A word of praise for Blake

[BGrantFan]

After a game like last night the best you can say about any player is that they sucked the least. Blake, Batum and DC are the winners of the coveted "We didn't suck as bad as everyone else" award. LMA is not in the running due to expectations and his failure to meet them.

LaMarcus had 15/15/4 assist with 4 steals and a block. He did this on 10 shot attempts. If his name was Greg Oden, people would be outraged over him not getting the ball on a night he was dominant. It is difficult for LMA to meet expectations when the guards and SF are launching up shots instead of feeding him the ball.

If that stat line doesn't meet expectations, what can Aldridge possibly do to please people?

 

[Blaze01]

Welcome to making $65 million and already being a good player....

The problem with Aldridge is expectations...and not just from fans BTW...He suffers from the same thing that Rasheed Wallace did...an already good player who be a very good player if he did certain things better...and signing a $65 million dollar contract only highlight that gap IMO....

I think Aldridge is very capable of playing better than he has, but he has played pretty good this year....

Deserving of some criticism? Yeah I think so, but he is WAY down the list in my book...

 

[andalusian]

There's a difference between ignoring something and understanding what it means.

Steve Blake has benefited from playing the majority of his minutes over the last three years with Brandon Roy. It's called the coattail effect.

He had an over 60% win% in Denver and he maintained the win% this year when demoted to play in the 2nd unit. During that time (with Roy playing the majority of his minutes with Miller) Roy's win% went down closer to Miller instead of Miller's win% going up closer to Roy's. Try a new argument, the data does not support your position, again.

Yeah, I agree, there is a difference between ignoring something and understanding what it means. It is a shame, however, that some people make up their mind and pick and choose the stats they want to present to support their position.

If the goal was to win at the PER championship - Blake would be an awful player. But, it is not. It is about winning NBA games by a team - and Blake is a fantastic role player. Not a great individual player, can not build a team around him, can not feature him as a designated scorer - and like most role players - sometimes he stinks the place.

But, the kind of absurd fixation some of you have with individual stats and the need to lay blame at the role players is just that - absurd. Blake is a steady hand, he is not flashy, he is not likely to win you many games - but he is not likely to lose you too many. He does what he is asked to do - and what the Blazers have done recently was turn the ball over tons (something Blake does not usually do) and play atrocious perimeter defense (something that, unfortunately, Blake is better at than most guards we have on the roster).

So, keep on your fixation on PER and cries of "Blake" sucks and "Nate" sucks - but there is more to a basketball game than that. Blake is a fine player, especially given his willingness to play starter or bench roles, his salary and the fact that without Roy we only have one other reliable ball-handler in Miller.

 

[Boob-No-More]

He had an over 60% win% in Denver and he maintained the win% this year when demoted to play in the 2nd unit. During that time (with Roy playing the majority of his minutes with Miller) Roy's win% went down closer to Miller instead of Miller's win% going up closer to Roy's. Try a new argument, the data does not support your position, again.

Good god, I thought we beat this to death last time. Blake benefits from playing on good teams with good players. A bad player on a good team will have a better win% than a good player on a bad team.

Is Steve Blake a better player than Brandon Roy? Is Steve Blake more critical to the success of the Portland Trailblazers than Brandon Roy? Fuck no. But Blake has a higher win%. Coattail effect. Blake benefits by playing with Roy. Roy is penalized by playing with Blake.

Blake also benefited from playing, as a starter, with Oden (before the injury).

You're wrong on Roy's win% decreasing after Miller became the starting PG. It went up - as did Miller's. The problem is, it was short lived. The two played great together for a couple weeks, and then Roy got injured. Blake has still played more minutes with Roy and Oden than Miller has. Again coattail effect.

You blindly cling to this ONE dubious stat to support your argument in favor of Steve Blake and ignore ALL others. If you just look at the top page Blazer team page at 82games.com you would see that Blake's net production is -4.3, his net oncourt/offcourt rating is -1.7 and his simple rating is -3.3 (notice teh negative signs) By comparsion, Andre Miller's net production is +4.3, his net oncourt/offcourt rating is +2.4 and his simple rating is +3.5 (notice the plus signs). The Blazers net team production is worse when Blake is in the game, yet you continue to insist, through some sort of magic, that Blake has more of a positive impact on this team than Andre Miller.

The team's net production with Steve Blake in the game is -2.8 points per 100 possessions.

The team's net production with Andre Miller in the game is +3.8 points per 100 possessions.

That's not individual production, that's team production. So, don't play the "individual stats dont' tell the whole story" argument. The fact is, Steve Blake (he is a net negative), for the season, has hurt his team and Andre Miller (net positive) has helped his team.

BNM

 

[BGrantFan]

LaMarcus had 15/15/4 assist with 4 steals and a block. He did this on 10 shot attempts. If his name was Greg Oden, people would be outraged over him not getting the ball on a night he was dominant. It is difficult for LMA to meet expectations when the guards and SF are launching up shots instead of feeding him the ball.

