.6%), Paul Pierce (15.5%), and Iguodala (16.2%) this year. All guys who can get to the cup fairly regularly.

Of course, I would be delinquent if I didn't not Rudy's VASTLY superior perimeter shooting here. Rudy had an eFG of 10% higher than Manu's on jumpers, mainly due to not only shooting 5% better from deep, but also taking more than twice as many triples, which is a pretty massive gulf any ways you look at it.

So to conclude, Manu's been able to get to the rim basically his entire career, although he's never been as good a shooter as Rudy is now. Still, assuming Rudy will develop that part of his game because "Manu did it" would be like assuming Sergio can learn to finish at the rim as well as Bayless because "Bayless developed it". Manu didn't all of a sudden start putting on the floor in his second and third years. He was always good at it, he just got better.

Myth 2: Manu's never had to start, so Rudy will be fine being a sixth man as long as he's in Portland.

This is perhaps the most confusing of all the comparisons for me. I think it's become so ingrained in popular belief because we're constantly bombarded with stories like "Manu okay moving to the 6th man", while ignoring the fact that every time one of those stories crops up, it's because he's being moved back to the bench from being a starter. In a strange coincidence, Manu has started exactly as many games as he's come off the bench for in his career. After sitting on the bench for his rookie year, when they won the title, he started for the first half of his second year before being moved back to the bench, and then after losing to LA in the playoffs, became a fixture in the starting lineup for the next two and a half years, including the title year in 2005 and the heartbreak in 2006 (when he gave Dirk an and 1 to send game 7 to OT). It was only midway through the following season that he was moved back to the bench.

The question is, will Rudy ever have that same kind of opportunity to start games here, which is doubtful with Roy and Nic around. Not that Nic is a better overall player, but it seems that would be Nate's preference. It's one thing to be okay with being moved to the bench, but it's an entirely different thing to be okay with going your entire career never having the opportunity to start. Maybe he's okay with that, but as we heard with some of the offseason rumblings with Trout over the last year, even if guys don't vocalize it, it's clear that starting is one of their goals. It should be noted that every recent sixth man of the year outside of Barbosa and Bobby Jax, either started, or went on to start the majority of their NBA career (Terry, Ginobili, Gordon, Miller).

I don't mean to say this is a deal breaker with Rudy or anything, but again, just that the Manu comparisons don't really fit. Manu has had ample time as a starter in SA, something that may never be available for Rudy here with the way the team is built.

Myth 3: If Rudy wants to play more, fine, Manu's averaged 28 mpg throughout his career, how come we can't give Rudy the same amount?

As stated before, Manu has spent extensive time as a starter for the Spurs. If you just look at his minute averages as a reserve, it gets a little dicier. Over his career, Manu has averaged 25.2 mpg coming off the bench, less than Rudy averaged this year (25.6). Moreover, there's only been one year in his career that he averaged more than 27 mpg off the bench (29.1 in 2007/2008). His career average is brought up by the fact that he's never averaged fewer than 28.5 mpg as a starter, so even if we were to keep Rudy in a "Ginobili"-type role off the bench, it would most likely be with a marginal increase in minutes, and not the moderately large one that I've heard rumblings about Rudy wanting.

Second, the other issue is that our set of wings outside of Rudy is substantially better than the Spurs wings outside of Ginobili. While the Spurs have always played with a defensive stopper (Bowen) for 35+ mpg, the only times that Ginobili has played alongside a decent third wing have been early in his career (Jackson and then Turkoglu), but that was before either was considered the player that they are now, and certainly neither were anywhere close to as good as Brandon is. Since his second year in the league, only one wing on the Spurs has played more mpg than Ginobili when healthy (Bowen). With Brandon here, that can never be the case for Rudy.

Even in theory, assuming Brandon plays 37 mpg (which he has the last two seasons), and Nic and Rudy play the entirety of the rest of the wing minutes, it's impossible for them both to play 30 mpg. In practice, though, teams will almost always split up the wing minutes between four players, even if one of them is only playing spot minutes (Lakers with Ariza, Kobe, Vujacic and Walton, Magic with Lee, Hedo, Pietrus, and Redick, Denver with Jones, Melo, Smith, and Kleiza/Carter, Cleveland with West, LBJ, Wally, and Sasha). Even though Vujacic and Pavlovic are only averaging about 10 mpg in the playoffs, if you assume that's what Webster will play filling in as the 4th wing, you're down to Nic only playing around 20 mpg again in order for Rudy to be around that 28 mpg threshold, and I'm sure all of us would expect Nic to play more than that next year.

