Quick Joins Team Bayless

I don’t know Ben. My Tone is pretty defined. It took a thousand comments to say nothing, it wasn’t easy, just ask Jerry Seinfeld what it’s like to talk about nothing for a long long time. But if the Jerryd Bayless era has begun, I have one thing to say, long be the reign. I just love watching hungry rookies get a chance. Someone needs to get the airplane spoon coming into the hanger for Greg too cause that kid could learn how to pick a carcass apart like T-Rex can. Just you wait and see. Kevin Garnett thinks this kid is worth barking at and that’s nothing to woof at. And then, right after that laughable childish gesture, Jerryd came right back and barried a deuce on the Celts. That’s called playing older then your age. Let your actions speak for themselves. And didn’t the Celtics loose to Golden State tonight? Sorry KG, it happens, you’ll be fine. I am just waiting for the Portland-Boston rematch, and see if KG has changed his tone, er, bark.

If I was Greg Oden I would hate playing with Sergio and Blake. Why?

A.) Sergio never throws me lob dunks.
B.) They are a big part of the reason I’m in foul trouble so much.

Greg is already pretty bad at rotating quick enough on defense. If Blake and Sergio (Roy and Rudy too for that matter) let their man get into the lane whenever he wants, I’m inevitably going to pick up fouls at a much higher rate. I don’t know if Bayless is the answer, but something needs to change. The Blazers can’t keep going into games hoping they can make enough jump shots to counter the other teams layups.

T-Rexx needs some minutes, and they should come at the expense of both Blake and Sergio. Blake is shooting good, but his PG skills (lack of) are driving me nuts. Turn overs, and actually BRoy plays point quite a bit when Blake is in, so it doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out. Sergio is dishing balls like a popular restaurant does with it’s most popular dish. ’Nuff said. (oh and he hits some shots also, oh my).

 T-Rexx’s minutes should not wholely come out of Sergio’s time. Look to the future Mr. Sonic.

It’s time.

Bayless has quietly worked his butt off despite being buried on the bench while his peers (Rose, Mayo, Gordon, even Chalmers and Hill) get carte blanche to toss up as many shots as they want to for inferior teams.

In limited time, despite disappointing some, he’s flashed explosive, gritty, unbridled athleticism and toughness just waiting to be let out of the proverbial can. Open it up, Nate. Let’s see what he can do once he gets comfortable on the court. Don’t be afraid. It’ll hurt just a little, but it’ll be really fun too and it’ll open your eyes to the surprising reality that it actually isn’t against the rules for the point guard for whom you run 25 pick-and-rolls a game to actually score off the pick-and-roll.

Here’s the thing: Blake and Sergio haven’t been THAT bad on D for the most part. But here’s the other thing: NOBODY on the Blazers is a good perimeter defender except (maybe hopefully let’s cross our fingers) Bay Bay. Not Roy. Certainly not Rudy or Outlaw. And despite his POTENTIAL as a stopper, not Batum. (He’s too flimsy and inexperienced right now.)

You need one guy out there capable of keeping his man in front of him and/or recovering after he gets rubbed off a pick. An upgrade on D at the point of attack is exactly what this team needs right now. If that also provides another guy who can draw fouls and attack the basket, hey, nobody’s complaining.

………………………… at least I assume that’s the position that our 5’9" friend from Puerto Rico was playing, given his dominance of the glass…

And Jerryd’s tone is unmistakeable… his tone is tonier than your tone.

you’d think Ben’s obsessive Bayless cheerleading on the main page would slow down, but it doesn’t. It’s wearing on me. Ben makes my postings about Sergio seem like I am a fair-weather Sergio fan.

The team is in the doldrums? And here I thought it was playing Phoenix, Denver, Denver and Dallas in a week. (and I seem to recall they won 2 of them and were completely competitive in all four).

No doubt the team is displaying disconcertingly lazy defense. No doubt Sergio is a prime offender. But let’s look at the Dallas game. Two questions: 1) was it REALLY defense that made the difference?, which partially answers 2) Would it have been possible to compensate in other ways and still win that game?

Now maybe you put boxing out under the category of defense, but as far as I’m concerned if the ball doesn’t go in the net it should be a given that it’s now your ball and you just need to make sure you get it (excepting crazy bounces off the rim, I suppose). So if you accept that premise, the only real defensive flaws down the stretch that hurt them were the late rotations to the perimeter shooter—for the entire quarter, the Mavs only made three shots from 15 ft or more that were not second chance points Only one of them was a three, so that’s 7 points out of 25. (There was the embarrassing scene of Oden having no clue where to go off one switch, too).

The failures in that game were the lack of FT efficiency (as was pointed out in the recap, almost the entire deficit should have been swallowed by more made frees), the 4th qtr Roy-do-your-magic iso did not result in buckets as it usually does (whether because he was hammered and got no call, or not) , and they simply gave a strong team too many extra chances.

So, question 2): could they have won anyway, despite the toreador defense? I say yes. The shots not falling/fouls not called, that’s a twist of fate thing more often than not, and you have to accept that just like not even David Ortiz gets the RBI every time with men on base and the team behind in the 9th, you’re not going to get the shot to fall or get the foul called every time you need it. That’s called being human.

But defensive rebounding and (to a lesser extent) FT are eminently fixable, and just a little extra work on both would have made the difference IMO. Give the Blazers the same FT% as Dallas, or as they are usually capable of, and suddenly it’s 97-97 with 3 minutes to go, and Portland doesn’t have to start scrambling as they did at 97-92.

Now, O-reebs. The Mavs had SEVEN of them in the 4th. SEVEN. You oughta run wind sprints to open practice the next day if you give up 7 offensives all game, almost. In a quarter, much less the final one? Jay-Zsus!