If that stat line doesn't meet expectations, what can Aldridge possibly do to please people?

I decided to check on this stat line and see where it ranked in recent NBA history.

Over the past 10 years, a 15/15/4 assist/4 steal game has been accomplished 29 times in the NBA. Of those 29 times, only two players have taken less shots than Aldridge did against OKC (Posey 8 FGA in April '03; Odom 9 FGA in March '07).

I'm not sure what more Aldridge could have done against OKC except perhaps get the ball more.

Link

 

[Rastapopoulos]

Is Steve Blake a better player than Brandon Roy? Is Steve Blake more critical to the success of the Portland Trailblazers than Brandon Roy? Fuck no. But Blake has a higher win%. Coattail effect. Blake benefits by playing with Roy. Roy is penalized by playing with Blake.

Aren't the coattails supposed to be behind? Shouldn't Steve Blake at best have the same win% as Roy? And that would be assuming that Roy never played without Blake or Blake without Roy. If either of those things happened, Blake should do worse than Roy. Unless Blake has the amazing superpower of riding the coattails of every player he plays with and somehow having better win% than any of them.

 

[Boob-No-More]

Aren't the coattails supposed to be behind? Shouldn't Steve Blake at best have the same win% as Roy? And that would be assuming that Roy never played without Blake or Blake without Roy. If either of those things happened, Blake should do worse than Roy. Unless Blake has the amazing superpower of riding the coattails of every player he plays with and somehow having better win% than any of them.

Really reaching, aren't you?

Blake does not magically have a better win% than EVERYONE he plays with, but he has benefited from playing big minutes with the best players on the team (and yes, riding their coattails). For instance, in addition to riding Roy's coattails, Blake started every game Oden did (66.7% win%) and benefitted from doing so.

The facts are, Blake's individual performance sucks. By every other measure, he has a negative impact on his TEAM's performance, but we're supposed to ignore ALL of that and base our assessment of him as a player on this one dubious stat?

I don't think so.

BNM

 

[LittleAlex]

Really reaching, aren't you?

Blake does not magically have a better win% than EVERYONE he plays with, but he has benefited from playing big minutes with the best players on the team (and yes, riding their coattails). For instance, in addition to riding Roy's coattails, Blake started every game Oden did (66.7% win%) and benefitted from doing so.

The facts are, Blake's individual performance sucks. By every other measure, he has a negative impact on his TEAM's performance, but we're supposed to ignore ALL of that and base our assessment of him as a player on this one dubious stat?

I don't think so.

BNM

Yes I would ignore all of that + ignore the one stat that tells a different tale about Blake.

The current state of quantified analysis of basketball is pitiful. It isn't all that good at predicting what will happen when a group of players get together on the floor.

In fact, it can't manage that at all.

PER, adjusted +/- and the rest don't get it done.

Oddly enough, the last two games have put me in the uncomfortable position of defending my least favorite player on the team.

I hope no one thinks I am suggesting that Blake is good. I am not. He is terrible most nights.

But Blake's play in the last two games helped the team far more then it hurt. In the Thunder game only because he wasn't an utter disaster and the Suns game because he really did kick some ass.

In the long run the Blazers would be better off without Blake because he takes minutes away from guys who have the potential to be better the Blake ever will be. He would have to have many, many games like the last two to convince me otherwise.

It would be awesome if somehow Blake was able to do just that. I honestly don't give one shit which guy steps up as long as someone does.

I just find the probability of Blake being that guy to be just about zero.

 

[BGrantFan]

Really reaching, aren't you?

Blake does not magically have a better win% than EVERYONE he plays with, but he has benefited from playing big minutes with the best players on the team (and yes, riding their coattails). For instance, in addition to riding Roy's coattails, Blake started every game Oden did (66.7% win%) and benefitted from doing so.

The facts are, Blake's individual performance sucks. By every other measure, he has a negative impact on his TEAM's performance, but we're supposed to ignore ALL of that and base our assessment of him as a player on this one dubious stat?

I don't think so.

BNM

Well that's not true at all. He is 4th on the team in terms of +/- for the year. How can you say that he's had a negative impact on team performance when he leads the active roster in Win% and is 4th in +/-, a number that has actually increased since he's been coming off the bench with true negative impact players like Rudy, Bayless, and Pendergraph?

You keep saying that Blake has a completely negative impact on the team ... based on what, exactly? His PER? That's an individual statistic, and if you look at 5-player +/- units, Blake is on the top 2 and 3 of the 4 overall. The fact of the matter is, the Blazers are a more successful TEAM with Blake on the floor, for whatever reason. Holding your overly negative opinion in light of obvious facts seems rather stubborn, doesn't it?

