Game 26: Bucks @ Blazers CSNNW 7:00PM

[The Sebastian Express]

Milwaukee made it a real scramble...Blazer's cooperated in 1st half, not so much in the 2nd

TRob had one of his high-energy games, and got the brain farts out of his system in the 1st half, thankfully. Stotts should have taken him out in the 4thQ though once the Bucks started fouling. That was stubborn and kind of dumb

I thought Batum had a concussion for sure. Pretty scary

when was last time Blazers missed 14 FT's while shooting 52% from the line and won?

Stotts is playing for the season and trying to give Robinson confidence in these situations (or else he won't be worth much later). Nothing stubborn or dumb about taking this risk with one game.

Epicurus is exactly right. If it's the playoffs of course he's gonna pull him. No reason to pull him so quick in the regular season. RoLo is out six weeks, likely. We're going to need TRob and building his confidence and letting him play through mistakes will pay down the line.

[James72]

I like the move of leaving Robinson in. you're up 10-12 points with 3 minutes left, give the guy experience at the line, let him get rhythm... Pulling him out would probably hurt his confidence even more. If it had been an 8 point game or less, i agree, pull him.

I don't like it because I think when a guy has played competitive BB for years and has always shot around 50%, he's going to keep bricking FT's. experience never helped Shaq, or Chris Dudley, or Olden Polynice, or Deandre Jordan or Ben Wallace...they remain(ed) crappy FT shooters forever and a day.

TRob went 4-12 from the FT in a 3 minute stretch of the 4thQ. It was hard to watch....in fact, I think it's debatable which would be worse for his confidence: coming out of the game for 2-3 minutes or watching his own foul shots chip paint of the rim

How many career minutes have those guys played? How many FT attempts do they have?

[Wizenheimer]

I like the move of leaving Robinson in. you're up 10-12 points with 3 minutes left, give the guy experience at the line, let him get rhythm... Pulling him out would probably hurt his confidence even more. If it had been an 8 point game or less, i agree, pull him.

I don't like it because I think when a guy has played competitive BB for years and has always shot around 50%, he's going to keep bricking FT's. experience never helped Shaq, or Chris Dudley, or Olden Polynice, or Deandre Jordan or Ben Wallace...they remain(ed) crappy FT shooters forever and a day.

TRob went 4-12 from the FT in a 3 minute stretch of the 4thQ. It was hard to watch....in fact, I think it's debatable which would be worse for his confidence: coming out of the game for 2-3 minutes or watching his own foul shots chip paint of the rim

How many career minutes have those guys played? How many FT attempts do they have?

how much improvement did they make?

[James72]

I don't like it because I think when a guy has played competitive BB for years and has always shot around 50%, he's going to keep bricking FT's. experience never helped Shaq, or Chris Dudley, or Olden Polynice, or Deandre Jordan or Ben Wallace...they remain(ed) crappy FT shooters forever and a day.

TRob went 4-12 from the FT in a 3 minute stretch of the 4thQ. It was hard to watch....in fact, I think it's debatable which would be worse for his confidence: coming out of the game for 2-3 minutes or watching his own foul shots chip paint of the rim

How many career minutes have those guys played? How many FT attempts do they have?

how much improvement did they make?

Not arguing that point...how do you know Robinson can't make improvements? All those guys had horrible percentages while playing significant time. Robinson gets DNPs by the handful, you can't tell me that having in game experience won't help him.

[The Sebastian Express]

Thomas shot 68% his final year in college - the year in which he took his most free throws. It isn't inconceivable that he could be a 65% shooter. He has good form. He just rushes. He's got a lot of energy and I think we might see an improvement with consistent playing time and opportunities.

[Wizenheimer]

Milwaukee made it a real scramble...Blazer's cooperated in 1st half, not so much in the 2nd

TRob had one of his high-energy games, and got the brain farts out of his system in the 1st half, thankfully. Stotts should have taken him out in the 4thQ though once the Bucks started fouling. That was stubborn and kind of dumb

I thought Batum had a concussion for sure. Pretty scary

when was last time Blazers missed 14 FT's while shooting 52% from the line and won?

Stotts is playing for the season and trying to give Robinson confidence in these situations (or else he won't be worth much later). Nothing stubborn or dumb about taking this risk with one game.

