CELTICS impress the heck out of me

[Wickzki]

If the Blazers were in the LEastern conference we'd have gone to the ECFs too.

LeBron is laughing so hard at the other teams. The Pacers *should* have beaten them and now he's destroying the Craptors.

Great accomplishment by Stevens, and he's a fantastic coach, but the Least is so weak that it's apples and oranges.

[Renegade]

Wickski’s comments made me wonder how the conferences fared against one another this last season. Each team plays 30 games against teams from the other conference. With 15 teams in each conference that yields 450 inter-conference games. The numbers I calculated were 237 wins for the west and 213 losses. A win percentage of ~ 52.7.

I am not sure what that percentage was in seasons passed, but it seems like it was larger. Perhaps the east is catching up?

[Unbiased hater]

Its much bigger gap when you compare just playoff teams from the West vs playoff teams from the East

[theman]

If the Blazers were in the LEastern conference we'd have gone to the ECFs too.

LeBron is laughing so hard at the other teams. The Pacers *should* have beaten them and now he's destroying the Craptors.

Great accomplishment by Stevens, and he's a fantastic coach, but the Least is so weak that it's apples and oranges.

I think you are underestimating the east, although you could be over estimating the Blazers.

If the blazers were a top 4 seed they may have gotten out of the first round. Blazers were swept by the Celtics, Raptors and Bucks, split with Cavs, Sixers, Wizards, and managed to sweep the Pacers and Heat.

The Blazers were 18 and 12 vs the east and 7-9 against play off teams from the east.

[Blazinaway]

Celts just keep rolling, be pretty crazy if they make the finals which after going up 2-0 they looks for now to be favored to do so

[Village Idiot]

Boston has both great coaching and great personnel to get the most out of the system:

- Stevens wants every player to be a triple threat and a good defender. Some are clearly not though (Smart - shooting, Baynes - driving)
- play D and put in full effort or you get taken out - Stevens is very consistent on this- as a former coach I know this is hard to live up to. I admire him for actually doing it. It would be very interesting to see how Kyrie would respond to this if he were playing now
- trust everybody to shoot if they have a good shot
- great plays and lots of movement off ball
- really solid player development

I would love to replicate what Boston has done but I see a couple of challenges:

1. Way too much dribbling. Our offense is too often Damian and CJ taking turns and other guys disengaged
2. Not enough accountability for bad defense, especially for Damian and CJ. Damian did make big strides this past season though.
3. Our wings (Amninu and Harkless) are not true triple threats but neither is that far off. Both are good defenders though.

Nurkic could be good in the Horford role. He's still really young and can improve upon:
1. confidence and ability in outside shot- If we can get him up at the 3 point line that opens up a lot of space
2. developing already great passing skills by cutting down on turnovers
3. stop finishing like a pussy
4. get control over emotions and body language

For this team to get to Boston's level we need to:

1. Implement new plays. Move more, pass more, dribble less
2. Trade CJ for a wing who is a triple threat and plays D. Both Kawhi and George are available. Time for Olshey to earn his paycheck.
3. Develop Nurkic, Collins, Aminu and Harkless to fill in the gaps in their games. Collins could be something special.. or not
4. Hold Damian accountable on both end of the floor
5. stop spending big money on replacement level players and locking them into long term deals..Evan Turner made $17 million this season. Tyreke Evans made $3.3 million... If you're going to give mediocre players big money make the contract shorter and the last year unguaranteed. Indiana has Bogdanovic, Jefferson and Collison on that kind of deal. A team can take back the three of them with a nominal salary of $30.5 million, cut them all and only be on the hook for $6.5 million. That's the kind of contract that can be used to acquire assets.

[Epicurus]

Let's, for now, just look at "move more." On offense the Blazers per game move more miles than the Celtics, 12th most in league compared to 23rd in league. Movement may be a measure where not much difference exist between top and bottlom. The Spurs cover 9.77 miles a game, at the top, and at the bottom the Rockets cover 8.47. No correlation (maybe because of small distance differences) seems to exist between winning and distances moved. I love the somewhat new tracking data available. One's eyes viewing a game once really aren't that accurate and reliable. Even for us fans who have a coaching background.

[tester551]

Let's, for now, just look at "move more." On offense the Blazers per game move more miles than the Celtics, 12th most in league compared to 23rd in league. Movement may be a measure where not much difference exist between top and bottlom. The Spurs cover 9.77 miles a game, at the top, and at the bottom the Rockets cover 8.47. No correlation (maybe because of small distance differences) seems to exist between winning and distances moved. I love the somewhat new tracking data available. One's eyes viewing a game once really aren't that accurate and reliable. Even for us fans who have a coaching background.

Blazer players move a lot. The BALL does not. Big difference. BALL movement is what I care about

[Epicurus]

Of course the ball moves. I think you mean the lack of passing, as the ball moves on dribbles also. But what my note was addressing was player movement as stated in VI's post.

Now passing is fine, if your players are good passers. Not everyone is. It is a skill that some don't have a feel for--touch, anticipation, etc. Look at the NFL more than a few who can throw the ball 60 yards or so have shown to be bad passers. Do the Blazers have good passers? I think McCollum would not be in the league if he had to depend upon passing. He has bad touch and often out of synch with would be receivers. The major thing is still offensive efficiency, not how one gets to it. Nor should one believe that passing is the only variable with offensive efficiency.