GAME THREAD: BLAZERS @ NUGGETS - DECEMBER 2, 2014; TUESDAY, 6 PM (PST), KGW

[BlazerDuckSeahawkFan94]

Nico will be fine. It's still early in the season and I expect his shot will come back before too long.

This. Nobody becomes a bad shooter overnight. He started the season in a slump and the injury didn't help anything. We still are less than 20 games into the season, my guess would be that he will be back to his normal self come January.

 

[magnifier661]

what? so you think that so far this season Nic is playing at an overall higher level than the past few seasons, if that is the case then lets just stop disagreeing because we are of two very differing opinions. Stats from past 2 years suggest his assists are barely up (5.2 this yr vs 5.0 prev 2 yrs), rebounding similar but shooting percentage has crashed to 37% from 2 yr avg near 44% and PPG down to 8.6 vs prev. 2-yr avg of 13.6, 3 point shooting at a horrible 23% from avg of 36.5. IMO all these stats clearly show an overall DECLINE

Yeah I definitely. 100% and utterly disagree with you. I don't give a flying fuck about the numbers this season, especially those after the injury. But for you to tell me that playing overseas is less of a level than practicing at home, then we are at ends.

 

[Blazinaway]

Yeah I definitely. 100% and utterly disagree with you. I don't give a flying fuck about the numbers this season, especially those after the injury. But for you to tell me that playing overseas is less of a level than practicing at home, then we are at ends.

why can't you understand that it is "less of a level" because of the toll it takes on his body and he's been playing full NBA seasons for years now and every summer playing Intl or Olympic ball. Like Wes or LMA if he worked on resting his body and doing specific work to strengthen his body and work on parts of his game IMO he would be a better player. Just playing all the time is NOT the answer, especially when the body wears out and more injuries occur.

 

[blue9]

Bashing on Nic's shooting percentage is kinda dumb, IMO. He's our 4th (?) scoring option in the starting unit. And maybe our 5th option overall? He has a career 45% FG% with a career shooting efficiency (did ESPN change from eFG% to SHEFF?) of 53.7%. This is the first time his SHEFF has been below 50%. To put this in perspective, LMA's SHEFF has never been over 51.3%, and he sports a career SHEFF of 48.8%.

Yes, Nic's shooting terribly so far. Nobody is questioning that. He's near the bottom of our AFG% list, but LMA is only two spots higher:
http://espn.go.com/nba/team/stats/_/name/por/cat/shootingEfficiency/portland-trail-blazers

Luckily there's a LOT of season left before the games really start to matter. What do we have, 64 more games? If he's still shooting this poorly after we play those games then I'll be worried. Until then I'm going to assume that his shooting will get better over the course of the season and he'll be right around his career average by the time the season ends. Remember last season when LMA and Wes started out RED HOT? Well there were a few of us that knew they'd regress to their career averages, and that's exactly what ended up happening. The same will be true for Nic. But in the end we're quibbling over ~6ish points from our 4th/5th scoring option, and we're just 3 days into the second month of the season. Oh, AND we have a few bench players who are more than capable of picking up Nic's 6 points.

 

[riverman]

One of the reasons Rolo is able to score is Nic..I've said before, Nic makes our bigs more successful in the paint. Since playing with Nic, Rolo has benefited with touches he normally wouldn't get.

 

[Strenuus]

I love what Batum adds to this team. No doubt I appreciate his importance. However.......The ally oop pass he threw to Wes in the last two minutes from 25 ft was insane. He needs to stop trying to make the "spectacular" passes. At least in crunch time.

I transcribed my monologue to nic via TV right after he did this play.

"WHat the fuck are you thinking? Are you kidding me with this shit? I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

 

[Strenuus]

"lets be real" huh? well being real is being honest and Wes-Dame-LMA are always working on their game in the offseason, and as much as you "wish" it Nic does not, so all U got is a dream

Okay, I'm sorry... totally off topic, but for the love of god, this isn't twitter. YOU CAN SPELL OUT YOUR WORDS!!!! Seriously, shorthand on the word YOU?? I wrote that and it took .23 seconds to do.

/petpeeve

 

[magnifier661]

LaMarcus, clinkidy, clankedy

http://espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=400578551

39 points, 16-30 shooting, 7-9 FT, 11 boards, 1 assist (that won the game), +8

 

[Blazinaway]

Okay, I'm sorry... totally off topic, but for the love of god, this isn't twitter. YOU CAN SPELL OUT YOUR WORDS!!!! Seriously, shorthand on the word YOU?? I wrote that and it took .23 seconds to do.

/petpeeve

I really don't care what U think about that

 

[KingSpeed]

We have a 5 game winning streak on the road. Gotta love that.

 

[Strenuus]

I really don't care what U think about that

You know what, I repped you for that. It made me laugh.

 

[noknobs]

Batum needs to pull an Aaron Rodgers and just tell everyone to R-E-L-A-X... You don't average 45.1% / 36.5% / 83.1% for your career and not know how to shoot the ball. Slumps happen.

 

[Boob-No-More]

Batum needs to pull an Aaron Rodgers and just tell everyone to R-E-L-A-X...

I don't know who this Aaron impostor is, but Mr. Rogers' first name is Fred. Nobody chills like Mr. Rogers!

BNM

 

[Blazinaway]

You know what, I repped you for that. It made me laugh.

good! we all need a good laugh as often as possible, glad to "B" of help, couldn't help myself

 

[Blazersfan161]

That loss has to hurt if you are denver. Will take it though

 

[PDXFonz]

That trust we see within the team shown in instances like last nights rolo game winner is something that is capable of doing big things. It's arguably more important than any of the other factors, and you often point to it as a reason for a teams success.

That win last night was the kind of win that can brig the mentality together and up the chemistry sparking success. A good example of this was last years incident in Golden State.