BE all summer long

Dave mentioned Offensive Rebounding in his latest post, too. We won in the regular sreason because we could get offensive rebounds. Looking at the Houston series, they really seemed to take that away from us, and we looked flat without it. I hope it doesn’t mean we’ve become a one-trick-pony.

I want to do more but I have to work tomorrow.

I will say this. I think Oden is the answer. Whether it will be a positive one or a negative one depends on what he does this summer. If he is out on the floor posing a serious threat to post up and pound the ball inside, defenses, even Houston’s, will have to adjust and that will help Roy and Aldridge tremendously. I think that is what was missing not only in the playoffs but on the road against the good teams. The third option can’t be a jump shooter when your legs are road weary, or 84 games weary. God bless Joel, but he just is not that threat. He can do a lot for the team but he is not a low post scorer.

all of the players shot near their season averages, except Travis, so I do not think that Roy was not getting help from his teammates.

Looking back at some of the clips, you see little movement by anybody when Roy has the ball, so when he goes into the lane and draws a 3x team, nobody is in a good position for a pass for a good shot. SOOOOO many times I saw Brandon isolated in the middle of the lane, Yao in front Scola/Battier/Artest on each side and Roy has to put up a jumpshot or pass out to the perimeter where all of our players were thinking instead of just letting it go.

So many times I was screaming at the TV, saying “MOVE OR SHOOT IT” Instead I say a lot of dribbling around for 20 secs and then a 18 foot contested jumper.

The games Portland won in this series involved a lot of quick, crisp passing and confident decision making. The games they lost were full of tentative decision making and slow feet. I complained about the referees after game 1 a little bit, but after seeing how much better they moved the ball in game 2 I was forced to change my tune.

Ball movement = better shots
Better shots = off balance defense
Off balance defense = better rebounding opportunities
Better rebounding opportunities = more good shots

It kind of reminds me of game 7 in the 2000 WCF. Every trip down the floor, Portland was dumping it into ’Sheed. Sheed would take a turnaround fadeaway (a shot he normally hits), miss it, and there would be nobody there to rebound. Over and over and over and over until the meanies finally caught up and won the game. This was a little different then that but the result was ultimately the same.

I am uncertain how much of the poor passing was Portland resting on their laurels or Houston’s tenacious D, but I suspect it was a little of both. IMO.

We weren’t our normal selves on the offensive boards. Not because of effort however, but due to Houston being able to effectively block out. How were they able to do this? As Jksnake stated, they didn’t have to double team us much so they could easily find their man to put a body on them. I watched Oden try to get offensive rebounds and to my naked eye I totally thought his effort was exactly the same as during the regular season. The difference was Yao put a BIG body on Greg and he couldn’t get around him nor jump over him for tips which he did quite frequently during the regular season. Two more of these a game and it definitely could have changed game 4 and maybe game 3.

Houston had the length to bother our shooters and play a sound team defensive game. They contest all shots (although not blocking many). Nothing came easy for us.

Portland’s players don’t move w/o the ball particularly well and frankly Nate’s offense doesn’t call for them too. As many others have stated our late game offense consists of Brandon Roy doing things. That’s pretty easy to defend, especially for a good defensive team like the Rockets.

It didn’t help that the bit players didn’t show up at all. Then again, why didn’t we expect a team with pretty inconsistent role players to suddenly put it together in the playoffs?

I love Joel, I’m not ashamed to say it. I do remember, however, several times when passes to him were dropped right under the basket toward the beginning of games. He’s gotten a lot better at offense this year, but it seemed like after a few dropped passes we stopped looking to him as an offensive bailout when brandon was in the lane and smothered.
     Oden’s hands did not look as good in the playoffs as they usually do, but I think he has great hands. When he is fully integrated in to the offense that will make a big difference. I am dying to see our guards and Lma really look to him as an option when they are doubled or tripled. That alone will change things for our offense, and will prevent the opposing center from leaving his man so much.

Greg Oden’s rebound rate was 15% lower than in the regular season. Joel Przybilla’s was 25% lower. LaMarcus Aldridge’s was 5% lower. I think we can all agree that Houston winning the rebound battle was a huge factor in the series.

Despite this, Roy saw his assist rate cut by about 40%. In those two late season games against Houston, Roy had 5 and 6 assists. In the playoffs, Roy reached the 5 assist plateau just once, in game 4. Help me out— was this primarily due to Roy passing less or teammates just missing shots?

By far the most striking difference in a player’s true shooting % numbers from regular season to the playoffs was Travis Outlaw’s .379 mark, compared to .541 in the regular season.

It’s certainly not enough to explain everything, but Oden didn’t get many put back dunks against Houston, in part because he didn’t get a lot of minutes against scrub centers.

Chuck Hayes also did a nice job on Oden.

Others: Houston’s help on Roy came from Yao in the paint instead of wing help. The Blazers were not able to punish Yao for helping on Roy the way they punish wing defenders for punishing Roy.

Outlaw just had a rough series.

As others side, Yao nullified our best offensive rebounders and that was huge.

Sorry for the super long quote, but I think this is all relevant and dead-on. We’ve got to learn better team offense (and team defense, but that’s another story).

http://www.dwightjaynes.com/the-trail-blazer-postmortem-begins-after-an-ugly-season-ender

Prior to the opening of this series, I had a chance to talk to a few NBA scouts who had prepared for the possibility of playing Portland in the first round. The only promise was that I couldn’t quote them directly or give any hints as to the teams they worked for. Most of them didn’t want their stuff printed until after the first-round series was finished.
 
I can tell you the one thing that stood out from what all of them told me – Portland is very easy to prepare for. The reason: "They run so many isolations."
 
