AFM wrote:Where's PIF to tell me how overrated LMA is?
Dude is straight nasty
Depends on where folks have Aldridge rated. Those who think of him as one of the game's elites have him overrated. Those who think he's pretty average have him underrated.
My primary caution would be to avoid reaching any conclusions based on one game -- especially one where a guy's performance is an extreme. Last night's play from Aldridge was impressive as hell, but it's at the extreme high end of what he can do.
He's an interesting player because so much of his game is the 2pt jumper. He's very productive and he rates well in my analysis, BUT he also would seem to leave a lot of points out there with his shot selection. 64% of his FGA are 2pt jumpers from 10 feet or more. He shoots .426 on those attempts. An average NBA FGA has an efg of .501. For Portland, it's .504.
With his high usage and misguided shot selection, Aldridge is costing the Blazers about 1.9 points per 40 minutes. The only high-usage (25% of his team's possessions or more) player costing his team more with his shooting this season was Michael Carter-Williams. The other guys close: Tyreke Evans, Demar Derozan, and Tony Wroten.
In my analysis, Aldridge is good, but could be much better. At 28 years old, he's not likely to make significant changes to his game, so...what you see is likely what you're going to get.
By the way, Portland did have one of the league's most efficient offenses, even with Aldridge's relative inefficiency. Why? Very low turnovers, and excellent offensive rebounding (especially by Robin Lopez).
"A lot of what we call talent is the desire to practice."
-- Malcolm Gladwell
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