Game One Forensic Fan (2014/10/29 v. OKC)

Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
BrianFromWA

BrianFromWA

Editor in Chief
Staff member
Editor in Chief
Joined
Sep 9, 2008
Messages
26,096
Likes
9,073
Points
113
106-89 (W)

From the top, looks like it was a big (and easy) win for the Blazers against a Thunder team decimated by injuries. Durant, Jackson, Lamb, Morrow, McGary, blah blah blah. For all the consternation pregame over “the Thunder are only able to go 9 deep”, the Blazers played basically 8-deep. Gimme a break.



But a quick look for really high or really low numbers in the quarter-by-quarter shows a 31-12 beatdown in the 4th, which means it was a close game for at least 3 quarters. And then, looking down:

Russell Westbrook had himself a game, ladies and gentlemen! 38 points! But wait…11-26? Yuck. 16FTs, though, in addition to the 26 shots? That seems somewhat ball-hoggish…did anyone else play? Well, yes…yes, they did. RW had 26 shots, the other 4 starters had 28 shots combined, and the bench had 27 shots combined. Fun Fact!: of the 223 times in NBA history that a player has had both 26 FGA and 16FT, RW was tied for 170th in total points for all those shots. http://www.basketball-reference.com...rp_dbl=&order_by=pts&order_by_asc=&offset=100

A closer look, though, shows that he might have petered out:
1st half: 7-13FG, 11-12 FT, 26pts
3rd quarter: 3-7, 3-4 FT, 10 pts
4th quarter: 1-6, 0-0 FT, 2 pts



Other then that, no Monster Games ™ on the box score, though LMA led the Blazers with 27, Wes had 22 and Lopez (11/10) earned another double-double to notch onto his belt. The team shot 46% from the field (pretty decent), 38% from 3 (good!) and a bit-lower-than-usual 77% from the FT line.

Going down points per shot it gets a bit dicier. LMA’s was a healthy 1.42 (1.5 could be considered “elite”), Dame’s was 1.0 (not so much elite) and Wes took Efficiency Honors tonight with 22 points on 9 shots, thanks to 5-7 shooting from 3 and 8-12 overall. LMA was 7-12 on his jumpers outside the paint (for a 58% clip) and shot 7 of his 19 FGA in the paint (3-7, 8FTs drawn). After a rough start, Dame and Wes ended up 5-5 from 3 in the 4th quarter.

https://imgflip.com/memegenerator


The rebounding battle was surprising…43-42 OKC. Going in I would’ve thought that our bigs (LMA, Lopez, Kaman) would have a distinct advantage over OKC’s, and would be able to dominate on the boards to get us some easy baskets while denying them second-chance opportunities. They also outscored us in the paint 44-34, though that wasn’t really a factor of their bigs, who combined for 20 points and 24 rebounds in 96 minutes. Ours (LMA/RoLo/Kaman) went for 50pt/19reb in 88 non-garbage minutes. I’ll take ours still, thanks.

Ancillary stuff--still not fastbreaking (this proof aside--[video]http://www.nba.com/video/games/blazers/2014/10/29/0021400015-okc-por-play2.nba/[/video]

We were outscored 14-4 on the break, but also limited turnovers to 10 (half coming from Kaman and CJ, who got a new nickname tonight). No earth-shattering changes from last year.

dmmxw.jpg


Bench: Last year we were dead last in the league in bench scoring—how’d we start off this year?
9-23FG (1-7 from 3, and that was Crabbe in garbage time), 20 pts, 18 rebounds, 8 assists. Turnovers: 3 to CJ, 2 to Kaman. Respectable. Not world-beating, and Blake’s 0-4 isn’t going to be a trend.

An Allen Crabbe sighting (and Truck Robinson getting off the bench) means that there was 2 minutes of garbage time. Which, looking at the final score, makes sense. Which, of course, I’d like to see more.

Some fans (ahem, Shooter) thought that this would be the time to declare their Westbrook fandom. If you had 7:49pm PDT in the “when will fans turn on Lillard?” pool, you’re the winner. “I’ll take Westbrook, please” appeared, much to the consternation of the hopeful.

It continued up until the 4th quarter.
https://imgflip.com/memegenerator https://imgflip.com/memegenerator

Bonus “Today in Professional Basketball”: K*be against PHX, 11-25. RW vs. POR, 11-26. OKC lost by 16, LAL by 20. K*be ridiculed for gunning, Hubie Brown jockriding RW as “putting on a show.”


Please send feedback if you’d like to see different items in here. Please comment below on pieces you saw/experienced/loved/hated. Until next time…


https://imgflip.com/memegenerator
 
Last edited:
Does this mean I created a nickname!?

#Butters
 
Yes. In the original draft I called you out
 
I'm almost famous!
 
Great dissection!

Blake never made a shot, but I l love the way he moved the other second unitors around, getting the likes of Kamen and others into place.

I think Stotts needs to gameplay defensive assignments a little better. In the first quarter I begging for Batum to take the Westbrook assignment. Seems we have some decent defenders to tak on a guard spot, but they each have drastically different strengths. If a player needs to be bodied than Wes is the man, a blanket smothering calls for Batum, and if the guard is average or worse, that's for Lillard.
 
Last edited:
Your avatar/caption made me smile, Julius.
 
Further said:
Great dissection!

Blake never made a shot, but I l love the way he moved the other second unitors around, getting the likes of Kamen and others into place.

