Otto Porter Part 2

[fishercob]

Just saw that Wittman said he was "a little bit" playing possum not using Pierce at PF during the regular season. Said he wanted to keep him fresh for the playoffs and didn't want to run his minutes to 35+ per night. Part of that answer -- the part about keeping Pierce fresh -- makes sense. The rest of it makes no sense at all. He could have kept Pierce at 26-28 minutes with some of those minutes coming at PF.

As I said all year, it came down to playing Seraphin over Porter. Shifting half of PP's minutes to 4 would mean shifting a chink of Nene's minutes to the 5, which would mean shifting most of Seraphin's minutes to the bench. All of these things would have helped.

[dckingsfan]

Just saw that Wittman said he was "a little bit" playing possum not using Pierce at PF during the regular season. Said he wanted to keep him fresh for the playoffs and didn't want to run his minutes to 35+ per night. Part of that answer -- the part about keeping Pierce fresh -- makes sense. The rest of it makes no sense at all. He could have kept Pierce at 26-28 minutes with some of those minutes coming at PF.

As I said all year, it came down to playing Seraphin over Porter. Shifting half of PP's minutes to 4 would mean shifting a chink of Nene's minutes to the 5, which would mean shifting most of Seraphin's minutes to the bench. All of these things would have helped.

I might add - if Grunfeld brings Satoransky over on a two year 2.5M deal - instead of signing Seraphin, we would have been in even better shape. But Grunfeld loaded us up with Gortat/Nene/Seraphin/Blair. And really we only needed two, maybe 3 of those.

[stevemcqueen1]

Just saw that Wittman said he was "a little bit" playing possum not using Pierce at PF during the regular season. Said he wanted to keep him fresh for the playoffs and didn't want to run his minutes to 35+ per night. Part of that answer -- the part about keeping Pierce fresh -- makes sense. The rest of it makes no sense at all. He could have kept Pierce at 26-28 minutes with some of those minutes coming at PF.

As I said all year, it came down to playing Seraphin over Porter. Shifting half of PP's minutes to 4 would mean shifting a chink of Nene's minutes to the 5, which would mean shifting most of Seraphin's minutes to the bench. All of these things would have helped.

That seems roundabout and assumes that Seraphin was the last man in the rotation, which I don't think was the case. You could just as easily play Pierce at the 4 and limit the minutes of Humphries and Gooden.

Or you could play Porter at the three and limit the minutes of Webster and Butler, which is the most obvious choice, and is what should have happened but didn't.

We're going to look back on this situation in a couple of years and see how absolutely asinine it was to play a 35 year old Butler over Porter at any point this season. The guy is vet min roster fringe who is no part of our future and we could have easily gotten to our measly 46 wins without any contribution from him. We lost a season of meaningful development from Porter because Butler played over him most of the year.

[stevemcqueen1]

Just saw that Wittman said he was "a little bit" playing possum not using Pierce at PF during the regular season. Said he wanted to keep him fresh for the playoffs and didn't want to run his minutes to 35+ per night. Part of that answer -- the part about keeping Pierce fresh -- makes sense. The rest of it makes no sense at all. He could have kept Pierce at 26-28 minutes with some of those minutes coming at PF.

As I said all year, it came down to playing Seraphin over Porter. Shifting half of PP's minutes to 4 would mean shifting a chink of Nene's minutes to the 5, which would mean shifting most of Seraphin's minutes to the bench. All of these things would have helped.

I might add - if Grunfeld brings Satoransky over on a two year 2.5M deal - instead of signing Seraphin, we would have been in even better shape. But Grunfeld loaded us up with Gortat/Nene/Seraphin/Blair. And really we only needed two, maybe 3 of those.

You need a dedicated back up C with or without Nene. Same is true moving forward. Blair turned out to be a complete scrub but Seraphin got the job done. However, nobody had any confidence in Seraphin to hold the job down going into the year. People still don't accept him as a competent backup C. So the move to hedge with Blair made sense and if the choice is depth in the front court versus depth in the back court, you choose front court if you can. You can get a Ramon Sessions midseason and live with it if need be. Much harder to get a credible body at C.

And we got lucky that we got as many minutes and games out of Nene as we did. He basically hit his target for the most you could expect.

[dobrojim]

We're going to look back on this situation in a couple of years and see how absolutely asinine it was to play a 35 year old Butler over Porter at any point this season. The guy is vet min roster fringe who is no part of our future and we could have easily gotten to our measly 46 wins without any contribution from him. We lost a season of meaningful development from Porter because Butler played over him most of the year.

While I agree with your overall sentiment, Butler won us a couple/few games early
in the season while he was en fuego from downtown. Surely OP could have been playing
a lot more starting around January.

