The Portland Trail Blazers have surpassed the numerical half-way mark of the 2015-16 NBA season, and they’ve done so with a better record, and a more talented and polished roster, than many people would have thought going into the season. But, I suppose, that’s why they play the games (in the immortal words of Chris Berman).
The All-Star break is considered to be the half-way mark of the season by the folks involved in the league, but that’s just because everybody except the stars gets to loaf around for a week. That break comes next month. Right now, we’re going to do something that’s very cliché, yet I’m told is reliable click bait: midseason grades for the players!
Accompanied by analysis and with a good smattering of stats, here’s who I think played well, played poorly, and/or played to expectations. Stats are courtesy of NBA.com and basketball-reference.com.
Damian Lillard, Point Guard
Stats: 24.4 PPG, 4.4 RPG, 7 APG, 3.5 turnovers a game, 42/38/87 shooting splits, -2.3 Net Rating, 5.13 Wins over Replacement Player, 21.5 PER
Thoughts: Did we expect anything different from this guy? After LaMarcus Aldridge left Portland to join the San Antonio Spurs, Lillard had to become the lone leader and resident superstar, anchoring a young and bad team. For the most part, Lillard has delivered.
Offensively, he’s regained his mojo from years past. It seemed like he deferred too much to Aldridge last season; instead of taking those bold 30-footers that made him a big NBA name, he meekly dumped the ball into Aldridge in the post 30 times a game and stood around with the rest of his teammates.
Now, we see the real Dame back in action, assertive, ruthless, and utterly lacking in conscience. While his three-point percentage hasn’t suffered as much as I thought it would (it’s up from just 34% from last year), his overall and two-point FG% are at career-lows. Unsurprising since he’s the focal point of the defense all the time, even when his backcourt mate is on the floor.
Keeping with the season-long theme of coach Terry Stotts letting his guys shoot early, nearly 80% of Lillard’s field goal attempts come when the shot clock has 22 and seven seconds left on it.
His defense still sucks (hence the negative Net Rating despite his great offense), but in a year where he’s averaging career highs in points, assists, and PER, there isn’t much you can dock him on. Lillard is doing what the best player on a bad team should be doing.
Grade: A- (The minus is for the defense)
CJ McCollum, Shooting Guard
Stats: 20.7 PPG, 3.6 RPG, 4.4 APG, 44/39/80 shooting splits, 0.6 Net Rating, 17.7 PER
Thoughts: McCollum is the big story for the Blazers this season, hands down. He went from an injury-prone young guy rotting on the bench behind Wesley Matthews and assorted veterans to a guy that’s doing his best Jamal Crawford impression, but with decent defense.
The defense from McCollum is what has been surprising. NBA.com says his rating is 104, second-best among the Blazers’ regulars. Basketball-reference.com’s per 100 possessions stat line says his rating is 110, which is terrible. My own eyeballs saw him stick to Kyle Korver like a 6-foot-4 barnacle last night, and contest Kent Bazemore’s shots whenever his big guys didn’t sabotage him on defense.
The Blazers as a whole are a horrible defensive team; we’ll get into some individuals’ defensive issues as we go down this list. CJ’s issues are mostly about being a short wing player trying to guard modern NBA wings. 25 years ago, he’d have been fine except for the four/six times a year he played Michael Jordan or Clyde Drexler.
On offense, he’s been everything the Blazers have needed. He can hit a shot pulling up, catch-and-shooting, driving to the basket, from the foul line, from the paint, from three (he’s a tenth of a percent behind Allen Crabbe for the team lead in 3PT%)…whenever you need a bucket, send this guy.
CJ McCollum, in the words of ESPN’s Jon Barry, is a “professional scorer.” Hard to argue with that. If he doesn’t win the NBA’s Most Improved Player award when the season ends, it’ll either be because he’d been injured or someone in the media took a vicious blow to the head.
