"royal jelly"

We seem to be the only bball blog/board not talking about "royal jelly" yet. From a very interesting David Thorpe interview by Henry Abbott last week about player development, how an organization can take players and give them the stuff to be successful.

This also formed the basis of today's interesting truehoop post about Popovich, and how he is pretty unique in how far he'll go in giving his players a defined role and opportunities to succeed.

My perspective -- we are not outstanding at player development and giving young players the opportunity to be successful. Nate's style seems to undermine player confidence rather than organize and rationalize player confidence. I don't always feel our players always know what they need to do in order to get playing time, and players who are given playing time seem to be looking over their shoulders for the hook too much.

4 months ago howlingfantods 25 comments 1 recs |

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I dunno if i'd agree with your second paragraph

Lamarcus Aldridge has turned out just fine. Sure, we ge the occassional jermaine O’neal, but look at what Outlaw has accomplished since leaving the blazers

I dont think we always pick the best talent, but we do tend to make a lot of what we have, and when a player doesn’t get played, i think it’s more often than not because that player is simply not as good as someone else on the team.

by moflow on Jan 30, 2012 12:37 PM PST reply actions

Yeah

I was surprised this subject hasn’t come up here too. Nate coaches every game as if it were game 7 of the finals, which isn’t necessarily bad, just short-sighted. I would love to see Nate show some confidence in our younger players. Really, they are some of the most valuable players on your roster if you can get some production out of them, as they are on relatively cheap rookie contracts. However, that has never been Nate’s style, and likely never will be.

by hollywood robinson on Jan 30, 2012 12:37 PM PST reply actions

the only "Royal Jelly" I know of is

SLURM!!!

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 1:20 PM PST reply actions

Wow. I'm not even a huge futurama guy,

but even I know that if you were going to make any reference to Futurama in a post about “royal jelly”, you use that one episode where Leela gets stung and hallucinates that Fry is dead but comes back to life when she spills the royal jelly.

by howlingfantods on Jan 30, 2012 2:15 PM PST up reply actions

unfortunately that episode sucks, and the Slurm episode is a classic.

and it’s Royal Slurm made out of her bottom, so it’s similar enough…

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 2:21 PM PST up reply actions

that episode does not suck.

Being a Blazer fan is not exactly healthy.

by dpnim on Jan 30, 2012 3:40 PM PST up reply actions

meh

it’s no 300 Big Boys, or Less Than Hero, or The Late Philip J. Fry.

I mean, all the episodes are good, but the episode you guys are talking about. The Sting, is not one of the tops (for me at least)

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 9:49 PM PST up reply actions

btw

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 10:18 PM PST up reply actions

Nah, they're both good episodes.

“The Sting” was a better dramatic episode, while “Fry and the Slurm Factory” was a better comedic episode.

"I Am Mine"

by AK1984 on Jan 30, 2012 9:56 PM PST up reply actions

the ultimate dramatic episode is "Jurassic Bark" by a mile.

if the proposed death of Fry’s dog gets a tear out of you, get solace in the fact that he’s referenced a little more happily in the first movie “Bender’s Big Score”

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 10:02 PM PST up reply actions

I disliked how the movie changed the way everything played out with Fry's dog, Seymour.

But yeah, “The Luck of the Fryrish,” “Jurassic Bark,” “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings,” “Lethal Inspection,” and “The Late Philip J. Fry” are my favorite dramatic episodes.

"I Am Mine"

by AK1984 on Jan 30, 2012 10:17 PM PST up reply actions

Luck of the Fryish is a great one too.

I know you’ve seen Workaholics, and Party Down and Arrested Development from previous forums, but have you seen the cartoon Clone High, or the british comedy Peep Show? those are on the all-time list, and a new addition was Trailer Park Boys (I can’t get enough of Ricky).

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 10:21 PM PST up reply actions

Nah, I haven't seen either of those.

Back in the day, I liked cartoons like Home Movies, Mission Hill, The Oblongs, and Undergrads. Don’t remember Clone High, though.

"I Am Mine"

by AK1984 on Jan 31, 2012 12:45 AM PST up reply actions

Wow. "The Sting" is a classic.

by Timmay! on Jan 30, 2012 10:02 PM PST up reply actions

lol, Slurm Factory is a classic.

Sting is third rate compared to it. Other episodes of earlier and later seasons smash it, and the first movie absolutely decimates “The Sting”

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 10:14 PM PST up reply actions

Admittedly, I was not a big fan of the direct-to-DVD movies/season 5.

Season 6 was outstanding, though, particularly the first half of it in 2010.

"I Am Mine"

by AK1984 on Jan 30, 2012 10:19 PM PST up reply actions

after the first one "Bender's Big Score", the following 3 fell off,

however, the time travel idea in the 1st was perfectly executed in my opinion in what was a genius concept with much better animation than the show had previously had.