[Higga]

Porter just seems to be playing with more confidence and aggressiveness in the playoffs. Lets hope we see that over the course of an entire season next year. For now though, I'll settle for him continuing to play lockdown D on Derozan, grabbing clutch tough rebounds, and hitting open shots.

[nate33]

We're going to look back on this situation in a couple of years and see how absolutely asinine it was to play a 35 year old Butler over Porter at any point this season. The guy is vet min roster fringe who is no part of our future and we could have easily gotten to our measly 46 wins without any contribution from him. We lost a season of meaningful development from Porter because Butler played over him most of the year.

That's an interesting point. Butler was so incredibly awesome in November and December, that he justifiably took Porter's minutes. It's really hard to fault Randy for the decision. The problem was that when Butler regressed to the mean in January, it took Wittman a long time to acknowledge that the November/December Butler was just a fluke, never to be seen again.

It's a shame Butler didn't go on his incredible shooting tear in April/May instead of November/December.

[payitforward]

I am certainly glad Porter has been getting big minutes but at the same time i am confused by it. It wasn't that long ago that Wittman got pissed when someone asked him why Porter wasn't playing more. Even Wall was saying to ask Witt about it when he was asked about Porters playing time.

I am curious to know why Witt suddenly decided to nearly double his minutes, in the playoffs no less.

Wittman addressed half this issue after game 1. He said Pierce came to him about playing some PF - and Wittman said something like "I'd be a fool to not listen to a Hall of Famer, so I tried it out." Of course, he could have used one of the veterans at the 3, but... maybe someone in the front office who reads this board had a talk with him.

I can believe that. It would be hard for me to believe the Witt decided to do it on his own. He is a master at ignoring the obvious (see Wall still running end of quarter isos).

Not to mention that Pierce played a bunch of PF w/ the Nets last year -- very much to their advantage. So, was someone keeping all that video a secret from Randy? He had to wait for Pierce to bring it up....?

[DCZards]

We're going to look back on this situation in a couple of years and see how absolutely asinine it was to play a 35 year old Butler over Porter at any point this season. The guy is vet min roster fringe who is no part of our future and we could have easily gotten to our measly 46 wins without any contribution from him. We lost a season of meaningful development from Porter because Butler played over him most of the year.

For weeks, I've been all over giving Porter more (and consistent) minutes, especially over Webster. But there's no way I'm not giving Butler props for his early season contribution to this team. I don't know how many games the Zards would have won without Butler, but I do know that there were at least 2-3 games where he was major factor in helping the Zards win.

[queridiculo]

This is just another example of how much of a pigheaded stubborn fool Wittman is.

It'd be one thing if we had a strong GM with a vision for this roster that would lean on Randy to be more open minded, but as it stands one can only hope that the team isn't going to exercise the third your option.

[fishercob]

Wittman addressed half this issue after game 1. He said Pierce came to him about playing some PF - and Wittman said something like "I'd be a fool to not listen to a Hall of Famer, so I tried it out." Of course, he could have used one of the veterans at the 3, but... maybe someone in the front office who reads this board had a talk with him.

I can believe that. It would be hard for me to believe the Witt decided to do it on his own. He is a master at ignoring the obvious (see Wall still running end of quarter isos).

Not to mention that Pierce played a bunch of PF w/ the Nets last year -- very much to their advantage. So, was someone keeping all that video a secret from Randy? He had to wait for Pierce to bring it up....?

Brooklyn moved PIerce to the 4 last seasons and finished 24-13 (after starting 20-25). Randy acknowledged in a off/pre-season interview that Pierce could (and likely would) play the 4. Randy definitely knew about Paul's ability as a PF. FOr whatever reason -- whether he's dumb or was playing possum -- he chose not to go to it during the season.

It should also be mentioned that the reason Paul can succeed at the 4 is because he can more than hold his own defensively in most situations. He's a brilliant help/team defender,and is strong as an ox. So the Pat Pattersons of the world can't just get deep position on him and dropstep for a layup.

[Kanyewest]

I'd call him a mix between a taller Danny Green (though Green's a better ball-handler) and a slightly smaller Prince. He made 33.7% of his 3's - which is almost certainly going to improve with hard work, experience, and regular playing time. Of course, it'd help if he had the shooting coach Green and Leonard had.

Is he in fact any smaller than Prince? They're both listed at 6'9.

Totally agree that his shooting his key. The huge improvements he made in college give me hope.

As skinny as Prince has always looked, he actually weighed in at 225 as a rookie out of Kentucky. Maybe it's in the legs. Prince looks at least an inch taller than Porter.