Not all of them led to points, but I still count 8 directly related to an offensive board.

So they lost by 8, but give them five FT and five points back from O-reebs (say the Berea putback jam and the Kidd three) and Portland wins that game.

To bring this back around to Sergio, his defense does blow. But my roundabout point is that almost every team has a weakness, and strengths are expected to overcome them however possible. To that end, IMO Sergio was more than overcoming his defensive deficiencies by doing exactly what the team says it needs now: pushing them out of the doldrums with energy and movement. When the 2nd unit came in the first time, Dallas had made their comeback and were looking to extend. Sergio was EVERYWHERE for several minutes, hitting his shots and feeding others…especially Rudy, who in my mind is the key bridge between inside and outside. When Rudy gets the ball with Serg and Roy on the court, the floor looks SO much more wide open.

When they needed that spark in the 2nd half, it wasn’t there. As has been amply pointed out, the defense sucked just as much with him on the pine, perhaps even worse. I think of Sergio as like a tall can of Rockstar—for a while you can do no wrong, but eventually you crash. The key is to let him run through all that energy, then sit him down when he starts to crash (ie, bad passes, taking his own turrible shots). The answer is not to sit him entirely, but to use his minutes as judiciously and strategicallly as possible.

I’m all for BRex seeing some minutes here and there in games other than blowouts. Roy and Rex instead of Roy and Blake for a while would do everyone some good. But unless Nate thinks Bayless’ defensive posture will be contagious to his teammates, I don’t see how it either fundamentally fixes the teamwide defensive problems—or replaces the notable boost in energy when Sergio is on the court. And further, I think that boost can often compensate for the defense, and still lead to (ugly) wins.

The entire defense sucked the last few games. I guess Sergio’s a convenient whipping boy. Keep blaming- it’s easier than seeing.

This gets me excited. I hope it doesn’t cut into Sergio’s time coming off one of his better performances. Nate refuses to play serg significantly in the second half so taking his minutes away would be like taking a starving man’s last top ramen. The only issue I see here is Bayless gets called for ticky-tack fouls way too often. I’m not sure if he is being TOO agressive or the refs aren’t used to this rook d-ing up everyone else likes its game 7 of the NBA finals. So please don’t start hailing the end of the experiment when he picks up some fouls…we need to give him some time to adjust.

I am glad Rudy and Roy got called out on the defensive end. Too often we overlook their mistakes because they can be simply magical at times. We need to step it up and stop acting like a finesse jump shooting team with two shot blocking bigs because that is not getting it done. In my opinion, we need: physical hard nosed defense, rebounding from the front court and an active presence in the paint AKA stay away from the perimeter Greg!

And I am not a big Sergio fan, but to signal him out is ridiculous. Especially against Dallas. The whole teams defense was atrocious. Blake, Sergio, Rudy and Roy were horrible. LaMarcus got used by Nowitzki. Trout had some good individual efforts against Dirk, but looked lost in off the ball defense. Oden and Pryzbilla were too slow once the guards easily penetrated by our guards.

Yes the second unit got burned at the start of the fourth quarter, but then so did the starters after they came back in. And to make matters worse they also couldn’t play any offense either.

I really do think Nate may have it out for Sergio.

singled out sergio, not Nate. It sounds like Quick asked Nate about Sergio’s performance, since he made 4-4 etc and then Nate gave the comments about his D.

Didn’t sound like Nate just started dogging Sergio randomly.

I’d say it’s an example of Quick once again abusing his postion as Oregonian beat writer to become the story, not report it. He clearly wants to see Bayless play, so he pounces on an ambiguous statement by Nate to push that agenda.

Yes, Nate may be considering giving Bayless some PT over Sergio. He also may be considering cutting back Rudy or Frye’s time. Maybe he intends to start Joel over GO. Or—most likely of all—he was issuing a generalized threat in an attempt to light a fire under his team by putting them ALL on edge.

I ignore Jason Quack

Bayless, once he works out the kinks, will give you unprecedented energy every night on defensive. I Guar-On-Tee!

As for whether blake, sergio, rudy or roy’s time will be shortened, I’ll leave that up to those in the know. I can’t imagine roy’s time would shrink, even with a couple of bad games. My guess is you are looking at the other 3. Love Rudy’s offense, but he is a little lax on defense, or maybe just not as good yet (still adjusting to NBA schedule madness I think).

I really want to see Bayless on the floor, the blazers would be fools not to develop this clearly maniacally devoted baller…

For all we know, Channing and Ike get benched permanently and we see more Travis at the 4 and Nicolas Batum at the 3.

Nate should have Tivoed that game. Sergio played good defence on christmas, it was Blake that was constantly getting burned.

That being said I’d like to see Bayless get more minutes. Maybe give different players meaningful minutes in different games based on matchups.

give some of his minutes to bayless. Put Roy at SF Rudy SG, PG Bayless for a few stretches of games

I don’t think Nate was singling out Sergio as much as Quick was. It doesn’t seem like Quick asked about any other players. It’s the equivalent of Nate saying he’s thinking about buying a ring and then Quick only asks about pinkies, then comes to the conclusion that Nate is going to buy a pinky ring, and Quick likes pinky rings.

Everyone besides Joel, and maybe LaMarcus on the perimeter is playing crappy D. Besides Joel, everyone needs to focus more on their defense or Nate will put someone else in to see if they will get the job done better. Quick jumped to the Bayless conclusion because the other conclusions suck.

      I meant . . .
                            COINCAST SUCKS !!!!

my photoshop got posted.