Do top NBA teams need just 3 offensive options to win?

Roy and LMA need to take more shots, Roy especially. Last night against ATL it was something that I thought contributed to the team losing. Down the stretch in the 4th and OT the Blazers need to have Roy, LMA, and maybe Oden shooting the ball everytime down the court. Roy should be avg 20 shots a game, not 14 or 15. LMA needs 18 shots a game, Oden should get 10-12 per game.

The Blazers are playing well, so i am not really upset at this, but it is something that I worry about.

In the playoffs, an opponent has time to game plan and set up defensive schemes to limit your first and second options. When that happens, you need legitimate third and fourth options. You don’t need to go to them all the time, but you need them there to keep the defense honest.

We lost in the playoffs last year primarily because we didn’t have enough other threats to keep the defense honest, so Houston was able to slow our main guys often enough to beat us.

This year, it is clear, we are working on developing a few other threats. When it comes time to win, we’ll still go through Brandon and LMA, and hopefully Greg on occasion. But we’ll also have other threats that will keep the defense honest.

By the playoffs, the offensive kinks will have been worked out, and we will be a machine that will do some serious damage. We won’t lose in the first round this year, unless we get zapped by injuries. I don’t know if we’ll win the second round or not, but we’ll give it a good run, I expect.

And the reason we’ll go further is two-fold — first, our defense will be better, and second, our offense will be harder to stop because we’ll have a few more threats that have to be respected. Not offensive all-stars, perhaps, but legitimate threats.

is that they still don’t know where the money is. And by that I mean they are searching for who gets shots, as a team they do not know who should be shooting the ball. If you look at their stats you can see the confusion:

Roy is avg 15 shots a game, 2 less than last year (almost 1 more 3 per game)
LMA is avg 12.7 shots a game, 2.6 less than last year
Oden is avg 6.8 shots a game, 1 more than last year
Rudy is avg 5.8 shots a game, 2.3 less than last year, (1.5 less 3’s than last year)
Blake is avg 7.4 shots a game, 2 less than last year, (same amount of 3’s as last year)
Outlaw is avg 9.2 shots a game, 1.3 less than last year, (same amount of 3’s)

Those were the main offensive last year, everyone but Greg is is avg less shots than last year. Now to the new additions.
Miller is avg 9.3 shots per game, (1.3 3’s)
Webster is avg 5.8 shots per game, (2.8 3’s)

The Blazers are avg 95.3 ppg, and giving up 88.1 ppg. They’re currently 3rd in defense allowing 96 points per 100 poss, but middle of the pack in offense avg just 104 points per 100.

I would speculate that Nate needs to change the offense to get the Blazers most efficient scorers the ball more. And those are Roy, LMA, Oden and Rudy. All of these players should be shooting more for the Blazers, Outlaw’s injury should help this happen as LMA should avg closer to last years 37 mins per game, (he is only avg 32.5 so far this year) and Rudy should see an increase in his minutes getting him close to the 25 mins per game he saw last year, (currently he is at 21.8) Roy needs to be featured a bit more, and I feel that will come as he continues to get comfortable playing along side Miller. As Oden continues to improve, his teammates will continue to look for him and his shots should increase naturally as the season goes forward.

Ofcourse if these 4 should increase their production, it has to come from somewhere. The Blazers should run a bit more than they have been, especially at home but that would only see a marginal increase in total possessions. It appears to me that both Webster and Miller are shooting too much for this Blazers offense to be efficient. Both are shooting below 40% on the year, and while they shouldn’t stop taking open shots, both have been forcing a few shots during the early part of the season. Those forced shots, and the forced shots we are seeing at the end of the shot clock are dragging the efficiency of the offense down. Getting rid of these type of shots, and replacing them with more efficient shots by better shooters will go along way toward getting this team’s offense back on track.

With all that said the team is doing really well defensively this year, some of that is playing bad teams, but the Blazers are helping them look really bad by playing really good defense. I want to see this team become an elite team, and to become that team I feel they need to have their best offensive players taking the majority of the shots during the game. As of last night, Roy, LMA, Oden, and Rudy are taking 40.3 shots and avg 49.4%, while the rest of the team is taking 36.3 shots and avg 39.9%.The “big 4” need to be taking more than 53% of the shots during a game, 55-60% would be more like it, especially if Blake, Webster and Outlaw, (when he returns) can’t find their rythem soon.

you’re just not seeing the whole picture. There are offensive players, and then there is the offense. You overlook the importance of the offense, as if it were just a sum of statistics of individual offensive performers.

From my perspective, a championship caliber offense has as many weapons as are needed to get the job done.

Is there a rule for how many players that is? Absolutely not.

It depends on the character of the team. Most importantly, IT DEPENDS UPON WHAT OPPOSING DEFENSES GIVE YOU.

In the case of our Blazers, I thought the lesson of last year was that our offense was not resilient enough. Too predictable. Too static.

So I interpret our shifting offense to an attempt to incorporate a more dynamic, less predictable offensive scheme centered around our new point guard, Andre Miller.

Is this the right answer for Portland? I hope so. If the team commits to Miller, it should make for a more resilient offense, because Andre can more easily adapt to a defense that is shutting down individual weapons.

Balance. If other scorers are doing damage, defenses will shift, giving Brandon more opportunities.

didnt start the season shooting well he was on a tear as far as getting to the line. Enter 3 guard lineup and miller and its come to a screeching halt. Why kp and nate decided to mess with brandon’s playmaking by bringing in the unnecessary miller i dont know.