Do you want to not have a center when you’re tied with 2 minutes left.

OR

Do you want to have a center when you’re down 10 with 2 minutes left?

I think the answer is obvious!

My point is that you’re far less likely to find yourself down 6 points with four minutes left if GO & Przy have played every single minute up until that point. Chances are you’ll be up 10+. The Rockets—like most NBA teams—simply can’t cope with a two-center tandem like GO & Przy. They get worn down by the third quarter.

Yao Ming in particular possesses the stamina of a cheetah—minus the speed! He spends a considerable amount of time on the bench recuperating, and Adelman resorts to Scola as a sub. Scola vs Oden (or even Przy) is a matchup you HAVE to take advantage of! But you can’t do so with GO sitting on the bench.

1. Rudy is still fighting a back injury and needs time to recoup (also Roy’s knee needs some healing), so Sergio is a necessity to spare them 40 minutes a night running up to the playoffs
2. When playing a bigger team (like Houston), Outlaw at the 4 is a liability. He’ll have to guard Scola or Hayes, both of which will kill him on the boards.
3. As for Oden and Pryz, Nate’s darned if you do, darned if you don’t. If he plays them both a lot and they’re both in foul trouble at the end, they may give up easy shots in the lane not trying to get the 6th foul (they will lose some aggressiveness). If he doesn’t, then he has to play Frye early risking giving up points early which the team has to come back from. I for one agree that I would rather both foul out and play small ball, then play small ball with both on the bench.

Both Cs won’t use all 6 fouls. Oden uses 6, but Joel uses 2 Ts.

He gets DNPs when the big guys aren’t in foul trouble.

Sergio has been playing fine as of late, and protecting the ball better than Blake even. (Minus that 5 turnover blowout, but Sergio also goes into flash mode during blowouts.)

If you let the centers play until (on rare occasions) they both foul out, they’ll end up logging a lot more minutes. And those are minutes during which they’re making things very tough on opposing teams—even physical ones like the Rockets.

… it hurts our defensive rebounding.

It’s a foul on Blake.

Assuming it’s not 6/5, just tell the guy with 5 to play his game. If you foul out, no biggy.

Refs may call a quick pair of fouls on a guy, but they seem loath to follow that up with ADDITIONAL foul calls. That is, unless said player does something really dumb—i.e, he commits a foul so blatant that he leaves the ref no choice but to call it.

On the other hand, Nate’s approach of pulling the offending player the instant he gets the two fouls takes the onus off the official. We’ve seen this a lot this season: GO gets the quick two and Nate gives him the hook. GO gets in again just before halftime (or just after) and immediately gets called. Out he goes again. GO ends up racking up 5 or 6 fouls in only six or eight minutes of play, but because it’s spread out over the course of the game, the officials don’t really seem to be picking on him.

Importantly, I’m not questioning Nate’s general policy of pulling players after two fouls. Rather, I’m suggesting that in the case of the Blazers’ “two-headed center,” he should make an exception. That’s because, in effect, GO/ Przy is one guy, with 12, not 6, fouls to use. So give whichever guy is in the game a chance to break a sweat and find his rhythm, even if he picks up a few fouls in the process. Ultimately, he’ll have a much better chance to impact the game than if he gets the quick hook.

The Blazers’ can seriously wear down opponents with their two active, physical centers. We’ve seen this. But it only works if one or the other big is on the court at nearly all times. (Again, as I mentioned in the poll, the obvious exception is when matchups favor going center-less.)

keeping his hands up and not swiping at the player when the ball i 1/2 way down. He’s almost a step slow behind each play. He cant anticipate, a foul happens. So Greg needs to work on this.

Sophia

Nate has shown the ability and willingness to change course (sooner or later) when an approach isn’t working. At that point, he tries a different approach—even if that approach violates of one of his “rules.” For example, it took Nate awhile to accept that splitting the back-up point guard minutes wasn’t working. Nate was loath to award the slot to either Sergio or Bayless when neither had clearly beaten out the other. But eventually Nate bowed to the reality that in splitting those minutes, BOTH players’ performance suffered. So Nate awarded the minutes to Sergio and glued Bayless to the bench. (Sergio hasn’t exactly excelled since then, but he’s certainly played better than either guard did during Nate’s “platooning” phase.)

My point is that Nate may be stubborn, but not to the point of being rigid & unbending. I expect that eventually he’ll start spending those 12 post fouls more freely. I’m just hoping the change comes sooner rather than later.

I’m not sure if it’s because Greg backs off a little, or if the refs are trigger-shy when he has five fouls. Probably a bit of both.

But Greg seems to stay in the game longer with 5 fouls than he does with 1.

I’m thinking about the food auction they have every season. Nate reminds me of the guy who saves his money for the perfect food item, but then the auction ends and he’s got no food—just a pocket full of worthless cash (worthless on the island, that is).

Nate also reminds me of all the survivors who have found the “hidden immunity idol” but failed to play it at tribal council. So they exit the show with no million dollars, just a wonderful trinket (probably worth a couple hundred bucks on eBay).

Not so last night. When Nate once again put Frye into the post and the opponent once again took control of the game, I winced. And when the Blazers had to make a miraculous comeback to win—with the “two-headed center” ending up with 5 unspent fouls—I felt sick.

Please, Nate: re-think your “avoid fouling out both centers at all costs” policy. That’s NOT the worst eventuality: LOSING GAMES IS!

Shav does seem a bit more at home banging than Frye does. Frye is taller, but he’s a shooting guard in a post player’s body. It’s not that he lacks heart; he really does try to bang in there. It’s just not in him.

Of course, some of us hoped the Blazers would keep a third true center on the roster—Stephen Hill—this season. I was among those Hill advocates. My thinking at the time was mainly that he would be injury insurance in the event either GO or Przy got hurt. Given that both guys are currently healthy, I don’t feel Hill is needed. The real problem is Nate’s apparent phobia regarding EVER finding himself in crunch time with both his centers fouled out.

Granted, if Nate let his centers play with fouls, eventually a night would come when both guys would foul out by crunch time. On that night, if the game were close, the Blazers would quite likely lose. But that eventuality would only occur once in a blue moon. Nate’s current policy—benching his bigs at the first hint of foul trouble and bringing in Frye—is resulting in losses or near-losses on a regular basis.