Today and tomorrow, each Portland Trail Blazer who’s played significant time with the team will get a grade on their season. I know it’s a wee bit cliché to do grades when everybody else does, but this is a Blazer-centric space, and I’ll toss in some player-specific analysis to explain why that player got the grade he did.
What I mean by “significant time” is each Blazer who’s played at least 15 minutes per game, or 41 games. So Tim Frazier and other assorted scrubs won’t be mentioned because they’re not important enough, nor Will Barton and Thomas Robinson, who were traded to Denver. They didn’t play enough games or minutes per to qualify, anyway.
One guy we will look at, though, is Arron Afflalo. He’s the lone exception; the trade for his services was supposed to push Portland into title contention. Sadly, that now isn’t the case, but he still warrants a look.
The bench guys will be graded tomorrow. Today, the starters, who’ll likely sit out the game against Dallas (except Damian Lillard, just to get that 82nd game in for the THIRD STRAIGHT YEAR!!!), will get looked at. (All stats per NBA.com)
LaMarcus Aldridge: A
Season Stats as of Wednesday: 23.5 PPG, 10.3 RPG, 1.8 APG, 47/35/85 shooting splits
Positives: Where to begin? The Franchise has built upon his great 2013-14 campaign by keeping his scoring steady, shooting a career best from the foul line, stretching his game out to the three-point line, and especially ramping up his defensive activity. (Everybody makes a big deal out of Robin Lopez’s rim protection, but Aldridge’s ability to chase around guys much quicker than himself on the perimeter when teams go small is just as vital to the Blazer defense, if not more so.)
His rebounding fell off a bit from last year’s career-best 11.1 mark, but Aldridge still recorded his second consecutive 20-10 season, the first time he’s ever done that. Additionally, though the midrange jumper is seen as the worst shot you can take in modern basketball, Aldridge feasts on it, to the point where teams send doubles whenever he gets the ball inside the arc.
Even after suffering a torn ligament in his left thumb before the All-Star break, he continues to routinely dominate games.
Negatives: One quibble where Aldridge is concerned is the tendency for the ball to stick when he gets it on the block. NBA offense typically works best when there’s constant motion, but when Aldridge catches the ball and goes to work, everybody else stands and watches.
There’s no movement off the ball, no back screens, no cuts, nothing. Consequently, when teams send two defenders at Aldridge and force him to either take a weird shot or give it up, the static Blazer offense allows the defense to easily reset or collect the rebound. If Portland gets the ball back, Lillard or Nicolas Batum re-enter the ball to Aldridge, and the whole insipid dance happens again.
To be clear, Aldridge is one of the five most devastating one-on-one weapons in the NBA today. I just think that awesomeness could be augmented if the opposing defense had more to worry about than the really tall guy dribbling the ball and sending forearm shivers into their big man.
Damian Lillard: C
Season Stats as of Wednesday: 21 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 6.2 APG, 2.7 turnovers a game, 43/34/86 splits
Positives: One of the knocks on Lillard’s game has been his inability to finish at the rim. He’s struggled again lately, but he does sport a season mark of 62% in the restricted area, a very good mark for a guard. He’s learned to drive better and with a little more control.
For a franchise that always seems to have horrible luck, the fact that Lillard’s poised to play all 82 games in each of his first three seasons is incredible and refreshing. His durability is perhaps his most important trait. It took 20 minutes to type those last two sentences, since I was knocking on my cherry wood desk with one hand and punching keys with the other.
Lillard also is a very good rebounding point guard, his size and athleticism coming into play. He’s not Russell Westbrook, but no human being can claim to be in Westbrook’s league as a rebounding point guard, especially with Westbrook stealing a few boards from his teammates to satisfy his triple-double hunger.
Negatives: Lillard gets an average grade for two reasons. The obvious one is his defense, which went from bad to awful as the year went on. With Stephen Curry finally becoming competent on defense, Lillard is the new NBA punching bag for bad perimeter defense.
Point guard defense is incredibly tough to learn in the NBA; it took Curry until this year, and the insertion of Draymond Green into the starting lineup, and Klay Thompson becoming really good on defense himself, to go from horrid to not costing his team points on the defensive end. Lillard has the tools to get there; all he needs is time.
The real troubling issue is his below-average three-point shooting. The 34% next to his name doesn’t tell the whole story, either. Looking deep into his shooting stats with NBA.com revealed a very disturbing stat: out of the seven threes Lillard takes a game, five are shot while open–that is to say, there’s no defender within four feet of him when he shoots.
Lillard makes just 34% of his OPEN threes, when he’s pretty much all by himself. For a guy who prides himself as, and has a reputation as, a dead-eye shooter, that stat is mind-boggling and disappointing. I knew he was missing most of his good looks; I’ve watched enough Blazer games to make that conclusion with the eyes alone. But seeing his stats made me bump him down to a C.
If the Blazers are to have a chance in the playoffs, and beyond, Lillard better get his act together. Now.
Nicolas Batum: D+
Season Stats as of Wednesday: 9.4 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 4.8 APG, 40/32/86 splits
Positives: Not much to say here, as Batum’s had an ugly year. He did perform much better after he got back from the All-Star break, keying a few vital Blazer victories.
When he’s engaged, Batum’s functioned well as a facilitator and secondary ball handler; he can initiate a pick-and-roll with Lopez that takes advantage of scrambling defenses and often leads to an easy RoLo hoop.