Again, this point doesn't mean to dog on Rudy, just to point out that their situations are completely different. Manu has been the Spurs best offensive wing during his entire career there, something we'll never be able to say about Rudy as long as Brandon't on the team.

And to end up, I really don't mean to say this is a call to trade Rudy, that he can't fit, or that he's an inferior player at all, just that there are very real differences between not only their games, but also their situations that are deeper than just dismissing any concerns with "well, it works in SA with Manu". Rudy's an excellent player in his own rights, and by all measures seemed to work well with Brandon, but once you get beyond the "white player from a European league" point, comparisons to Manu just fall apart if you bother to look at them a little deeper. If anything, it just strikes me as lazy stereotyping, like Adam Morrison or Keith Van Horn getting compared to Larry Bird, or Rubio getting compared to Sergio. Feel free to rebut away, though.

Trade Drawer 5/21: Now Conley-Free

Royster — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:30:50 -0000

Well, after 1200 comments or so in the last two trade drawers, largely dominated by discussions of a certain Grizzlies point guard, I thought we should mix it up a little bit. For everyone dying for more Conley-Bayless debate, I suggest going here, but let's try and limit this to non-Conley related topics for this post, at least.

So without further ado, I turn to Norsktroll's first love for a draft trading partner: the Washington Wizards. As has been pointed out by Norsk and others previously, Abe Pollin is really trying to get under the luxury tax threshold while keeping his core in place. Since they have a couple bad contracts, but no real assets outside of their pick, it seems to be a good use of our cap space. So here's a starting proposal:

Sergio, Outlaw for Darius Songaila, Deshawn Stevenson, and #5 overall pick.

Obviously Sergio sounds like he wants out, and Outlaw's time will be severely curtailed with Webster and Batum gobbling up any SF minutes that aren't used by Brandon/Rudy, but both are cheap pieces for Washington. Stevenson is pretty worthless, bus Songaila has shown himself to be a serviceable back up PF, and we'd be able to take the number 5 pick, and look at one of the many non-Rubio PGs in the draft. Based on draftexpress.com (I'm too lazy to cross check all the sites), the following guys would be available at 5 and expected to go in the lottery: Jordan Hill, James Harden, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry, Dejuan Blair, Ty Lawson, Gerald Henderson, Jonny Flynn, Earl Clark. A decent list of names.

And let's try and avoid Conley talk in here for now.

EDIT: Salary info for Songaila and Stevenson.

Both expiring contracts in 2011 (Stevenson has a PO for his final season). Stevenson owed ~$8 million total, Songaila owed ~$9 million total. This is enough to get Washington under the luxury tax.

Poll

So, if we end up with the 5th pick, who do you take?

Jordan Hill

4 votes

James Harden

8 votes

Tyreke Evans

8 votes

Stephen Curry

12 votes

Dejuan Blair

13 votes

Ty Lawson

16 votes

Gerald Henderson

1 votes

Jonny Flynn

5 votes

Earl Clark

3 votes

Mike from Queens

17 votes

Other

11 votes

98 votes | Poll has closed

You Be The GM: Jerryd Bayless/Epic basketball-reference fail by Henry

Royster — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:11:02 -0000

You Be The GM: Jerryd Bayless/Epic basketball-reference fail by Henry

The blogfather contributes the oregonlive entry for Jerryd, however, he messes up the sorting algorithm to generate his "list of similar players", which, given his rather lengthy list of criteria is fairly restrictive.

Henry's list: http://www.basketball-reference.com/fc/tiny.cgi?id=lX5aA

Actual List: http://www.basketball-reference.com/fc/tiny.cgi?id=tEGmb

The new key to this series. EDIT: Morning after clarifications

Royster — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 06:02:28 -0000

I might need a little leeway here, because I'm a little buzzed in my attempt to drown my sorrows away from this last Blazer loss. I've been thinking this ever since about the second quarter of the game, though, so bear with me, and hopefully the spelling will be tolerable.

Throughout my years of watching the NBA playoffs, what seems to be self-evident is that success is all about exploiting matchups. The most successful teams tend to be the ones who are most effective at utilizing their biggest matchup advantages throughout the game. Witness tonight; Houston had two major matchup advantages, at PG and starting C, and utilized these to enormous effect. Brooks and Yao flat out embarrassed Joel and Blake. Obviously Brooks isn't going to shoot 60% from downtown all series, and Yao isn't going to be perfect from the field all series, but their domination of our guys seemed to be the main places that we got taken to the wood shed tonight.