Grade: A+
Mason Plumlee, Center
Stats: 9.2 PPG, 7.8 RPG with 2.8 offensive rebounds per game, 2.7 APG, 50% FG%, 61% FT%, 16.6 PER
Thoughts: When he was with the Brooklyn Nets, Plumlee was their athletic garbage man, providing a desperately needed dose of youth and bounciness to a stodgy veteran team. After being acquired by Portland last summer and asked to expand his game, the 2014 World Cup gold medalist with Team USA tried his best. The results have been mixed.
On the plus side, Plumlee has shown a skill with ball handling and passing that’s uncommon among big men. He’s very comfortable with the ball in his hands, his decisions have been better as he gotten used to his teammates, and Stott’s green light to experiment has led to some entertaining sequences. He’s shooting the requisite 50% from the field that every center should, he’s holding his own on the boards, and he isn’t shooting shots he knows he can’t make.
On the minus side, Plumlee is one of the more clueless defenders on Portland’s roster. He’s often a step late on getting to a spot to seal off the basket, and he isn’t leveraging his great athleticism as much as he can. Most of this is lack of experience; with time and good coaching, Plumlee will get better, and Stotts is able to provide both.
His lack of shooting range is an issue on this current Blazers roster, as well. Meyers Leonard is the only big that can play with Plumlee while not crippling the Blazers’ spacing, but Leonard’s injury coupled with the defensive issues with that pairing has led Stotts to start the 20-year-old Noah Vonleh, despite Vonleh’s obvious lack of seasoning. Ed Davis is a solid defender, but he has shooting limitations similar to Plumlee’s.
I expect Stotts to brainstorm ways to make use of Plumlee’s unique passing game from the elbows in the seasons to come. For now, he’ll have to be content with flashing his skills one or two times a game while Lillard and McCollum hog the ball and dribble-penetrate, with an occasional screen from Plumlee.
Grade: B-
Meyers Leonard, Power Forward (yes, power forward; basketball-reference defines him as such)
Stats: 23.5 MPG, 9 PPG, 4.9 RPG, 1.5 APG, 45/35/78 shooting splits, 11.5 PER
Thoughts: Meyers has had a strange year. He started out shooting very well, picking up from last year. Then he hurt his shoulder, which led in turn to his confidence dwindling. He’s picked it up some lately, shooting when he’s open (mostly), but he still has moments where he passes up an open three to dribble into traffic, cough up the ball, then treat the ball like a hot rock the rest of the quarter.
The thing is, the Blazers desperately need him to shoot whenever he has space, whatever the result. Like I mentioned above, Davis and Plumlee have no range, and Vonleh is unproven. Leonard is the only big man that defenses respect from distance; when he’s hitting threes, everything gets so much easier for Lillard and McCollum, which in turn makes things easier for guys like Allen Crabbe and Al-Farouq Aminu, who play off the lead guards.
They could run more pick-and-pop plays for Leonard to help him out, too. He shoots 51% from the midrange, where Aldridge sniped teams to death for years. The ball-dominance of the guards, and shoddy screening from a tender Leonard, might be factors in the Blazers steering away from those plays.
Forget his still-bad defense, the confidence swings, and the three point dip in PER from last season. If Leonard can get his shot right, he can be the pebble that starts the kind of Blazer offensive rockslide that just buries opponents.
He hasn’t done enough of that to help the Blazers win, to be frank. In a contract year and everything, too. Leonard bet that he’d be deserving of a big raise from Portland management this summer. So far, he’s been losing that bet.
Grade: C-
Al-Farouq Aminu, Small Forward
Stats: 10.6 PPG, 6.6 RPG, 1.6 APG, 41/35/72 shooting splits, 12.4 PER
Thoughts: Aminu has been one of the better new Blazers this year, which makes sense given that he’s one of the most seasoned imports. Getting 29 minutes a game, and starting 43 games out of 44, has helped as well.
