Courtside Thursday recap (thanks to D69)

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

Nate McMillan – interview
- Maximum playing time for the major players are 20 minutes for LaMarcus, Greg, Roy and probably will include Rudy.
- He is not sure if he will play LaMarcus on Friday as he has some soreness from the last game and may hold him out in Friday’s game.
- Rudy is limping around and Nate plans to hold him out for Friday and possibly Sunday’s game. Even though Rudy hates to not play.
- Joel woke up with a bad cold and appears he has a sinus infection and will may miss both games this weekend.
- They are going to slow it down to allow the players to run plays better.
- They have been telling the players to go faster and go faster when they have the ball.
- Now he is seeing too many mistakes with the ball from the PGs and wants them to adjust to the faster speed by slowing it down and maybe look at speeding it up later.
- Wed. game had a lot of new players not used to each other in these mixture of different lineups and the players struggled in proper spacing and positioning. That caused a lot of turnovers.
- Nate is a big believer that anytime you can have 3:1, assists to turnover that the team will stand a high chance of winning games.
- There are going to be combo of Brandon and Rudy on the floor at the same time throughout the season
- Nate will play both Travis and Rudy at SF, but thinks if Rudy does get to start he will look to Brandon as SF and Rudy at SG.
- Nate and the coaches have talked to Travis and told him this is his opportunity to start at SF.
- Nate will give Travis time and encouragement as he knows it is an adjustment for any player who was the #1 option on the bench to become a 3rd of 4th option on offense as a starter.
- Travis will need to adjust to guarding the faster SF compared to last year where he spent a lot of time guarding PFs.
- Batum is awlful young and Nate would like to see him take his time, but will play as a backup SF if he continues to improve.

more......

http://www.clubblazers.com/109-thursday-courtside-notes/


Thanks to Discovery69 for the recap.

 

[heykid1]

good stuff

 

[alex42083]

I don't think we saw much of Brandon and Rudy together in Tuesday's game, but if the plan is to play those two together a lot, I'm very interested to see how that would work.
I'd love to see how Brandon, Rudy, LaMarcus and Greg play together. Those four are our untouchables right now, and if they can form a chemistry with another, that would just be so scary. It wouldn't even matter who our fifth guy on the floor would be. Just take your pick.

 

[AgentDrazenPetrovic]

Martell! With his 3-point shooting, its perfect for a team of slashers and post players anchored by Oden. We're a better version of the Shaq-filled Magic!

 

[alex42083]

Martell! With his 3-point shooting, its perfect for a team of slashers and post players anchored by Oden. We're a better version of the Shaq-filled Magic!

If only he were healthy... I'd love to see Martell with that group. He and Rudy played really well together on Tuesday.

 

[BlazersBlood]

Nate gets so gunshy when the team has a couple turnovers. Maybe they aren't very good at it because he doesn't let them get out and run enough?

I understand that he wants us to be a lock-down defensive team (and we've got the pieces for it) and be able to execute in the half-court (playoff ball) but sometimes you need to let the kids run. If we could get more easy buckets we'll be much harder to defend.

 

[GrandpaBlaze]

Thanks for the post Xericx. Much appreciated.

Gramps...

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Nice recap. Thanks

 

[Nikolokolus]

Nate gets so gunshy when the team has a couple turnovers. Maybe they aren't very good at it because he doesn't let them get out and run enough?

I understand that he wants us to be a lock-down defensive team (and we've got the pieces for it) and be able to execute in the half-court (playoff ball) but sometimes you need to let the kids run. If we could get more easy buckets we'll be much harder to defend.

A couple? 26 turnovers is not "a couple" I think Nate understands how to get maximum production out of his players, and if that means kicking it down into a lower gear for a little while and then slowly ramping up the speed then I'm all for it.

The whole "get easier buckets" thing will come from playing solid defense and forcing turnovers or forcing a bad shot with Greg collecting boards and hitting a long outlet pass to streaking wings. Look at the contrast between the Sacramento game and the Golden State game; when the team played good defense, with a lot of pressure, Sacto gave up the ball or forced a bad shot and we saw a lot of Rudy to LMA or Rudy to Martell, and Sergio hitting cutters on the break. When the defense broke down against Golden State they gave up easy buckets and on the other end they could never get the mismatches they wanted, they played fast, but they were out of control.

 

[Nikolokolus]

I just read the whole recap and this jumped out at me as a very intriguing possibility:

Mike Rice – comments
- If they didn’t find the three (i.e. SF) that could start (i.e. Travis).
- Rice would have Roy @ PG, Rudy @ SG and Channing @ SF. Frye can shoot outside and also quick enough to guard the SFs. Plus Channing Frye has shown the Blazers over the summer he can hit the 3pt. shot consistently in practice before he got hurt. Either way look for Channing to get minutes at PF and possibly SF.

I know Channing got a lot leaner over the summer and seems to have added the trey to his arsenal, but do people around here think he could really play the 3 consistently?

 

[THE HCP]

I think he might be alright. With Greg back there to help on the defensive end, I think it would work.