Not to distract from the playoff push and amazingness that is the blazers right now but I have realized that Lamarcus finally seems to be getting more respect from other players around the league. Part of it is that until this season not only did other nba players seem to just underrate or not respect aldridge's game, they almost acted as if he was a non factor and pretend his stat line was irrelevant and made him look better then he was (basically the same way i view kevin love- cool stats but id prefer alot of PF's before him with alot worse stat lines if im a gm). He never seemed to be able to shake the image that all he does is shoot jump shots. Sure, he developed into a terrific outside shooter very early into his nba carear but the predominant view of him being soft and unable to score in the paint was to simple and ignored the complexity of lamarcus as a player.

The view completely glossed over what Nate put Lamarcus in position to do, and asked him to do. We all know Nate likes to keep the floor spread on offense, and for most of Aldirdge's carear keep the paint open for roy. On defense nate likes to protect the paint and dominate the defensive glass. Aldridges rookie year nate certainly didn't encourage him to focus on scoring in the paint, but to develop a more well rounded game and continue to improve on knocking down that midrange jumper. Why? He was playing next to Randolph or Joel. no need to clog the paint when zach was in, and joel cant spread the floor so lamarcus wouldn't have any room to effectively operate in the paint (let alone for a rookie trying to adjust to the nba) anyways if nate had wanted him to. In both cases, Aldridge was more useful spreading the floor and hitting his jumper and ceding the paint to zach and roy. and don't forget that when joel went down in february lamarcus finished his rookie year starting at center.

And then greg oden got drafted. what do you think nate told lamarcus to focus on during the offseason? post moves? um no. this is the same dude who tried starting blake over dre. nate is obsessed with spreading the floor. you can bet rookie lamarcus was told to come back the next year ready to give oden space and live by the pick on pop with roy. sadly, oden got hurt. but id say the improvement lamarcus made coming into his 2nd year was remarkable. the best front court that year was la and joel, so once again it made more sense to not clog up the paint for roy. however, when outlaw played 4 and la 5, he showed a ton of promise in the paint  with limited opportunities. yet with aldridge at 5 and joel on the bench, the already dangerous pick and pop between roy and aldridge became lethal with outlaw in the corner and joel on the bench.

Next offseason, same thing. with oden coming back, why should lamarcus focus on improving his low post game? he was much more valuable to the team improving his face up game. not only did nate ask for more of the same from la, the number one offensive goal nate gave la during offseason was to EXTEND his range to the corner 3. sure they wanted him to continue to develop a lowpost game, but at much less of a priority and extent than they wanted him to improve his face up game. no way was la going to get a chance to play alot in the low post his 3rd year.

In his 4th, oden went down 22 games into the season and then followed by joel. up until this point the entire national media (notably chuck) had already been criticizing the blazers for not having a low post scorer. instead of understanding nate never wanted la's focus to be in the post and allow oden to develop into the low block scorer they chose to overlook lamarcus's emerging post game, albeit through limited opportunities. but now with oden and joel injured finally the team demanded la step up and play in the block. he began to adapt his game in the middle of the season and progressed very well. he started demanding double teams on a regular basis but was unable to improve enough during the season to effectively exploit the double team. in a sense, he had developed a good enough low post game to be effective in the paint, yet teams were still able to shut him down if they committed to stoping him. this forced him to teeter back and forth between his outside game and inside game depending on how good of a game he was having. the more teams tried to stop him in the paint the more willing he was to just shoot jumpers.

Every low post scorer encounters the same learning curve when the transition to the nba. scoring in the paint in the nba is tough. and once you learn how, then teams double you. and then it becomes really tough. most great low post scorers dont have la's sweet jumper however. this forces them to keep hitting their head over and over again against the double team wall until they either learn to overcome it, or their coach realizes it is futile, will never happen, and at that point try to get that player to develop a better midrange jumper. lamarcus was stuck in a grey area where in the short term (during a game) he better helped his team by going back to his midrange jumper when teams began doubling him, and the long run where he needed to eventually get more comfortable exploiting the double team. 

The same point can be made about every offseason of his with oden always suposed to be inserted into the offense . yet this offseason, with an already elite midrange jumper for his position, he focused on a low post game.

The results speak for themselves. which is why media personalities and players alike are all starting to give him long overdue props. its just too many of them simply think something all of the sudden clicked in LA's head and that is why hes good now. instead, the truth is that something finally clicked in their heads.

All of this brings me to my point. Not only should Lamarcus start, or at the very least, back up Dwight Howard on team USA next olympics, he finally is getting the appropriate respect from his peers to allow this to be possible. 

In the 2008 olympics, Howard started at 5 and Bosh backed him up. Bosh however played more minutes and normally finished games. Howard was simply to much of an unnecessary risk shooting free throws at the end of games. It is more then that though. Undoubtably a key reason Lebron and Wade were duped into wedding themselves to Bosh for 6 years was his performance during the olympics. they loved playing with an athletic big guy who wouldn't clog the paint and was able to knock down jumpers off kick-outs for easy assists. Bosh proved to be great for the international game, Howard more awkward. Yet from team USA's perspective, while Bosh may have been slightly more useful then Howard it was still more of a wash between which one to use since their strengths and weaknesses were so different. With Bosh they give up too much defense and low-post scoring, and with Howard they have difficulty creating driving lanes for James, Wade and co. Yet Paul and D-Will found pick and rolls with Howard far more effective then with Bosh, not to mention being able to throw countless more alley-ops to Howard then Bosh. The two complemented each other great, but im sure coach k would of loved to morph them into one player. 

His assistant, Nate, did just that for him.