Tayshaun Prince was listed as 215 as a rookie according to NBA reference. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/DET/2003.html Although I'm not sure if Porter has put on 15 more pounds since being drafted (he's currently listed a 196 pounds on NBA.com but draftexpress combine results had him listed at 200)

Also, Prince was 22 when he was drafted while Porter was 19- he may have grown into his body more than anything. Prince and Porter are listed at the same height but he has slightly longer wingspan (7 foot 2 compared to Porter's 7 foot 1 1/2). Although perhaps it is possible that Porter has grown a bit since then.

[Kanyewest]

I can believe that. It would be hard for me to believe the Witt decided to do it on his own. He is a master at ignoring the obvious (see Wall still running end of quarter isos).

Not to mention that Pierce played a bunch of PF w/ the Nets last year -- very much to their advantage. So, was someone keeping all that video a secret from Randy? He had to wait for Pierce to bring it up....?

Brooklyn moved PIerce to the 4 last seasons and finished 24-13 (after starting 20-25). Randy acknowledged in a off/pre-season interview that Pierce could (and likely would) play the 4. Randy definitely knew about Paul's ability as a PF. FOr whatever reason -- whether he's dumb or was playing possum -- he chose not to go to it during the season.

It should also be mentioned that the reason Paul can succeed at the 4 is because he can more than hold his own defensively in most situations. He's a brilliant help/team defender,and is strong as an ox. So the Pat Pattersons of the world can't just get deep position on him and dropstep for a layup.

Pierce moving to the 4 helped Brooklyn significantly but there are also other things to point to

- Garnett's move from the 4 to center significantly improved the Nets defense. He could guard centers better than he could guard power forwards and was not as much of liability on offense. I personally think this was more important that Pierce's move to the 4 since Boston experienced a similar improvement in their record and made it all the way to the conference finals in 2012 when Doc RIvers went to this lineup.
- The Nets pieces finally gelling together. Given the Nets had so many offseason acquisitions including KG, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry, AK47- it was simply going to take some time for the pieces to fit. It is uncommon for the pieces to fit immediately.
- Jason Kidd became a much better head coach. After the soda incident and firing Lawrence Frank, Kidd's coaching ability improved.
- Brook Lopez injury may have been a weird situation where the Nets played better without him or at least more conducive to Jason Kidd's style of play.
- Shaun Livingston was also inserted into the starting lineup; the Nets lineup became pretty effective for switching 1 through 5.

There have been instances where Wittman has used small lineup with Pierce/Butler in the regular season. Usually though this resulted in Gortat getting benched for the entire 4th quarter. What didn't make sense though is why Wittman didn't stagger minutes accordingly to eliminate guys like Seraphin from playing. I think this may have to do with the fact that Wittman knows the regular season is long and actually plays his bench more than usual than he would in a postseason game but even then it made little sense to play Gortat 12 minutes in a row in the 3rd quarter and make him sit out the entire 4th quarter.

Overall, aPierce at the 4 spot would have made more sense to give more minutes to someone like Porter to develop. Still, it appears Pierce has been playing great at either the 3 or the 4 in this series- I just hope the Wizards can keep it up.

[payitforward]

We're going to look back on this situation in a couple of years and see how absolutely asinine it was to play a 35 year old Butler over Porter at any point this season. The guy is vet min roster fringe who is no part of our future and we could have easily gotten to our measly 46 wins without any contribution from him. We lost a season of meaningful development from Porter because Butler played over him most of the year.

That's an interesting point. Butler was so incredibly awesome in November and December, that he justifiably took Porter's minutes. It's really hard to fault Randy for the decision. The problem was that when Butler regressed to the mean in January, it took Wittman a long time to acknowledge that the November/December Butler was just a fluke, never to be seen again.

It's a shame Butler didn't go on his incredible shooting tear in April/May instead of November/December.

Butler's season was good enough to earn him an NBA contract next year I bet. Very happy for him.

Otto played @ 1450 minutes. Butler played about 70 more minutes. On the season, Otto outplayed Rasual (he should!).

[stevemcqueen1]

We're going to look back on this situation in a couple of years and see how absolutely asinine it was to play a 35 year old Butler over Porter at any point this season. The guy is vet min roster fringe who is no part of our future and we could have easily gotten to our measly 46 wins without any contribution from him. We lost a season of meaningful development from Porter because Butler played over him most of the year.

That's an interesting point. Butler was so incredibly awesome in November and December, that he justifiably took Porter's minutes. It's really hard to fault Randy for the decision. The problem was that when Butler regressed to the mean in January, it took Wittman a long time to acknowledge that the November/December Butler was just a fluke, never to be seen again.

It's a shame Butler didn't go on his incredible shooting tear in April/May instead of November/December.

