I obviously didn't expect we would do this good, but I expected us to be a solid playoff team and I thought that should be obvious. Our core stayed the same, everyone had a year of experience and growth. Last year our starters kept us in almost every game, they just didn't have enough in the tank do it all themselves. So it just seemed like simple math that our bench improvements would make a significant difference. The part of the equation that everyone underestimated was the Lopez and LA effect. All these years when LA was crying for a center I just thought he was being uncompromising and maybe a little prima dona, guess I was wrong.
I was guilty of the LA is soft mantra for his first few seasons, but didn't get into it much because he was never a real focal point. The last 3 years, I've been saying emphatically that LA is a beast. The thing that sold me was watching the play-offs with Dallas. Dirk/Tyson made it clear for me to put things in perspective in terms of fit. LA was fantastic offensively, and was a pretty good rebounder and a pretty good defender, but never had a 250 lbs meat shield in their prime to play next to, and certainly not while LA was the focal point of the offense. Once it became obvious BRoy was done and Oden was done, Portland never had the coach or the personnel to maximizes LA's skill set.
On the Lopez Effect:
Stotts had the ability to bring in a new system to cater to LA and did so pretty well last season. Stotts is a players coach. After a year of working together, talk out of training camp, and drastic changes being made on both ends of the court, it should have been clear this team was going to be much better in terms of LA.
Stotts scrapped the entire pick and roll defense to cater to Lopez, and it was going to take time to learn it, which makes sense that it wasn't a work of art in pre-season, and still has a ways to go. But that's a sign that things will improve, not remain terrible like last season - the same goes for rebounding.
Lopez has legit size, and talk out of training camp was that he works extremely hard, just wants to win and play basketball, is unselfish, and wants to do whatever the team needs which is exactly what he is built for and skilled at. His offensive rebounding prowess was not a fluke, and offensive rebounding is a much better indicator of rebounding ability than is defensive or total rebounds. He also played all 82 games in NO with 2 stretch fours in rookie Davis and Anderson, who are not on the same level as LA (although Davis is certainly well on his way to becoming really something special if he could stay healthy). So Lopez started 82 games where he played the role of being alone on an island in the paint. That experience was disregarded or not even understood by some who weren't sold on the Lopez acquisition.
LA specifically talked about how Lopez will help him in training camp.
- Boxing out the other side of the paint, and clearing space
- Having the size and ability to have LA's back on help D, and vice versa
- Forcing teams to choose to give up offensive rebounds/easy Lopez points, OR allow LA to abuse his counter PF, OR force a double team
- LA would be match up with a PF, not a center
How does LA spell relief? R-O-L... O
I've sought counter arguments, and they were extremely weak - often based on a vacuum perception of Lopez as an individual player, and unable to see the affect in it's proper context as the Center of a TEAM.
LA had been asking for a giant body to make his life easier. Players know players, and LA was right about Robin. The "experts" who disagreed should have listened.
What's wrong with what he did and why did it deserve a thread?