Although his PER has stayed at his exact career average and his overall FG% is an average 41%, the fact that he’s shooting 35% from three–despite shooting in the mid 20s for most of his career–is a satisfying development. Aminu is a hard worker, but Terry Stotts and his coaching staff just might be wizards.
Besides that surprising shooting punch from three, Aminu has also provided tough rebounding when asked to play the 4, as well as good perimeter defense. He isn’t much of a scorer, but the Blazers don’t really need more scoring. They need more guys like Aminu, glue guys who form the backbone of a successful team.
He’ll never be the ball handler or creator Nicolas Batum was, but if he can keep that outside shooting steady, Aminu will be a reasonable enough facsimile; remember, Wes Matthews couldn’t dribble facing the basket, either.
Grade: B
Ed Davis, Center
Stats: 21.1 MPG, 6.8 PPG, 7.3 RPG with 3 offensive rebounds a game, 1.1 APG, 62% FG%, 51% FT%, 18.8 PER
Thoughts: Garbage man extraordinaire, this guy. Davis is another of those glue guys I mentioned, a hard worker that knows what he can and should do on the court, and just goes out and does it.
Davis’ field goal shooting and offensive rebounding are his major assets. 62% isn’t anything to sneeze at, even if 185 of his 191 field-goal attempts have come within eight feet of the basket. He also gets many of his buckets on offensive putbacks.
The three offensive rebounds per game he grabs don’t really illustrate Davis’ impact on the offensive boards. Zach Lowe of ESPN wrote a wonderful piece on the dying art of offensive rebounding, and he singled out Ed Davis as an exception to that.
It isn’t all about the rebounds, either; there are times Davis draws a loose ball foul on an opposing player, or taps a ball out to one of his guards to pick up, or knocks the ball off an opponent and out of bounds. Hell, even the two seconds or so he spends battling another team’s big in an unsuccessful attempt to get a rebound are two seconds his teammates can use to get back on defense and set up.
Davis does all the little things that coaches deem incredibly valuable. Plumlee starts over him because Plumlee’s younger, has more potential, and is more skilled than Davis. Excepting those facts, Davis has come in and done what he does best. Any faults that can be found in his game has more to do with what Davis isn’t, and isn’t going to be, than anything else.
Already at 26 years old, Davis isn’t likely to get much better than he is now. If he, the coaches, and especially the fans can accept that, people will have a greater appreciation for guys like him.
Grade: A
Noah Vonleh, Power Forward
Stats: 15.6 MPG, 3.4 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 40% FG%, 18% 3PT%, 83% FT%, 8.9 PER
Thoughts: Stotts isn’t throwing the kid out there because he thinks he’ll be productive. This is a classic “toss him into the deep end” scenario. So far, Vonleh is unsurprisingly floundering, having to learn how to play NBA basketball on the fly.
Stotts at least has the sense to not play him more than those 15 minutes per game, even though he’s starting. The Blazers did the same thing with a young guy named Nicolas Batum years ago, starting him while giving the bulk of the minutes to Travis Outlaw.
I’m reserving judgment on Vonleh because of this dynamic; Batum didn’t show much his first season here either. One thing I will mention: if Stotts is trying to use the kid as a floor-stretcher, have him work on his damn shot.
He’s only attempted 22 threes on the season, but his percentage up there might be why. Vonleh’s got a decent post game, according to some. I said “according to some” because he’s so low on the totem pole he rarely gets to set up down there.
Grade: C (I have to grade him on impact, and he hasn’t made much of one, for reasons I outlined above. This should be “Incomplete,” but he‘s played enough to get a real grade.)
Gerald Henderson, Shooting Guard
Stats: 16.1 MPG, 6.6 PPG, 2.4 RPG, 39/38/71 shooting splits, 10.6 PER
Thoughts: Other than a couple great games here and there, Gerald Henderson’s 2015-16 season has been a flaming pile of dog dung. Thought to be a candidate for the starting job alongside Lillard in the backcourt in training camp, Hendo promptly got hurt and had to watch McCollum seize the starting job like a fat man stealing a large pizza, and hog the playing time like said fat man with said pizza.
