Enough with the small ball basketball

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Blazer4ever said:
also said essentialy the same thing in this thread: "what we didn't have this year - power forwards"

http://www.sportstwo.com/threads/wh...ear-power-forwards.330701/page-2#post-4451907
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Well, since you're repeating what you've already said in another thread, I'll do the same:

Boob-No-More said:
Depends on what you expect out of the position. Our PFs provided excellent defense, with Aminu as the starter and Collins as the back up (with Vonleh getting minutes early in the season when Aminu was injured). Our PFs were 5th in the league in rebounding. So, in the traditional PF sense we got what you expect to get from the position (rebounding and defense).

Where our PFs were lacking was the scoring department. Part of that is with Dame, C.J. and Nurk, there are only so many shots left over to divide between the two forward positions. That combined with poor shooting (last in FG%, 20th in 3FG%) meant our PFs were 29th in the league in scoring.

I've been saying for a couple years now, that for a team built around Dame and C.J. to be successful, we need 2-way players at the forward positions that are at least average on both sides of the ball - ideally above average both ways, but average offensively with above average defense would also work.

We hope to see Collins grow into that type of player. He's already very solid defensively, which is impressive for a 20-year old rookie big man. His offense clearly needs some work. He shows flashes, but he needs to become a consistent threat at the offensive end of the floor.

Harkless, post all star game/pre injury was also giving us that kind of 2-way play at the SF position. The question is, can he deliver that on a consistent level over the course of an entire season + play offs. He's teased us with this potential in the past only to pout and disappear for months at a time. Hopefully, he has finally matured and can be more consistent moving forward.

Who we draft or acquire using our trade exceptions will tell us who the organization believes in more - Collins or Harkless. They seem very high on Collins, given his youth, attitude and upside. Going forward, I'm more concerned about the SF position that I am PF.

BNM
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Boob-No-More said:
While I agree with the basic premise that the game has changed, I disagree with the premise that Nurk is ill suited to today's NBA.

We saw this year what a huge difference he made in our team defense, and that's where most "traditional" big men get run off the floor when other teams go small. If you only consider size and athleticism, Plumlee, who is much more athletic, much faster and has a much higher motor should be the better defender for today's small ball line ups, but in practice, the exact opposite is true.

Nurk uses his size, both length and width, to completely swallow up the pick and roll. He crowds the screener, but spreads out and gets wide to also contain the dribbler coming off the screen. He basically uses his size to contain both the screener and the ball handler at the point of attack. With Plumlee, because his narrow shoulders and shorter arms, the ball handler was constantly just blowing past him for uncontested layups. Nurk, with his much wider base and longer arms, prevents that from happening, while also remaining in contact with the screener to prevent him an easy roll to the basket.

With his length and the way he crowds the screener, Nurk also does a better job of contesting pull up jumper shots off the screen, something Plumlee is incapable of doing with his much shorter arms. Plumlee actually blocks a lot more shots than Nurk, but his blocks are almost all in the form of weakside help, where he uses his quickness as a help defender to surprise a lot of opponents from the side or from behind. Granted, they are still blocks and count for something, but you can't block every shot, especially against the pick and roll. Where Nurk is superior is that, while he doesn't get as many blocks, he contests a LOT more shots in the pick and roll. He crowds the screener and overplays the shooter's strong hand coming off the screen. If the ball handler pulls up for a jumper, Nurk may not block the shot, but he gets his hand up and contests the shot. Plumlee, with his short arms and narrow shoulders simply can't present the same obstacle as a 7'1" Bosnian beast.

Defensively, I REALLY want to see what a line up of Nurk, Collins and Harkless can do. That's a whole lot of length, but it's also three VERY good pick and roll defenders. Collins earned a spot in the rotation due to his defense, something that's rare for a rookie 7-footer in today's NBA. Like Nurk, Collins is an excellent pick and roll defender that does a good job containing the ball handler coming off the screen. He has good lateral quickness and length, but what makes him a good defender is his solid fundamentals, good instincts and aggressive nature.