Yeah it is a shame. That early hot streak had me both happy and worried. Everything pointed to it being unsustainable and that the regression was coming. And it also cooled off Otto's momentum coming into the season after he had a good summer with encouraging SL performances.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think the best way to have played that situation was keep Otto's minutes stable in the regular rotation at the three, play Pierce more at the 4, and start Butler at the 2 whenever Beal was hurt, then have him get all the back up 2 minutes when Beal came back plus the minutes vacated at the three when Pierce played some time at the 4. Essentially push Temple and one of our back up 4s out of the rotation rather than Porter.

Even when Butler was shooting well from deep, I still don't think he could out-contribute Porter because Porter offered more in almost every other area: defense, rebounding, passing, moving off the ball, running in transition--scoring from two in general.

And even if that hadn't been the case, you just don't play the 35 year old vet min journeyman who was the last guy to make your team over the fresh #3 overall pick that you have to develop for the long term success of the build. Even if it does actually cost you two or three regular season wins in the short term. It's bad management. I have a hard time seeing a good team, like Houston for example, bury their young guy in favor of the older vet with no future for the team.

The temptation to go with the devil you know in the older vet is always going to be strong for a weak coach. But on a team like ours where most of the roster is stable veterans and we only have two or three young players to develop at once, there really is no excuse not to try and do so.

[Ruzious]

Is he in fact any smaller than Prince? They're both listed at 6'9.

Totally agree that his shooting his key. The huge improvements he made in college give me hope.

As skinny as Prince has always looked, he actually weighed in at 225 as a rookie out of Kentucky. Maybe it's in the legs. Prince looks at least an inch taller than Porter.

Tayshaun Prince was listed as 215 as a rookie according to NBA reference. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/DET/2003.html Although I'm not sure if Porter has put on 15 more pounds since being drafted (he's currently listed a 196 pounds on NBA.com but draftexpress combine results had him listed at 200)

Also, Prince was 22 when he was drafted while Porter was 19- he may have grown into his body more than anything. Prince and Porter are listed at the same height but he has slightly longer wingspan (7 foot 2 compared to Porter's 7 foot 1 1/2). Although perhaps it is possible that Porter has grown a bit since then.

I don't know - I could be wrong - but I think we've all watched both of them play many times. It looks to me that Prince is at least an inch taller - for what it's worth. If you want, we can go over to Porter's house at the end of June and weigh him. He seems like an affable guy who probably wouldn't mind.

[DCZards]

Yeah it is a shame. That early hot streak had me both happy and worried. Everything pointed to it being unsustainable and that the regression was coming. And it also cooled off Otto's momentum coming into the season after he had a good summer with encouraging SL performances.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think the best way to have played that situation was keep Otto's minutes stable in the regular rotation at the three, play Pierce more at the 4, and start Butler at the 2 whenever Beal was hurt, then have him get all the back up 2 minutes when Beal came back plus the minutes vacated at the three when Pierce played some time at the 4. Essentially push Temple and one of our back up 4s out of the rotation rather than Porter.

Even when Butler was shooting well from deep, I still don't think he could out-contribute Porter because Porter offered more in almost every other area: defense, rebounding, passing, moving off the ball, running in transition--scoring from two in general.

And even if that hadn't been the case, you just don't play the 35 year old vet min journeyman who was the last guy to make your team over the fresh #3 overall pick that you have to develop for the long term success of the build. Even if it does actually cost you two or three regular season wins in the short term. It's bad management. I have a hard time seeing a good team, like Houston for example, bury their young guy in favor of the older vet with no future for the team.

The temptation to go with the devil you know in the older vet is always going to be strong for a weak coach. But on a team like ours where most of the roster is stable veterans and we only have two or three young players to develop at once, there really is no excuse not to try and do so.

Yes, as you say, a lot of this is hindsight. And I agree with much of it. But Witt would be hard-pressed to bench Butler—even in favor of Porter—when Rasual was shooting something like 45% from 3pt range the first couple of months of the season. Fans would have been rightfully calling for Witt’s head if he had done that.

And those few wins it might have cost the Zards to bench a red-hot Butler, may have been the difference between playing Toronto in the first round…or a much better team like Chicago or Cleveland.

[dckingsfan]

Good point Zards - I think if we had played Otto at the beginning of the season instead of Butler and Temple when they were hot, we might have been the 6th or 7th seed and that would have been truly ugly. I think that Wittman just rode the hot hand - maybe a bit too long but still.

[fishercob]

I am in awe of Otto Porter.

Derozan was en fuego in the 1Q. Then Otto comepletely shut him down. DD finished with 32 points on 11-29 shooting. Otto got in his head.

Those 2 3's in the 4Q were as huge as they were pure.

11 points on 6 shots, 8 boards, 2 assists, 2 steals, a block and a monster charge taken.

Fantastic.

[hands11]

So not a bust..

Huge game 3 by Otto...

Congrats young man.