The key for us to come back then being, where do we have a huge advantage over Houston. It'd be tempting to say PF, but anyone who watched the game tonight would say that Scola was seriously undervalued as a force by Blazer fans. For me, the one place that jumped out at me as a matchup overwhelmingly in our favor was the Oden-Deke matchup. Simply put, every time Oden got the ball on the block against Mutombo, he was able to get FTs, at the very least, with a couple and 1's resulting there, as I recall. We had exactly one efficient offensive player last night (no offense to Roy, who was a lion), and that was Greg. I was absolutely flabbergasted we didn't feed him more (I know, sinus infection, yada yada).

My point being, Greg gave us an overwhelming advantage on the block against his counterpart, and we barely went to him. This is going to be something that we need to exploit in order to win this series. After that game, I have a hard time believing that will win this series without Greg putting up something like an 18/10 this series. Obviously going to him a lot will cause Houston to put Yao on him, but I have a hard time believing that Yao could consistently guard a guy as strong as Greg without picking up one or two cheap fouls, which would have been enough to get Yao off the court early in this game, and allowed us to maybe put together a run before the end of the first half. As good as Yao was, Greg nearly matched him at 6-7 and 3-4 on FTs.

The sky certainly isn't falling yet, but that was definitely a gut check loss, and when Nate goes back to re-evaluate, I hope a lot more Greg is in the prescription for game 2.

EDIT: Now that I look at this, I never meant to imply that we'd be able to beat Houston with similar output from all our players but with a greater Oden contribution. We'll need much more from LaMarcus, Trout and the usual suspects, but based on his previous history with Houston, I just don't see LaMarcus dominating Scola like we'll need him to do if we're going to win through our normal offensive sets.

Simply put, I think Houston had us perfectly scouted down on offense. doubling LaMarcus in the post right as he got deep enough to where he likes to make his move, and staying at home on Rudy and Blake all night. Yao's early domination and foul took us a little out of our offense as we desperately probed him to try and get foul 2 on him with about 400 P&R's on every straight possession (which actually worked okay while Yao refused to really contest Roy in the first). The one thing that seems to be somewhat immune to scheming right now is Greg's strength down low. Either it forces Yao to play him and tires him out/leads to Yao fouls, or they have to start aggressively doubling him which'll open up things for Rudy and Trout outside.

And while Greg did get most of his numbers after the game was decided, I thought he looked just as good when we went to him in the second, we just barely ever fed him down there.

One Final Leap in Hollinger's power rankings

Royster — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:31:13 -0000

One Final Leap in Hollinger's power rankings

All the way up to 3 (ahead of the Magic) on the eve of the playoffs. Houston is 6 right now, though, sadly.

Expanding On the Road Records of the West's Elite

Royster — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:58:15 -0000

After reading through a fanpost about the Blazers road record against the top west team being roughly equally as bad as every other team at the top of the west, I thought I'd investigate it further. For me, the problem hasn't seemed to be that we've just been losing, but that we've been getting regularly blown out early in non-competitive games, as opposed to keeping it close throughout, which I'd assume the other "vet" teams have done. Along those lines, using the game flows at popcornmachine.net, I decided to waste an hour going through each western conference team's road games and look at the max lead, max deficit, and final point differential, to get an idea of whether we've been more or competitive than other team's on the road. Here's the data, with some snap analysis. Enjoy.

First off, before I get into anything, it's shocking how rare a top western conference team beats another one on the road. To put it in perspective, the last time it happened was when we beat NO (CP Groin game). That's nearly a month and a half, which is ridiculous. Strangely, WC teams have beaten the top east teams on the road a couple times in that span, just never a west team.

And without further discussion, here's the data for each team, in order of standings, saving the Blazers for last, though. Each row refers to one game. And the averages are shown in the final row.

LAL:

	Max Lead	Max Deficit	Final
	5	15	-7
	5	14	-11
	4	9	-4
	5	11	-1
	5	9	5
	21	3	13
	18	6	13
	23	0	7
	8	12	7
	9	9	7
Averages	10.3	8.8	2.9

LA as the best road record among the top teams, but even then, this was all done at the start of the season. Each of their last 4 games has been a loss. Still, 8.8 as an average max deficit is by far the lowest, and 10.3 is the highest max lead so it's pretty clear they've fared the best on the road. Still, their performance in the last 4 games is pretty similar to every other team listed here. Also, the only team with a positive point differential in these games.

SA:

	Max Lead	Max Deficit	Final
	9	10	-5
	1	29	-18
	6	17	-8
	12	6	10
	11	4	6
	2	21	-14
	5	13	1
	9	7	-7
	7	11	7
	24	2	17
	0	20	-19
	4	12	-1
Averages	7.5	12.6666667	-2.58333

SA's been the second best WC team on the road, although being blown out a couple times depresses their numbers some. It's happened just enough to not write these games off as flukes, but they've had far more games that they haven't fallen far behind in than anyone but LA.