Everyone remembers the injuries to CP3 and Blake Griffin back in the 2016 playoffs, but what most people seem to have forgotten was the tide of that series had already shifted in Game 3, and one of the biggest reasons was Terry started switching Moe onto CP3. Moe has the length and lateral quickness to bother small, quick point guards. He not only shot down CP3's scoring, his height and length also made it much harder for CP3 to locate and deliver to the ball to his teammates. In Game 3 of that series, POR held a 100% healthy Cliiper team to 88 points. In Game 4, the Blazers had led the entire game, were up 9 when the injuries happened. The series was going back to Los Angeles tied 2 game apiece, with, or without the injuries. Would teh Blazers have still won the series without the injuries? It's impossible to tell, but switching Moe onto CP3 definitely swung the momentum in Portland's favor even before the injuries.

With all three of Nurk, Collins and Moe being excellent pick and roll defenders and able to contain smaller ball handlers coming off screens, there is really no reason to pull them and "go small" just because the other team does. In fact, when other teams go small, we should go big and punish them for doing so. This is when Nurk can go total beast mode.

This season, especially early in the year, Dame (and Terry) seemed dead set on posting up Nurk early and force feeding him on the low block. This lead to a lot of wild forced shots and turnovers as Nurk tended to play too fast for fear of getting his shot blocked by his equally large starting center counterpart. We should do the exact opposite. When the other team starts a big center, use Nurk in the high post for setting screens and also as a distributor to find the cutting Harkless or the open Collins for the corner 3. Back during Nurk fever, when Terry didn't have time to develop specific plays for Nurk, that's exactly how Nurk was used and he thrived, averaging 3.2 assists per game.

Then when the other team goes small, let Nurk go absolute beast mode against the Draymond Green and PJ Tucker small ball 5s of the world. Nurk, with a smaller defender on him is nearly unstoppable. He slows down and simply overpowers them.

Of course, this depends on Collins continuing to develop, and Moe becoming a lot more consistent. It's no coincidence the team had their 13-game winning streak when Moe decided to show up and be "good" Moe. If he can play close to that level, and Collins can grow into an upgrade over Aminu at both ends of the floor, I see absolutely no reason to not resign Nurk, in fact, I think it's imperative.

BNM
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Note in the second post, I specifically discuss how a front court of Nurk, Collins and Harkless would let us go big while still being able to defend opponents small ball lineups.

BNM
 
Blazer4ever said:
Release either Harkless or Aminu and start playing with 2 real bigs. Discuss
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Do you understand anything about the CBA? Releasing a player that is healthy and has any value at all is the dumbest thing a team can do. You get ZERO cap relief or tax relief. All you really do is create a roster spot, which you will have to fill. So, it actually costs you more than just keeping the player you would have released.

Harkless and Aminu may not be perfect, but they both have value and are on very reasonable contracts given their level of production. Releasing either would be monumentally stupid. We'd still be on the hook for paying their salaries and it would let a competitor pick them up for cheap. If we REALLY wanted to get rid of either, trading them to a team with cap space for a top 55 protected 2nd round pick would be a MUCH better way to go, as it would actually get their contracts off our books.

But even that would be stupid. Even if neither starts, we need backups at both forward positions and while they both may not be perfect starters, they are both better than average backups on reasonable contracts.

My best case scenario is Collins eventually wrestles the starting PF position away from Aminu (who we keep around as a back up in the last year of his contract) and Moe looks like the same Moe we saw after the all star break. As mentioned in my own quoted post above, a front court of Nurk, Collins and Harkless has insane defensive potential. All are long for their positions, yet are able to constrain smaller,quicker players in the pick and roll.

We need to see improvement on the offensive end from Collins and the ability to defend without getting in foul trouble, but I think both of those things will come with more experience, and we need to see a full season of engaged, motivate Moe, but that is a very young, very long front court. All three players have the skills and versatility to mesh together without getting in each other's way.

