DeBlazerRiddem wrote:monopoman wrote:I mean Chauncy is really pushing for more ball movement, you can see guys in some cases overpassing and it leads to turnovers. We are seeing a lot less of give the ball to Dame or CJ and watch them go to work.
Now, I imagine that offense will still happen in late game scenarios or when the team is struggling to score, but Stotts seemed to default to that stuff a lot more.
Chauncy very well might do that too once he realizes we (and indeed most teams) don't really have the personnel to pull off a free flowing offense and that the turnovers hurt us more than the extra opportunities help us.
We saw the same criticisms with Nate McMillian when we let him go, that the new coach, the offensive guru under Carlisle, would bring an up-tempo offense but as time went along Stotts ended up defaulting to a more conservative approach as well. I think there's a reason that tends to happen and I don't think its because the coach gets lazy or anything but they come to realize that the risk of taking the ball out of Dame or CJ or whomever is the most experienced ball handler's hands is often not worth the reward.
ironically, the rate of touches for Dame and CJ haven't changed. Last year, Dame averaged 0.44 touches/minute & CJ averaged 0.52 touches/minute. This season, it's still 0.44 for Dame & 0.52 for CJ
I think a pretty good argument could be made that all things considered, it should be Dame with the higher rate of touches than CJ. Dame is simply much better at running the offense. And when Dame creates his own offense, he's also much better at it in terms of efficiency....except over the first 3 games of this season. But to me, the obvious factor at work here is that when Dame plays off the ball, he simply doesn't have the type of teammates, like Batum or Steve Blake for instance, that can get the ball to him or back to him
last year, CJ attempted a shot every 3.46 touches; this year; this year it's every 3.08 touches. Last year, Dame attempted a shot every 4.09 touches; this year it's every 4.21 touches. So, in this new semi-socialist '
everybody-gets-touches' offense of Billups, it's kind of crazy that CJ still gets touches at a higher rate than Dame while his FGA/touch has actually increased. Dame's FGA/touch has decreased. Dame must have have received a different memo than CJ
now, some obvious context is that CJ has been hot while Dame has been cold. So there very well could be some '
go-with-the-hot-hand' dynamic at work. Still, there's a real shadow of MeJ hanging over all those stats
more than that though is gauging impact. CJ has had two hot starts to the season in a row. The first 12 games last season, and the first 3 games this season. A revealing number is that in those 15 games, when CJ has been hot and shooting more while posting a usage rate well over 30%, Portland's record is only 8-7, a .533 winning percentage. Meanwhile CJ has missed two substantial stretches of games over the last 3 seasons when Dame has had to carry the load; 37 games. In those 37 games, Portland's record is 24-13, a .649 winning percentage. Making that even more stark a difference, is that Nurkic was injured both times CJ was and missed 28 of those 37 games. Another way to look at it is that the Blazers with CJ as
'the man' a healthy Portland wins at the rate of 44 wins in a regular season. With Dame as
the man, and missing both CJ and Nurkic, the Blazers win at a rate of 53 wins in the regular season, which ironically happens to be thehighest number of regular season wins in the Dame/CJ era.
but then anybody who has watched the Blazers over the last 7 season seasons knows that Dame has broad shoulder and can carry the team to wins and the playoffs. CJ has very narrow shoulders. So I guess Billups has a decision to make, if he's actually in control of it. That being what is more important: keep CJ going; or get Dame going
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I'll explicitly add the 'understood' asterisk so nobody has to mention it: a 3 game sample size can be highly skewed statistically from what it will be at 33 games