Why does Blake make the team more successful? Who knows. Maybe it's his bbiq. Maybe he whispers sweet nothings into his teammates ears. Maybe he's a magical elf.

http://www.nba.com/statistics/plusm...omb=5&season=22009&split=9&team=Trail Blazers

 

[Boob-No-More]

Well that's not true at all. He is 4th on the team in terms of +/- for the year. How can you say that he's had a negative impact on team performance when he leads the active roster in Win% and is 4th in +/-, a number that has actually increased since he's been coming off the bench with true negative impact players like Rudy, Bayless, and Pendergraph?

You keep saying that Blake has a completely negative impact on the team ... based on what, exactly? His PER? That's an individual statistic, and if you look at 5-player +/- units, Blake is on the top 2 and 3 of the 4 overall. The fact of the matter is, the Blazers are a more successful TEAM with Blake on the floor, for whatever reason. Holding your overly negative opinion in light of obvious facts seems rather stubborn, doesn't it?

Why does Blake make the team more successful? Who knows. Maybe it's his bbiq. Maybe he whispers sweet nothings into his teammates ears. Maybe he's a magical elf.

http://www.nba.com/statistics/plusm...omb=5&season=22009&split=9&team=Trail Blazers

Oh god, not the consistently misused +/- stat again. It's just a slight variation on win%. Same principal, same flaws. It's a TEAM stat that measures how the TEAM performs when an individual player is in the game. As such, there are NINE other variables that add enough noise to the stat to make it totally meaningless for single game, single player analysis, and practically useless for a sample size of anything less than three years worth of data. Even then, there is a LOT of noise that has to be filtered out. Players teammates change from season to season, opponents change game to game, etc.

Is Anderson Varejao the third best player in the entire NBA? He has the third best +/- (and until recently, led the league). Is Derek Fisher a better player than Kevin Durant? He has a better +/-. Varejao and Fisher are role players who benefit from playing beside superstars on winning teams. Yes, they are a part of their teams' success, but not nearly as vital as their ridiculously high +/- ratings imply. Again, they are riding the coattails of their superior teammates, just like Steve Blake, and their +/- and win% are a direct result of this coattail effect.

BTW, for those who INSIST on misusing the +/- stat to make Blake look good, consider this, Martell Webster has the highest +/- on the team (by a substantial margin) and Andre Miller now has a higher +/- for the seaon than Steve Blake. If you're going to misuse a stat, at least pick one that supports your argument.

BNM

 

[BGrantFan]

Andre Miller now has a higher +/- for the seaon than Steve Blake. If you're going to misuse a stat, at least pick one that supports your argument.

BNM

Where did I ever say anything about Miller, other than that he's been solid and has played like a borderline All-Star with Roy out? Please point it out. Otherwise, you are arguing a strawman with me when in reality I love what Miller is giving this team.

Your argument seems to be that Blake is negatively impacting the team. I don't recall using Miller as a comparative, and if I did, I certainly didn't mean to do it for any other reason than to illustrate that Blake may not be complete garbage. If you took that to somehow mean that I think he's a better player than Andre Miller ... well ... I really don't see where you made that assumption. Help me out here!

 

[Boob-No-More]

Where did I ever say anything about Miller, other than that he's been solid and has played like a borderline All-Star with Roy out? Please point it out. Otherwise, you are arguing a strawman with me when in reality I love what Miller is giving this team.

Your argument seems to be that Blake is negatively impacting the team. I don't recall using Miller as a comparative, and if I did, I certainly didn't mean to do it for any other reason than to illustrate that Blake may not be complete garbage. If you took that to somehow mean that I think he's a better player than Andre Miller ... well ... I really don't see where you made that assumption. Help me out here!

I didn't direct that specific comment at you, did I? If I did, please show me where I did.

Since you're supposedly new here, perhaps your oblivious to the fact that the whole Miller vs. Blake debate has been going on ALL season. And, perhaps you are also oblivious to the fact that the Blake supporters ALWAYS trot out the +/- (and equally dubious win%) stat as the basis of their argument (since nothing else supports their position).

There, now you know.

BNM

 

[BGrantFan]

I didn't direct that specific comment at you, did I? If I did, please show me where I did.

Since you're supposedly new here, perhaps your oblivious to the fact that the whole Miller vs. Blake debate has been going on ALL season. And, perhaps you are also oblivious to the fact that the Blake supporters ALWAYS trot out the +/- (and equally dubious win%) stat as the basis of their argument (since nothing else supports their position).

There, now you know.

BNM

Unless I am mistaken, you specifically were quoting my post when you mentioned Miller as my "argument", and I also used to illustrate that Blake helps the team, for whatever reason.. So, since I never said that about Miller, and I love what he does for the team, how about you try to focus on the poster you are conversing with, and what they post, instead of assigning them positions that have nothing to do with them? Or, you can just continue to make stuff up in order to prove your point (a point that I think is dead-on about Miller).

 

[Boob-No-More]

how about you try to focus on the poster you are conversing with, and what they post, instead of assigning them positions that have nothing to do with them?

Ok, I'll be sure to do that. Thanks for telling me how I should post. I would have never been able to figure it out on my own.

How did this forum EVER manage to function before you burst on the scene to straighten us all out?

BNM