Epicurus is exactly right. If it's the playoffs of course he's gonna pull him. No reason to pull him so quick in the regular season. RoLo is out six weeks, likely. We're going to need TRob and building his confidence and letting him play through mistakes will pay down the line.

playing through mistakes is one thing. You can learn not to make stupid passes or move on screens.

Shooting FT's is not the same thing as that. Not even close. If you're a 50% FT shooter, chances are excellent you're going to shoot 50%. Yeah, every once in a while a bad FT shooter will go 9-12 in a quarter. But the odds are even higher he's going to go 4-12

[Dame Lizard]

T-Rob is a 55% career FT shooter, which is bad, however tonight was likely psychological (5/15).

Often you see players like Dwight increase their % when they get hacked, hopefully that can be the case for T-Rob later on.

He still managed a 15 point, 51.5% TS, an efficiency which is at LMA's average, ironically. (I'm not implying anything other than it wasn't that bad really).

Other than the FT shooting (and a couple of TO's), a grest game from T Rob. Talk about elite rebounding, particularly some key offensive boards.

Sent from my SM-G900I using RealGM Forums mobile app

[Wizenheimer]

Thomas shot 68% his final year in college - the year in which he took his most free throws. It isn't inconceivable that he could be a 65% shooter. He has good form. He just rushes. He's got a lot of energy and I think we might see an improvement with consistent playing time and opportunities.

he's shot 54% in the NBA and that's on 224 shots. That's a more appropriate sample then a college season 4 years ago

[The Sebastian Express]

Thomas shot 68% his final year in college - the year in which he took his most free throws. It isn't inconceivable that he could be a 65% shooter. He has good form. He just rushes. He's got a lot of energy and I think we might see an improvement with consistent playing time and opportunities.

he's shot 54% in the NBA and that's on 224 shots. That's a more appropriate sample then a college season 4 years ago

Not spread out over three years of intermittent playing time and you know that. If he's someone that needs confidence and consistent playing time to get into a rhythm from the foul line he wasn't gonna get it the last three years.

[Wizenheimer]

Not arguing that point...how do you know Robinson can't make improvements?

he may make improvements over the next few seasons. Maybe even the next few months

he just wasn't going to make them all tonight.

I'm not talking about benching him for the rest of the season. I was talking about taking him out of the game for 3 minutes in the 4th because fouling TRob was the only possible way Milwaukee could get back in the game. Simply take that option away from them

[James72]

Not arguing that point...how do you know Robinson can't make improvements?

he may make improvements over the next few seasons. Maybe even the next few months

he just wasn't going to make them all tonight.

I'm not talking about benching him for the rest of the season. I was talking about taking him out of the game for 3 minutes in the 4th because fouling TRob was the only possible way Milwaukee could get back in the game. Simply take that option away from them

Okay, with a double digit lead, i don't see any issue. Difference of opinion i suppose.

[Dame Lizard]

I honestly believe Stotts kept him in as a sign of trust to hopefully help him overcome the mental nerves of getting hacked. Getting fouled in the act of shooting does not come with the same expectation, pressure and spot-light, that getting hacked does.

Let’s see how he goes going forward, but eventually I think we’ll see him get over the nerves and embrace the challenge (as a sign of disrespect from the other team), and shoot maybe 60% of FT’s when getting hacked. It was a bad FT night, he clearly isn’t as bad as a 33% career shooter, so no need to over-react.

Without him we likely wouldn’t have won tonight. A lot of his offensive boards results in points, and he controlled the defensive glass.

It was a great game from T-Rob, no questions asked (it would have been nearly an elite game if he shot his 55% career average).

[Wizenheimer]

Not spread out over three years of intermittent playing time and you know that. If he's someone that needs confidence and consistent playing time to get into a rhythm from the foul line he wasn't gonna get it the last three years.

I'm drawing a blank...give me an example of a player that needed consistent playing time to be a better FT shooter. I can buy that logic for FG shooting. Not so much for FT shooting

the only player I can think of that made a big improvement was Joel Przybilla. But that came after a summer of work (no playing time) and was in his 8th season. IIRC, that came after his worst FT shooting season and he was embarrassed by it

whatever, it'sa minor point...I just think Stotts was being stubborn and I think it's unlikely that TRob is a better FT shooter now then he was at the start of the 4th Q

[GreenRiddler]

Yeah I thought it hurt his confidence more missing so many FTAs. Its not like we needed him for those 3 mins, they were going small.

