If you're not on the L-Train, what are you waiting for?

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BrianFromWA said:
I'll repost verbatim from my original response to the OP:

If you really want to make MVP arguments, and you really want to "jump on the L-Train", then stick with the counting stats and enjoy. The more you watch, and the more that you study what your eyes may not see, the more you realize that LMA has become the perfect Robin, and that he probably isn't even the team's MVP (I'll save that for another post), and he probably shouldn't keep jacking up the voluminous amount of jumpers that he does, since he's not doing any better than anytime else in his career (actually, worse, since he's shooting more of them).
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FIFY
 
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He's not shooting enough!
 
Blazer Fanatic said:
Who cares? If the analogy doesn't work for you, ignore it. And yes, your repeated insults diminishes any valid point you might have, as well as confirm my opinion of your intent. They were sexist and condescending, and my feeling on the matter is not unwarranted considering a recent thread where many people thought it acceptable to call me other distasteful names no one would not say to my face and not end up on their ass.
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Wow. Just, wow. As I said, if (since) you find it an insult, I've stopped.

It's not a trump card. It's a reality. LA is improved ALL AROUND, on the aggregate.
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And NO, he HASN'T. His ppg and rpg numbers are up, because he's shooting more shots. His PPP are not as high as they were last year. His ORB are not as high as they were last year. He's crushing DRB, as I pointed out (and backed up).

You are trying to parse the MVP candidate convo (that I did not talk about in my OP by the way), with a shooting chart.
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I am defending my opinion that he's not playing the best ball of his career, and that I personally don't feel the need to be "on the L-Train" until he gets more consistently into the post and becomes a more efficient scorer. Everything else has been defense of that opinion.

I'm not arguing that LA just became who he is today all of the sudden. I know he was almost this good last season. The addition of Lopez and some more help on the bench has been the main reason for his increase in production, as it has benefited every one on the Blazers. Regardless, the stats are what they are, and collectively they are the best he's put up in his career from that perspective.
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As I've stated repeatedly, yes. He's taking 21 shots a game--3 more than his career high--which is why he's getting more ppg. Earlier this season when he was shooting 54% and people were pointing to that as a harbinger that he should just keep shooting as much as he liked (not sure if you were one or not, so disregard if you don't care), I asked what changed with him to get him from shooting 41.8% +/- 1% for 7 straight years on those shots, to now being above 50%? Well, now that he's back down to his career averages (which all show that he's NOT an "elite" shooter on par with Dirk/Scola/Anderson/KG/M.Gasol/etc (all these threads are available from the summer, if you don't want to rehash them here), he's still shooting more of those "contested" jumpers as a detriment to the team's overall offense.

I've always argued that LA has always been great. To buy what you're selling, I'd have to believe that LA is not, and never has been.
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Not at all. I think (and have repeatedly said) that right now LMA's the best PF in the game not named LeBron, because of his paint game. But he's not an elite shooter---he's elite when he gets into the paint and uses his array of moves and power (as we've seen the last two days) to abuse teams who can't defend him. And his jumper, when open, spaces the floor. When contested, it's better to have DeAndre Jordan shooting FTs for us. So to your point--no, I can't get behind LMA shooting 500+ sub-optimal jumpers in less than half a season when we have 2 guys shooting 44% or so from 3, or guys like Nic who can drive the lane at will when LMA's being "contested".
 
Blazer Fanatic said:
You should write your grievance to NBA.com. The injustice!
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You said he was shooting 50% for the 2 months. That's not true. NBA.com didn't have it wrong. Perhaps you read the wrong column? No, of course not. And it's the internet, so of course you can't just say you had it wrong. Brian said you had it wrong, meh, whatever. You keep on doing what you do.
 
This thread is terrible.

You can't evaluate anyone in a vacuum (via a single statistic). Especially one that is so heavily skewed towards three-point shooting.

Karl Malone's career eFG% was 0.51... good for seventh on this team. Ryan Anderson? 0.53. Jokes on you, though, if you'd want to trade Aldridge or Malone for Ryan "check that eFG%" Anderson. U
 
Everyone has the wrong stats and everyone is wrong in this thread! There! :MARIS61:
 
BengalDuck said:
This thread is terrible.

You can't evaluate anyone in a vacuum (via a single statistic). Especially one that is so heavily skewed towards three-point shooting.
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Um, it's not a single statistic, it represents a huge facet of the offensive half of the game. It feeds into points per possession (or Offensive efficiency, if you will) which has a very strong correlation to win% and playoff success. Rebounding is also important. Turnovers are another. But those were discussed, as not changing much at all.
 
RR7 said:
You said he was shooting 50% for the 2 months. That's not true. NBA.com didn't have it wrong. Perhaps you read the wrong column? No, of course not. And it's the internet, so of course you can't just say you had it wrong. Brian said you had it wrong, meh, whatever. You keep on doing what you do.
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Maybe. I guess LA isn't the MVP of even the Blazers now.

See you on the Bulls forum Denny where I will trash Taj Gibson and every Bull with a single stat that is completely out of context and not at all representative of reality. Win/Win.
 
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BengalDuck said:
This thread is terrible.

You can't evaluate anyone in a vacuum (via a single statistic). Especially one that is so heavily skewed towards three-point shooting.

Karl Malone's career eFG% was 0.51... good for seventh on this team. Ryan Anderson? 0.53. Jokes on you, though, if you'd want to trade Aldridge or Malone for Ryan "check that eFG%" Anderson. U
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This is a good point. It has been argued several times in this thread. It bears repeating. And Brain will ignore it.
 