"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."

by thankyouforblaze on Jan 30, 2012 10:23 PM PST up reply actions

The "Nate kills rookies" meme contniues.

Yet nobody can ever cite one kid who got drafted under Nate who showed any noticable improvement after leaving the Blazers. Most of them in fact tanked (see: Outlaw, Rodriguez) with Bayless and Jack being the two guys who have held steady or upticked slightly to correspond with age and experience.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they're not.

by conspirator5 on Jan 30, 2012 1:59 PM PST reply actions

there's a big difference between saying "nate kills rookies" and saying "we are not outstanding at player development."

The Wizards and Kings have horrible player development. I’m saying we’re just not great.

As evidence, we’ve had several young players that regressed or plateaued with our team, which is especially troubling since players typically get much better in their early twenties.

by howlingfantods on Jan 30, 2012 2:10 PM PST up reply actions

I don't see how anyone

can listen to Thorpe on the podcast and think this is something that Nate has done well. Simply put, when was the last time the Blazers had someone completely unheralded become a solid contributor like Chandler Parsons or Udonis Haslem? Batum and possibly Outlaw are literally the only examples, and Batum is a guy who was once projected to be a top 5 pick and a late lotto pick heading into the draft who only fell to the end of the first round due to some rumored heart issues.

Maybe you can say that it’s a rare enough trait that Nate shouldn’t be faulted for not possessing it, but at least that’s more honest than pretending that none of the bench guys that have rotated through Portland over the past few years was able to be a decent NBA contributor.

by Royster on Jan 30, 2012 2:19 PM PST up reply actions

Meh... This is all subjective.

The problem with the whole “royal jelly” theory is that there are no real solid indicators.

I think that Pop probably is a great player development coach. I also think that the spurs have a great draft history. The problem is that we really can’t distinguish if the players that they have drafted were just diamonds in the rough that would have flourished anywhere or if some “royal jelly” from Pop made them into players that stick even when they move on from the spurs.

If all we have are hunches that Nate isn’t a good player developer vs the blazers are drafting well…. There is no way to know… But to come to the conclusion that because Nate hasn’t had an outlier like Haslem he isn’t any good at player development seems to be jumping to conclusions.

Maybe you can say that it’s a rare enough trait that Nate shouldn’t be faulted for not possessing it, but at least that’s more honest than pretending that none of the bench guys that have rotated through Portland over the past few years was able to be a decent NBA contributor.

… Again super subjective and unlikely… I guess Nate could so ruin every player that comes through here that they are never able to recover…. but that seems far fetched.

by vullkem116 on Jan 30, 2012 2:43 PM PST up reply actions

The thing is

we can’t know for sure, but given the quantity of players that have passed through here and the multiple different front offices, I’d say the evidence points to the one constant, which is the coaching. Sure, it’s definitely possible that all of KP, Cho, and Buchanan are bad at drafting, or that none of Bayless, Babbitt, Pendergraph, Dante, Armon, McRoberts or even Bassy had a chance to be solid contributors, but at some point as the names add up, it’s pretty darn unlikely that it’s something Nate is doing well, especially when you see Pop continually pulling guys like Danny Green, Gary Neal, and Matt Bonner off the scrap heap and turning them into contributors on a contender.

by Royster on Jan 30, 2012 2:59 PM PST up reply actions

Dante contributed just fine.

Wings are a dime a dozen. We haven’t needed any wing players because we were set with Roy and Batum. Their backups (Rudy and Martell) were no worse than Danny Green and Gary Neal. You could argue that Nate killed Rudy but that guy was such a head case he seemingly purposefully played bad just to get traded.

by Oden Mad, Oden Smash! on Jan 30, 2012 3:06 PM PST via mobile up reply actions

The podcast was very interesting.

I suggest that everyone give it a listen.

Batum Shakalaka

by WesMoneyy on Jan 30, 2012 2:47 PM PST reply actions

Thorpe sounds like a guy I would like to have for a coach.

His comments on Aldeman are certainly complementary, as Rubio explodes on the scene.
Now, of course the ‘nature/nuture’ debate is centuries old, and the truth is that both are certainly important in what a person develops into. The thing is, genetics(nature) is set, nuture is, well what a coach should be doing.
What i want from a coach is to maximize the potential of what a player can do. There are a couple critical parts of this pointed out in the interview. One is, the coach must actually have useful, detailed knowledge to give the player to improve – he must know more that the player needs to develop and win the players confidence to follow the coach’s direction. Two, the coach must convey that he believes in the player’s potential. He must provide a vision for the player to aspire to. The coach certainly provids critical feedback, but useful, actionable feedback within the context of ‘I believe in you, you can do this’.
Of course, a player must have adequate natural gifts to develop.
Add this to game strategy, opponent analysis, new talent evaluation; and you have a very complex skillset for a great coach, and a need for assistants. Of course, in the NBA the job does play well.

by Berkeley on Jan 31, 2012 12:24 AM PST reply actions