Anyway, Batum continues t be stubborn, the one game he scored well was when he mixed up his shot, for the past 2 games he went back to jacking 3s and he has had poor scoring/ shooting nights as a result. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way. HE should be glad its not a contract year.

Crabbe has to man up and take some shots, can't shoot that high from the field and not take 1.

Great game from LMA.

[Dame Lizard]

I’ll probably cop some stick for this, but if he keeps showing minor improvements as the season goes on, I want Portland to resign T-Rob to a 4 year $20 million deal.

Now that might be a slight overpay in his first year, but once he can iron out a few more of the hiccups in his game (he should be able to increase his 55% FT shooting to 65%), he really can be dynamic energy player. I can see him growing to become an elite off-the-bench big going forward. I’m keen to resign him as I do think his stock would be quite low, and despite his youth, I think there could be some value in 4/20 kind of deal (which could be a bargain later on).

There is so much to like about his game. (the hiccups should hopefully decrease with experience, but they will always be there... it happens with the high energy high intensity players).

I’m glad he got a couple of alley oop dunks today. For the life of me I could never understand why we never ran some alley oop plays for T-Rob, his strength, size, wingspan and athleticism is built for those plays!

Now I know Kaman makes that much money this year, but I have faith in T-Rob being valuable going forward, and the cap is increasing 2016, after all.

[zzaj]

I'm in the camp of letting TRob play in this situation...if missing FTs in a "hack-a" situation gets him embarrassed/motivated enough to shoot 1,000 FTs a day with a coach, well then great. I think if the game was really in question then Stotts would have pulled him.

Trob reminded me of Hickson tonight in a lot of ways. If (and this huge "IF" is the main thing keeping him from being a legitimate player in the NBA, IMO) he can actually string together some performances like tonight, he will see an NBA rotation.

I will say that tonight it was refreshing seeing some consistent energy, hustle and quickness out of ANY Blazer. The whole roster seems to be made up of pretty slow or conserve and then burst type athletes.

On a side note, that 3/4 court bounce pass from Batum to Lillard was amazing. It reminded me of a similar pass Eric Snow made to Iverson in a Philly/Miami game I saw in 2002 that made 'Zo on the sidelines jaw drop.

[DeBlazerRiddem]

On a side note, that 3/4 court bounce pass from Batum to Lillard was amazing. It reminded me of a similar pass Eric Snow made to Iverson in a Philly/Miami game I saw in 2002 that made 'Zo on the sidelines jaw drop.

Ya, that was nice

[Shem]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMEenuNbnPo[/youtube]

[BigLurch92]

Wizenheimer you are continuously making these game threads more and more unenjoyable to read. No wonder they have half the replies they used too. Like I've said until your little itty bitty negative nancy irrelevant points have an impact on the final score..Let me know.. T-Rob's FT shooting might have sucked but it never put the game out of the Blazers control in the 4th. They maintained a 9-10 point lead throughout the quarter until the final 1:30.

I really think a long losing streak would benefit you insofar that the words you type would mean something...I bet RoLo's injury was an early XMAS present for you.."Now I have the means to point out more deficiencies in the Blazers game cause thankfully one of their impecable starting 5 went down. YES! I've been waiting for this for two years"..is that your thought process??..Get real man and enjoy a victory. Do you ever have anything good to say (not in a negative tone like "I can't believe the Blazer won while shooting that horrible from the FT line)..

Are you an actual Blazers fan?? Or do you lament the old days where the Blazers sucked and your comments were actually justified??

This team is tied for 3rd place in the most stacked Western Conference of our lifetimes. Enjoy it. It's healthy..

[DaVoiceMaster]

What ever happened to Meyers?

Likely Coach Stotts views Meyers as a PF but with T-Rob and Joel having problems at
the FT line, its only a matter of time before Meyers gets PT with Rolo being out.

Meyers might do better at the free throw line, but I'd rather take my chances with T-Rob. I couldn't stand to see Meyers out there making bonehead play after bonehead play.

When Bayless fouled T-Rob prior to Aldridge inbounding the ball, shouldn't that have been 2 free throws AND the ball?

Anybody else surprised to see Batum get up after that hard fall? I thought for sure he was done for the game. That was a nasty fall.