I think Stotts needs to gameplay defensive assignments a little better. In the first quarter I begging for Batum to take the Westbrook assignment. Seems we have some decent defenders to tak on a guard spot, but they each have drastically different strengths. If a player needs to be bodied than Wes is the man, a blanket smothering calls for Batum, and if the guard is average or worse, that's for Lillard.
Click to expand...

I was too, but maybe Stott's strategy for defensive assignments make more sense. Batum is clearly the best defender we have against ultra quick PG's, but maybe it is best to wait until the second half. That way he is less likely to be in foul trouble and he won't be worn out during crunch time.
 
Interesting that this was Portland's 14 straight home opener win. Ties a record with Boston. Even when we sucked, we won the first game. It usually takes about 10 games for bad teams to realize they are bad. I almost hate to play the bad ones early on while they still have confidence.
 
Minutes:
  • Starters had between 30 and 35 minutes played - almost SAish.
  • Stotts played 10 players in the first half, 8 in the second - that's how he cut down the starters minutes.
  • Rolo and Kaman played together for more than a minute or 2 - successfully I thought.
  • CJ in rotation, other young pups out - though we'll see what happens when Biebs returns.
  • Damian (superpassive in first half) was in foul trouble, giving Blake a few more minutes.
  • Kaman had 22, Blake had 20, CJ had 16 - a new trend: I am saddened when Kaman comes out of the game, he's rock solid.


Bonus statistical anomaly: Rolo at one point had 1 defensive rebound and 7 offensive rebounds. Later he picked up two more def. rebounds to get the double-double.
 
I just got word that this is going up on blazers.com

Great work, Brian!

I hope they'll put up game previews we do, too, but we need to get those done ASAP after the previous game ends.
 
Love that we won this game. But I don't love how we played the game. The offense mostly looked like dog shit, and we won not because we changed how we played but because OKC wasn't able to sustain their defense throughout the game - we simply outlasted them, which was to be expected.

There were only 3 good offensive plays last night. Starting with the best and working our way down: (1) Wes passing to Kaman in the post curling around a screen at the top of the key and diving down the lane to receive a beaut of a pass for a lay-up. (2) Side pick/pop between Nic and Rolo to kick off the game. (3) LMA's first post move of the game ending our first mini-drought. That's not to say the rest of the game sucked, just that our offense is not built on sound fundamentals.

I really liked LMA's first 3. Was disappointed we didn't go back to it a few more times. Even though he made a fair amount of those contested long jumpers, I never like seeing that as the staple of an offense.

Kaman is our most skilled big man. I haven't watched him play since his days with the Clippers, but aside from the shaved head and being a tiny bit slower he looked the same as he did back then. I like that we give him the ball and trust him to create his own scoring opportunities. It's something he's quite good at. Pulling Kaman and inserting LMA was a bad move. I understand wanting to get LMA back in the game, but at the time Kaman was a big reason we grabbed a lead. Given how Kaman was playing Lopez should have checked out when LMA came into the game.

Wasn't too worried about Lillard guarding Westbrook. I think it's smart to throw different defensive looks at the opponent's best scorer, and it seemed obvious that Stotts would shift Nic onto Westbrook at the end of the game. I think Stotts made the switch earlier than he would have liked, but overall I think it was the one thing Stotts did well.

CJ. Yup. I like that after two straight TOs Lillard gave him the ball on the next possession. CJ brought it up and QUICKLY passed it back to Lillard. But it was good of Lillard to not freeze CJ out for being an idiot of two successive plays, and actually FORCE him to touch the ball again. This game did nothing to change my opinion of the CJ pick (thought it was crap at the time, still do), but we HAVE to play this guy and get him to start showing some promise so he'll have some amount of value by the trade deadline.

All in all, that was pretty much what I expected from this game. Hot garbage resulting in a win. Hopefully we won't always rely on good offensive players to free-lance our way to wins, but I'm not holding my breath while waiting to see a well structured offense.
 
I'm done with Hubie. He needs to retire. Said that just minutes into the game
 
Good dissection, but the picture 'meme' thingies are not needed IMO.
 
Last edited:
Denny Crane said:
I just got word that this is going up on blazers.com
Click to expand...
Cool...link?

I hope they'll put up game previews we do, too, but we need to get those done ASAP after the previous game ends.
Click to expand...

We can make that happen, I guess, but I'd planned on having a piece about the other team's previous game. I had planned on going over SAC's game tonight on the DVR.
 
The Blazers really could have improved how they trapped/blitzed Westbrook on the Pick-n-Roll. The Thunder did that to Lillard all night long and really took him out of the offense but the Blazers still play off the pick and make the guard chase around giving Westbrook free corner after corner all night long.

:matrix:
 
Other than blue not liking memes, what else can be improved?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

BrianFromWA
Forensic Fan, Game 4 v. CLE
Replies
17
Views
917
KingSpeed
KingSpeed
BrianFromWA
Forensic Fan Game Ten (11/15/14 v. Brooklyn)
Replies
10
Views
2K
KingSpeed
KingSpeed
BrianFromWA
Game Four Forensic Fan Post-game
Replies
9
Views
2K
BlazerCaravan
BlazerCaravan
BrianFromWA
Forensic Fan, Denver 10/21
Replies
2
Views
408
HomerLovesKoolAid
HomerLovesKoolAid
BrianFromWA
Game Six Forensic Fan Post-game
Replies
8
Views
580
Strenuus
Strenuus

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top