The MOST Encouraging Sign From Today's Game...

[hasoos]

The facts are that if you can shoot an efficient percentage and outrebound the other team on a nightly basis you will win most of your games. Only one of those things is happening right now. The Blazers have to get more out of their offensive game in the paint. They are still a jump shooting team for the most part. Jump shooting teams lose out in the playoffs.


They obviously need more out of Oden and Aldridge in the paint. Particularly Aldridge.

They could use a few plays where they post up Miller. That has been half his bread and butter over his years, and I think I have seen it once this year, and he basically called a clear out and did it on his own.

Roy should have been posting up Chauncy Billups all night last night. Get that Fracker into foul trouble.

 

[Wizard Mentor]

One word. Rebounding.

I grew up watching games on KGW where Steve 'Snapper' Jones would decry his three keys to the game. With near certainty, you could count on third tip to be 'Rebound'. It's that simple. Control the possession of the game. Sure, you should try to minimize turnovers, but if you rebound well then you're giving yourself second chance opportunities and limiting theirs. And it leads to easy opportunities to convert on the fast break.

Last year Portland was the 12th best rebounding team total, and the absolute best on the offensive end.

Tonight we out-rebounded Denver by a margin of 44-36. Against (undersized) Houston it was an even more impressive 51-33.

Want to know who lead the league in rebounding last year? The eventual champion Lakers. How about the runners-up Magic? Third. There are a few outliers (most notably the Pacers at 2nd), but looking at the numbers it's a clear trend that the good teams tend to rank well in rebounding...there's correlation. I assert that this has always been the case, and soon will spend a bit of time attempting to prove this theory (I'll post my findings on my blog).

Certainly there are several things we need to improve upon. Free-throw shooting anyone? It was encouraging to see Rudy step up as well. We should have had an extra couple of seconds on that last play to get a shot off. Regardless, we lost. Time to get over it. So far this season we have a young but VERY promising trend emerging. If we continue to scrap at the boards like we did in this game (Outlaw's 3rd and 4th efforts on the one play come to mind) we'll consistently be in every game to the end. And with our overall talent and closer in Roy, we'll come out on the better end more often than not.

Funny you bring this up. At the end of the game I was being haunted by the voice of Bill Shonely -
"You've gotta make your free throws!"

 

[BBert]

We might as well have drafted Durant.

So Nate could announce to the world the team will not run a single play for him, since we already have enough offensive players, and that he must focus exclusively on defense and rebounding?

Sorry, just channeling my inner Mediocre Man.