BNM
 
julius said:
Or, and go with me on this one, just stop playing them at the PF spot?
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I think Aminu is one of the better contracts on the team, and in certain matchups is an ok Power Forward. I really like the idea of Nurk, Collins and Aminu as your starting front court. A lot of length there Collins probably can’t stick with NBA guards but he could at least make it harder on them. Now the real question is can Collins get his jump shot consistent enough to space the floor on offense? I don’t know but defensively I like that lineup. I don’t even mind putting Moe in at the 2 next to Dame or CJ. That’s a team that would be awfully tough to score on.
 
julius said:
Or, and go with me on this one, just stop playing them at the PF spot?
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It's the most efficient position for both of them.
I'd rather play smaller at small forward, even a 3 guard lineup, but bigger in the 4/5
 
Counter argument: Nurkic and the other teams stretch five can't guard each other because of weight differences. Nurk scores 2pts/make the other guy scores 3pt/make. The other team wins by 10pts.

I really would like to see Nurkic/Collins/Harkless next year at 5-3, but we don't seem to use their size to our advantage and other teams seem to use their size against us.
 
Reep said:
Counter argument: Nurkic and the other teams stretch five can't guard each other because of weight differences. Nurk scores 2pts/make the other guy scores 3pt/make. The other team wins by 10pts
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That's not how it works. It completely ignores the defense, rebounding, passing, screening and other factors that impacts the scores of both teams.

Bottom line: POR was +3.8 points/48 with Nurkic on the court last season. So, you can have your soft, skinny stretch 5 and I'll take the guy that anchored a defense that went from 24th in the league one year to 8th in the league the next.

BNM
 
Nurkic is a solid big man defender, but we're playing too small. need to have the small ball as an option not the gameplan
 
TorturedBlazerFan said:
I think Aminu is one of the better contracts on the team, and in certain matchups is an ok Power Forward. I really like the idea of Nurk, Collins and Aminu as your starting front court. A lot of length there Collins probably can’t stick with NBA guards but he could at least make it harder on them. Now the real question is can Collins get his jump shot consistent enough to space the floor on offense? I don’t know but defensively I like that lineup. I don’t even mind putting Moe in at the 2 next to Dame or CJ. That’s a team that would be awfully tough to score on.
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Putting Mo at the 2 would be a horrible idea as that puts one ball handler on the floor and teams would just put more pressure on Lillard. We need more ball handlers and players that can create their own shot rather than less on the floor.
 
Blazer4ever said:
I'm not kidding you that T-Rob would be an amazing addtion
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Jesus.... Here we go with the scrubs again....

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CupWizier said:
Putting Mo at the 2 would be a horrible idea as that puts one ball handler on the floor and teams would just put more pressure on Lillard. We need more ball handlers and players that can create their own shot rather than less on the floor.
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You’re probably right, but for short stretches I think that would be a really good defensive line up.
 
CupWizier said:
We need more ball handlers and players that can create their own shot rather than less on the floor.
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Do we, though? If a common criticism of the team's current offensive system is that there's too much dribbling and not enough ball movement, why is adding more ball-handlers/shot-creators desirable? If we had fewer "ball-handlers", wouldn't that then necessitate more passing and off-ball movement in order to facilitate an effective offense?
 
Blazer4ever said:
Release either Harkless or Aminu and start playing with 2 real bigs. Discuss
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I am all for starting two real big in Nurk and Collins. Give me a SF like Kawhi to go with CJ and Dame and we are set. Bring Aminu off the bench to cover spread 4's. But we need that highly skilled SF.
 
PtldPlatypus said:
Do we, though? If a common criticism of the team's current offensive system is that there's too much dribbling and not enough ball movement, why is adding more ball-handlers/shot-creators desirable? If we had fewer "ball-handlers", wouldn't that then necessitate more passing and off-ball movement in order to facilitate an effective offense?
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Because ball handlers are typically better passers also and when the offense breaks down a ball handler and shot creator can get to the basket or pull up for a shot. Look at Boston as they have several ball handlers/ passers on the floor at the same time. Same with GS. Some of our best early offense is when we added Napier into the 3 guard rotation and ball movement was much better.

As an example, would you consider Aminu a ball handler? Would you consider him a good passer?
 
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