Goldbum wrote:Its important to remember rookie year doesn't necessarily equal great career. Its OK to say you think Dame is a better rookie than Brandon, it doesn't mean you believe he will be better over all. I would argue that OJ Mayo and Tyreke Evans had better rookie years than either and at younger ages to boot.
I don't disagree with your argument, just one of your examples
obviously, Tyreke had the best season as far a production. But he had the benefit of being the #1 option on offense while playing most of his time with Beno Udrich as the stealth PG. In other words, Evans had the luxury of looking for his own offense first
Lillard has quite a bit more responsibility then Evans had, IMO
as to Mayo, he was only a year younger then Lillard, and it's pretty hard to make a case statistically that Mayo had the better season. They are/were really close in most categories, but Lillard's giant advantage in running an offense and lesser advantage in attacking the basket are pretty hard to ignore
now, it's pretty easy to project a rookie into ending up being a much better player then they actually become. Projecting Evans career off of what he did as a rookie would have landed him in the top-tier of NBA players. We now know that a lot of that was mirage. Same for Mayo, although even an optimistic forecast would have been a poor man's Ray Allen, IMO
Lillard could disappoint in the same fashion. What's hopeful about Lillard is that a lot of his weaknesses seem correctable. He should be able to cut way down on his lateral and bounce passes that too often result in turnovers. He should be able to develop a little better shot selection which should elevate his shooting percentages and efficiency. He should be able to improve his success rate on shots at the rim. And at the same time as that last improvement, you'd expect that he would start to get more respect from the officials. If Lillard was getting whistles in the same fashion as other dribble-penetrators like Rose and Westbrook, he'd be averaging over 20 points a game
obviously, there's no guarantee that any of that will come to be, let alone all of it, but we can hope
-----------------------------------------------------
another thought: I know it's premature, but I do have some big reservations about how Stotts uses Lillard. Now, there may be some long-term benefit to the offensive structure right now, as well as some long term benefit in forcing Lillard into a ton of pick-and-roll
but it's painfully obvious that opponents use the Blazer pick-and-roll as an opportunity to aggressively double-team Lillard and get the ball out of his hands. Furthermore, Portland runs that high pick-and-roll to one side of the floor or the other which allows the double team to push Lillard to the high sideline. From that position there's almost no hope that Lillard will end up in a good position. As of yet, I haven't seen an adjustment that starts the pick-and-roll in the center of the floor so the ball-handler is headed more in the direction of the basket. That would make it a lot more difficult to trap Lillard and force the ball out of his hands
granted, this could just be me as I find myself yelling at the TV when I see one of the Blazer bigs coming out past the 3 point line to set a screen...and of course dragging their defender right out to where it's easy to double Lillard
this criticism is at least supported a little by the numbers at Synergy:
http://mysynergysports.com/Overall, Lillard scores 0.90 points/possession. That ranks 200 in the league. And he averages turnovers on 15.5% of possessions
44% of the time, Lillard is the P&R ball-handler. he averages 0.87 points/possession (ranking 28th) while committing turnovers on 16% of the possessions
on the other hand, 15% of the time, Lillard is in isolation. On those possessions, Lillard averages 0.99 points/possession (10th in the NBA) while only committing turnovers 9.8% of the time
it would certainly appear, that at least for Lillard, it would be better to run more isolation and less pick-and-roll. He's the 10th best isolation player in the league which is pretty impressive for a rookie.