One scout said, "It’s really just about all they do — particularly in the fourth quarter. You know how they play, everybody does. They’re going to give Brandon Roy the ball at the top and just stand back and watch him play. They may run a little screen for him, but it’s window dressing — he’s going to try to take you."
 
Well, he’s pretty good at that — what’s wrong with Brandon going one-on-one?
 
"Nothing, once in a while," one scout said. "But he’s not going to go one-on-one against Houston in the playoffs. He’s going to go one-on-five. They just won’t let him get to the basket. They’re going to lock him up."
 
Said another scout, "What he’s done a lot of this season is go left. That’s fine, but he tends to put his head down, head to the basket and jump into somebody, expecting a foul call. He isn’t going to pass, he’s going to go hard to the basket, looking for a whistle. In the playoffs, you don’t always get that call."
 
I think those assessments were on the money, particularly in the Game 4 situation at the end of the game that may have decided this series. And it’s not unlike what we’ve been writing all season. The fact is, people talked all the time prior to the series about Houston having two players — Ron Artest and Shane Battier — who could defend Roy. Fact is, neither did much of a job. Artest, in particular, was easy meat for Roy all the time. Problem for Brandon, though, is that there were always two or three other guys standing there ready for him after he beat Artest off the dribble. That’s called "team defense" — a concept the Trail Blazers themselves have not entirely embraced yet.

My guess is Turn Over Velocity and I Googled it and it’s: The Temple of VTEC

Too much trying to do it on your own. Lack of ball movement and anyone not named Roy or Aldridge failing to move once they got the ball. We need someone else who can facilitate. One of the reasons why Cleveland is so good is because they have three or more people of the floor that can facilitate shots for others or take it themselves. That puts a lot of pressure on the defense. Not a consistent third option. Outlaw is too streaky. Lack of playoff experience is more noticeable in roll players than your stars. I think some of this will be cured through maturation, but a consistent third option who could facilitate would help out a lot. I mean if LaMarcus and Greg had the high low game going or Rudy/Oden pick and roll. Maybe I’m full of it but I think the roll players just need to be better.

1. Travis was scared to the state he could not excrete, let alone hit a bucket.

2. The series was lost in the first game, although we did not know it at the time.

3. Blazers are a jump shooting team. When those go down, they look unstoppable. When those don’t go down, you have game 6.

4. Channing Frye needs to be on another team.

5. Two words: Jerryd Bayless. Maybe next year he’ll be ready…

6. LMA played the first 4 games like he was a Channing Frye impersonator and suddenly remembered that quality PFs play low in games 5 and 6. The first four games were yucksville…

7. Steve Blake is Mike Barrett’s buddy, but I really don’t think he’s the dude. The Blazers, two years in a row, have run the break like a pack of Eric Cartmans trying to compete with Special Olympians. It’s time to place the blame where it lies… The Rockets are a team that can be beat by RUNNING, which is why the Blazers are a piss-poor matchup with them.

8. Nate has never been an offensive guru. The pick and pop has been done before, but the Blazers seem to think it’s a really swell offensive plan. In fact, it is plans A, B, and C for them…

Well, that will get you started — now I’ll stop before I get started…

After watching Houston dismantle the Lakers last night just like they did Portland throughout the first round, I think it is time to give Houston the credit they deserve.

They are playing the right way and are peaking at the right time in the playoffs. I’m starting to think it’s more of Houston playing great defense when it matters and their opponents unable to counter-act with better offense. The Lakers are one of if not the best offensive teams in the league – not to mention an even better home team than Portland with an abundance of championship experience – and they faced the exact same problems as Portland did against Houston.

Time to give the Rockets some hard-earned due.

maybe the answer was “they got stopped by a good defense?”

There is a confusion here between offensive EFFICIENCY and offensive diversity. One is well-measurable with statistics, and the Blazers did well—our offense outperformed, over the course of the regular season, the rest of the league.

Was our offense diverse? Not really. Only two players in our starting lineup, and four if you count the bench, are truly dangerous with the ball in their hands. Many others only get points off of spot-up shooting, offensive putbacks, and other situations where they are momentarily unguarded. As a result, most of our offense was either Roy being fancy, or LMA working down low—everybody else scored when the defense collapsed.

However, as simple (or simplistic) as our offense was, it worked—until it ran into a team (Houston) with the personnel to stop it.

Many other effective offenses (with the right personnel) are also simple. Orlando these days, and Houston back in their championship days with Hakeem, ran the “wagon wheel”—one dominating post player who commanded double-teams and was a decent passer; surrounded by a bunch of guys who could be counted on to make open jumpers. Utah’s offense during the Stockton/Malone days was likewise uncomplicated—pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll.

When you have an offensive player as talented as Roy (and who is a willing and intelligent passer), it’s not hard to fashion an efficient offense around him, simply by surrounding him with jumpshooters. But to get to next level, the team needs one more guy in the lineup who is dangerous with the ball in his hands, as opposed to guys who only are threats to score if left open. Because in the playoffs, there are guys who can slow down Roy one-on-one. Brandon still got his; but he got his without drawing the usual double-teams that normally lead to open jumpers from his teammates.

But it’s an old axiom in sports that a good defense beats a good offense. Unfortunately we weren’t the team with the elite defense.

We didn’t move…our players didn’t move off the ball, they didn’t move the ball, and players didn’t trust their teammates. Our record leading into the playoffs were great, and we were finally pushing the pace against teams and got a bunch of 20 pt victories. During the playoffs we shortened the rotation because that is the “standard practice” and slowed down our pace. The only game with any resemblance of “Blazer Ball” was game 5.