Denver:

	Max Lead	Max Deficit	Final
	8	15	-12
	8	6	-2
	7	12	-9
	9	10	-7
	9	12	-12
	16	0	10
	0	27	-14
	21	3	10
	3	14	-4
Averages	9	11	-4.44444

Another team that started off better than they've been playing recently, Denver's dropped their last 5 on the road. Outside of getting blown out in the one game, though, they have a pretty low average deficit, so they're in most road games.

NO:

	Max Lead	Deficit	Final
	2	15	-14
	5	16	-4
	8	15	-13
	7	9	7
	9	33	-26
	11	7	11
	1	26	-5
	16	7	15
	4	17	-15
	14	8	4
	1	18	-9
	16	0	13
Averages	7.833333	14.25	-3

Nothing too special here. Their road record recently is a little better than most, but they've still fallen behind big in each of their last three games. -3 is one of the better point differentials in the group, although being down at least 15 in over half of their games is a little ugly. Still, not nearly as bad as some other teams.

Houston:

	Max Lead	Max Deficit	Final
	7	13	-7
	0	9	-9
	2	14	-10
	14	5	-2
	19	8	12
	18	29	-29
	3	10	-3
	14	5	10
Averages	9.625	11.625	-4.75

Houston's actually been one of the better teams on the road. They've been in all but one game they played, and even that blowout was kind of a wonky game where they were up 18 early and just collapsed. Even if their road record doesn't show it, probably one of the more dangerous road teams. Without that 29 point loss, they'd be second in point differential among this group behind LA.

Utah:

	Lead	Deficit	Final
	0	22	-14
	1	24	-20
	0	16	-9
	12	11	-7
	0	20	-13
	2	16	-5
	3	9	-2
	9	30	-25
Averages	3.375	18.5	-11.875

Here's where it gets ugly. Not only has Utah not won a game on the road, they've been regularly blown out and out of games. 18.5 is by far the worst average deficit and -11.8 is easily the worst point differential. Not only that, they've trailed wire to wire in 3 of their last 5 games against these teams. Blame it on injuries or whatever, but if any fans need to be shouting about their road record, it's jazz fans.

Dallas:

	Max Lead	Max Deficit	Final
	5	22	-16
	3	17	-17
	16	11	-7
	5	29	-28
	4	17	-2
	7	32	-28
	1	16	-9
	10	8	8
	12	12	-7
	12	2	10
	5	10	-3
	23	4	17
Averages	8.583333	15	-6.83333

Also pretty ugly. They've been down big in each of their last 7 games, and their numbers are being largely propped up by their early season success. They seem to be fading fast here.

Phoenix:

	Max Lead	Deficit	Final
	3	28	-26
	14	8	-6
	12	5	-5
	2	12	-5
	0	23	-15
	3	18	-13
	9	17	-12
	6	7	4
Averages	6.125	14.75	-9.75

Nothing too special here, although notable that half of their games have been blowouts. A couple good showings recently, though, so they could be kind of the anti-mavs in this respect.

Portland:

	Max Lead	Max Deficit	Final
	4	18	-16
	1	15	-15
	7	18	-4
	3	15	-5
	8	20	8
	9	19	-14
	4	8	-8
	2	17	-9
	2	15	-10
	5	7	-5
	11	7	-7
	8	14	-11
	0	23	-20
Averages	4.923077	15.0769231	-8.9231

And now we get to us. In our 13 road games, it's pretty distressing that we've been down at least 14 points in all but three of our games, and at least 15 in our last 6. We're the second-worst both average lead and average deficit, and have the 3rd worst point differential, so it's clear that we're among the worst road teams in this pseudo-round robin set up.

Also, we have a fair boost in our numbers from the CP game being turned from a blowout into a solid win thanks to Antonio Daniels, so we could be 0-13 on the road instead.

While it's clear that none of the west's elite fares well on the road against each other, it's equally clear that we're one of the worst teams at it. Us, Utah, and Phoenix have been significantly worse than the other 6 teams, so it's clear that whatever we're doing against these teams isn't working, and that we regularly fall behind big in these games.

Aside from that, make of it what you will.

Thorpe's rookie watch

Royster — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:06:59 -0000

Thorpe's rookie watch

Not sure how this one slipped through. He loves Oden's potential and has some solid words for Bayless also. He leaves Batum out of the list of rookies starting for a playoff team, though.