Henderson’s PER this season is at its lowest since his rookie year. That is also true of his per game totals for minutes, points, rebounds, assists, and steals. Ditto for his field goal shooting too, which is under 40% for the first time since…yeah, since his rookie year.
His three-point shooting has bumped up to a career-high 38%, though. Seriously, are we sure Terry Stotts isn’t employing somebody from Hogwarts? A guy with a magic spell to correct crappy shooting form?
That outside shooting is all that’s sparing Hendo from the F-burger. I know he was injured, but he hasn’t shown anything during the minutes he’s gotten to make me think he deserves more. You have a huge slump like this, you get a piss-poor grade. Sorry.
Grade: D-
Moe Harkless, Small Forward/Shooting Guard
Stats: 17.6 MPG, 5.1 PPG, 3.1 RPG, 45/26/57 shooting splits, 11.1 PER
Thoughts: If there’s something in Tualatin’s water that improves shooting form, Harkless isn’t drinking any of that stuff. His second season shooting might be a fluke, despite some early signs of life this year; he’s a career 30% three-point shooter.
Looking at his shooting chart, almost all his shots are either in the restricted area or from three-point range, which is good. He’s listening to his coaches about the proper shots to take. He’s subscribing to the notion among stat heads like myself that the best shots to take are right at the cup and from three-point land.
Problem is, the three-point part isn’t there for poor Moe. Teams are now backing off of him, cutting off those driving lanes and daring him to shoot. He just meekly passes off to Lillard or McCollum, putting more pressure on them to score. He also hasn’t been good on defense. Younger and slightly lighter than Aminu, Harkless hasn’t used his length and speed to bother opponents enough to be worthy of more playing time.
Harkless can’t seem to get out of his own head at times. Like Leonard, he’s in a contract year, and he doesn’t have the advantage of being seven feet tall. While he’s trying his best, Harkless hasn’t done all that much since November. If this continues, at least the Blazers gave up next to nothing for a flier on a young guy.
Grade: D
Allen Crabbe, Shooting Guard
Stats: 26 MPG, 11.1 PPG, 2.6 RPG, 1.2 APG, 47/39/84 shooting splits, 13.2 PER
Thoughts: Unlike Harkless, here’s a guy that’s made the most of his time. He’s a tenth of a percentage point ahead of McCollum for the lead in three-point percentage on the Blazers, and his overall FG% is great for a perimeter player as well.
Name an area of the floor, and Crabbe shoots at least above-average from there. The restricted area and midrange (the area he’s taken the most shots from) percentages in particular are sterling, and he’s 44% when shooting a jump shot, which is freaking brilliant.
He still has his defensive issues. Stotts has treated him to a baptism by fire on that end; I’ve watched him “try” to guard legendary scorer Kevin Durant, among other elite players. Emphasis on “try.” Poor kid.
It’s fascinating to compare Crabbe to Harkless, his main competition for playing time. While Harkless has been almost clinical in where he takes his shots, he’s struggled from the floor. Crabbe, meanwhile, hasn’t been shy about shooting from midrange, which is the worst spot to shoot from according to analytics. Crabbe, if you didn’t notice from the stat lines, is shooting much better than Harkless.
The difference is Harkless is thinking too much while he’s out there, while Crabbe is just going out there and playing. Sometimes, you need to toss what eggheads like yours truly say out the door and just go out there and ball.
Crabbe hasn’t done much else of consequence on the court, but his primary NBA skills coming out of college were scoring and shooting. He’s doing that. Perfecting defense and other skills can come later.
Crabbe can look to the example of his former teammate, Matthews. While Crabbe was drafted, unlike Matthews, Crabbe was a second-rounder. He had little more security than Wes did. If Crabbe develops like Matthews did during his time in Portland, that would be all the awesome.
For now, I’m content to just watch AC get buckets.
Grade: B+
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