LaMarcus is having the best season I've seen him play since he became a Blazer. Now the thread asks a question...I'm not waiting, I'm on the L-Train and for those who aren't, you're missing one hell of a basketball season in Portland! LaMarcus had 3 steals tonight against the Mavs and his double double...30-12 came with sitting most of the 4th qtr. He's dominating. Check Dirks stats for the night or Duncan's for the night before...LaMarcus smoked them both. Deal with it!
 
I think LMA goes to 11!

[video=youtube;4xgx4k83zzc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc[/video]
 
lmao. I finally actually watched that clip of "These go to eleven". That's fantastic.
 
I love Spinal Tap but my favorite part is the Stonehenge prop they used on stage.
 
Blazer Fanatic said:
Maybe. I guess LA isn't the MVP of even the Blazers now.

See you on the Bull forum Denny where I will trash Taj Gibson and every Bull with a single stat the is completely out of context and not at all representative of reality. Win/Win.
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It's not a "single stat", it's a huge portion of the offense, and the only one of rebounding/turnovers/shooting that I didn't cover as a positive for LMA.

Do you ever read stuff from the Association for Basketball Research? Basketball Journal? Or any of the Sloan Conference papers? There was a paper called "Basketball on Paper" that a scout who got his PhD wrote up that talked about statistical analysis of reams of historical data to find correlations among successful teams. (Historical, not predictive)

"Based on statistical analyses, the four most important keys for team success in basketball and their relative weights, in parentheses, are:

Shoot a high field goal percentage (10).
Do not commit turnovers (5-6).
Get offensive rebounds (4-5).
Get to the foul line frequently (2-3).
Teams that consistently win basketball games do at least three of these things well. If a team doesn't shoot well, it better do the other three things very well. I should note that Oliver says these factors should be considered on the basis of the number of a team's possessions compared to its opponent, not in absolute terms. In other words, he looks at efficiency, for example, the number of made shots per possession, or the number of turnovers per possession, not total points or turnovers, which can vary greatly depending on the pace of the game."
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I know you hate taking what I say seriously, but seriously, this is one of the reasons why I harp on eFG%, TO's and rebounding, written by a guy who was a player, scout, coach and, most importantly, not a dude on a message board.
 
BrianFromWA said:
It's not a "single stat", it's a huge portion of the offense, and the only one of rebounding/turnovers/shooting that I didn't cover as a positive for LMA.

Do you ever read stuff from the Association for Basketball Research? Basketball Journal? Or any of the Sloan Conference papers? There was a paper called "Basketball on Paper" that a scout who got his PhD wrote up that talked about statistical analysis of reams of historical data to find correlations among successful teams. (Historical, not predictive)


I know you hate taking what I say seriously, but seriously, this is one of the reasons why I harp on eFG%, TO's and rebounding, written by a guy who was a player, scout, coach and, most importantly, not a dude on a message board.
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uh...Blazer Fanatic is not a dude
 
BrianFromWA said:
It's not a "single stat", it's a huge portion of the offense, and the only one of rebounding/turnovers/shooting that I didn't cover as a positive for LMA.

Do you ever read stuff from the Association for Basketball Research? Basketball Journal? Or any of the Sloan Conference papers? There was a paper called "Basketball on Paper" that a scout who got his PhD wrote up that talked about statistical analysis of reams of historical data to find correlations among successful teams. (Historical, not predictive)


I know you hate taking what I say seriously, but seriously, this is one of the reasons why I harp on eFG%, TO's and rebounding, written by a guy who was a player, scout, coach and, most importantly, never won a championship.
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FTFY... Not that he doesn't know way more than us, but in a club of champions, he's an outsider, a Monday-morning quarterback. A highly qualified message board guy.
 
BlazerCaravan said:
FTFY... Not that he doesn't know way more than us, but in a club of champions, he's an outsider, a Monday-morning quarterback. A highly qualified message board guy.
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He's someone analyzing what successful teams HAVE done. DO you have to win a title to do that?
 
RR7 said:
He's someone analyzing what successful teams HAVE done. DO you have to win a title to do that?
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No and that's why the message board guy thing is bogus. We have access to the same stats and some of us have way too much time on our hands.

It's like someone insisting they know more than us because he coached girls basketball and we don't.
 
RR7 said:
He's someone analyzing what successful teams HAVE done. DO you have to win a title to do that?
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Typically you need an MVP-level player to win a title. LMA is as close to an MVP-level player that the Blazers have had since Clyde Drexler.

In terms of PER, LMA is right on par with Dirk Nowitzki surrounded by 3-point shooters this season during Dallas' championship season. The year Dallas lost to Miami, Dirk had a PER far above his norm.
 
It was probably a guy with a PhD who read all the journals and papers and studied the stats from previous players that told Mugsy Bogues he was too short to play basketball.
 
PapaG said:
Typically you need an MVP-level player to win a title. LMA is as close to an MVP-level player that the Blazers have had since Clyde Drexler.

In terms of PER, LMA is right on par with Dirk Nowitzki surrounded by 3-point shooters this season during Dallas' championship season. The year Dallas lost to Miami, Dirk had a PER far above his norm.
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I agree. And if you look at the 4 criteria brian posted from the guy, we're top 10 in FG%, 4th in TOV%, 2nd in ORB% and we're 13th in FTA per FGA, slightly below league average, but in the top half of the league, which helps the successful team aspect. I just don't think you need to have won a title to be able to analyze past teams and see what they did well.
I think brian's "not a dude on a message board" line was more saying hey, you don't have to just take it from me looking at stuff, referring to himself as the "some dude on a message board"
 
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