Also, while his career-high 7.5 rebounds per game last season looks to be an outlier, Batum’s still rebounded well for a wing player. When Aldridge or Lopez has missed time, they’ve needed every loose board Batum’s corralled with those long arms.
Negatives: Playing for France yet again last summer, after a second-round playoff run for the first time in his career, and also having to go through a divorce, clearly took their toll on Nic. Being continually banged-up didn’t help either; Batum’s never been a durable player, and last year will likely be the only season he plays all 82 games.
Batum’s posted career lows in field goal percentage, three-point percentage, and has shot the fewest amount of free throws, and blocked the least amount of shots, since his rookie year. He’s only attempted 85. Shots a game, his lowest since his abbreviated second year, when Nate McMillian was still holding his leash and Brandon Roy was playing like a top-three shooting guard.
Any way you choose to look at it, Batum stank in 2014-15. If GM Neil Olshey can get the band back together this summer, here’s hoping Batum actually gets some rest, and gets his personal affairs in order and behind him.
Wesley Matthews: B+
Season Stats after Injury: 15.9 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.3 steals per game, 45/39/75 splits
Positives: Matthews maintained the sniper-like accuracy from three-point range he’s refined his whole career, as well as giving the Blazers his usual bulldog defense. In the framework of Terry Stotts’ offense, Matthews has fit like a glove.
Two-thirds of Wes’ made field goals are off of assists, showing that when he makes himself available, he’ll let it fly. On catch-and-shoot threes, he shot 38.6%, a great mark. On open threes, Matthews shot 40%, including a sterling 45% on wide-open shots behind the arc. Unlike Lillard, Matthews has made defenses pay for leaving him alone.
His accuracy isn’t limited to just the great beyond, either. Wes has shot the ball very well from all over the court this season; that 45% mark is more a product of him taking 3/5ths of his shots from three than any kind of inaccuracy.
Negatives: You mean besides getting injured? There hasn’t been much to ding Matthews on this season, but one statistical oddity I did find relates to his free-throw shooting.
Wes has shot 75% this season, well below his career average of 82%. In fact, the only other time he didn’t crack 80% from the stripe in a season was 2012-13, and he shot 79.7%; that can be rounded up into 80% for those with an obsession with concrete numbers.
Here’s hoping Wes comes back to Portland healthy and better than ever.
Robin Lopez: B
Season Stats as of Wednesday: 9.7 PPG, 6.8 RPG, 0.9 APG, 1.4 blocks per game, 53.6% FG%, 77% FT%
Positives: Lopez has done his usual RoLo things this year. He’s been opportunistic on offense, accurate (for a center) from the free-throw line, and a deterrent at the rim.
It’s the rim protection in particular I want to touch on. Defensive prowess is much harder to quantify than the offensive side of the ball; blocks and steals don’t begin to tell the story. Looking at a player’s high blocks total or seeing some guard swipe 20 passes in five games, than assuming said player is good at defense, is like reading the first 30 pages of Dune, then assuming you know all the ins-and-outs of the plot…even though the book is 600 pages long.
If that player blocks shots out of bounds instead of toward a teammate, his opponents will have the ball back, and another chance to score. If the guy who gambled to accrue those 20 steals in a week continues to do so, the other team will use those tendencies against him, and break the entire defense down because he’s hunting for numbers.
Robin doesn’t do any of that nonsense. A handy-dandy number from NBA.com, recently invented thanks to the SportVU tracking cameras installed in every NBA arena, shows how effective Lopez is at the rim. Called Diff%, it takes a team’s or player’s normal FG% from a certain area of the floor, like the paint, and the FG% of that team or player when defended by another player, and figures out the difference.
From 10 feet and in, Lopez’s Diff% is a sparkly -5.5. To illustrate that, let’s say Player X shoots 57.5% from the paint. When his shots from the paint are defended by Robin Lopez, his shooting percentage is decreased by 5.5%, to 52%. Lopez significantly reduces a player’s chances to score close to the basket, and his pedestrian blocks total is just the tip of the iceberg that is his overall defensive impact.
MIT stat heads and college professors, including Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry, are finding new methods to quantify defensive impact, and most NBA teams (including the Blazers) have their own statistical databases, gathered by their own advanced stats personnel. As our understanding of basketball defense improves, maybe that half of the court will get the attention and notice it deserves from the fans.
Negatives: Lopez’s numbers are down across the board, but the worst part of Lopez’s season was getting bit by the injury bug that he’d eluded the past two seasons, playing every possible game from 2012 to 2014. That broken hand, suffered while guarding DeMarcus Cousins, cost Lopez a quarter of his season and was the start of the injury plague that struck down Portland’s chances for a championship.
Now that he’s back, Lopez hasn’t been able to recover the form that led him to average a career-high 8.5 rebounds last season, three more per game than his previous high. It’s possible that, like Batum, Lopez’s rebounding was a one-year spike returning to the mean, but unlike Nico, RoLo’s a massive man working next to a guy in Aldridge who gets everybody’s undivided attention at all times.
I love Lopez, and I’m likely nitpicking on the Blazers’ fifth-best player, but a seven-foot, 255-pound man shouldn’t be averaging less than seven rebounds per game. For a big man, averaging a number of rebounds less than the number of feet he stands should be embarrassing.
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