"exactly" what they needed was a low post scorer. perkins helps them, but he doesn't solve that problem.
no team in the league is more dependent on making contested jumpshots than OKC.
i really only worry about defensive rebounding rate - since teams differ on how they attack the offensive glass. but everybody wants defensive rebounds.
"exactly" what they needed was a low post scorer. perkins helps them, but he doesn't solve that problem.
no team in the league is more dependent on making contested jumpshots than OKC.
And the Spurs are tied for 9th in the NBA, second in the West, in that category. The Lakers are 20th in the NBA and 9th in the conference. Mavs are 14th and 4th.
This.
Splitter missed a lot of training camp, then a lot of the RRT. Those are the two of the best times to be integrated into the system. Just bad luck/timing on those injuries.
Who knew with all the old guys we have that 2 of our 3 rookies would be injured half the season? And who knew our best rookie would be Gary Neal?!
As for OKC, Perkins will give them a lot. But its a gamble. A gamble that he can get integrated in time, a gamble that his knee is okay. OKC has improved their upside this year, which is Presti's job. But if Perkins was enough to carry the Thunder past the Spurs, then we weren't going to win the championship anyway. I'd still take us in six in a series with them.
For those that followed Splitter's pre-Spurs, European career, did he have a history of injury before?
Yes.
and Bruno warned everybody about this several times...
Ah. Thanks man.
Yep. Not any major injuries, but lots of small, nagging injuries.
Also, he never played more than about 1400 minutes in any given season including playoffs. Right now, he's on track for about 700 regular season minutes. Without the training camp and RRT injuries, he'd probably be on track for 900-1000 regular season minutes.
You know Bill Simmons did an interesting article a few weeks ago where he mentioned that Bigs who have injuries when they're young usually are injury prone their whole careers. He gave a list to prove his point. It's why, he felt, the Lakers should have traded Bynum - it just doesn't get better as they get older. This seems obvious, but its natural to hope that these injuries are 'freak' occurrences. Of course, it does depend on the injury, but Simmons's list was pretty persuasive.
Off subject but Anderson concerns me too. Wasn't he injured during pre-draft workouts? Then some in the summer? Then after 8 games or so in the season. It's been like a year since he's played regular basketball. No wonder he's out of shape.
Okay, sorry. Back to Sam Presti. Yes he's good. But RC ain't bad either.
Also you gotta look that he has missed 16 games of the season.
Greg Oden would be the poster child for this.
Hopefully Tiago's injury concerns are more about his style of play than just not having a basketball-marathon body. We all know this but Splitter's style involves routinely sacrificing his body especially when it comes to taking charges. He has taken quite a few inadvertent hits and hard fouls as well especially compared to minutes played FWIW. He's going to have one of an offseason with the Spurs; Splitter would benefit a lot from getting stronger and learning how to pace a basketball season.
good point - so, a better gauge for him is #25 in the NBA for 3 pointers made per game
No doubt, Tiago has been a big steaming disappointment, fragile like a Beno.
Green isn't an efficient scorer at all, his range sucks, and he doesn't get to the line. OKC didn't lose much in this trade while getting an above average big who Durant's going to absolutely love getting screens from. This trade is a big win for the Thunder.
That was one injury. It happened in the PD workouts and carried over into the summer, preventing him from playing on the SL team. I'm not too concerned by a hammy and a foot stress fracture. The knees are ultimately what kill your career.
Green was expendable because he played the same position as KD. He was still averaging 15 a game backing him up and/or playing the 4.
All OKC ed about is not having a big man. The general story was they have their superstar, they have their PG, now the need a big (who isn't white and from KU).
I listened to 4 hours of OKC sports talk on Thursday driving thru. Over and over that's exactly what was said. It seems it was widely know Green would be offered smallmoney to stay but obviously someone was gonna throw bigger bucks at him. They are ape over Sam for doing this. Altho Perkins isn't an A-list big man, who really is? He may not be top shelf, but there is a lot of also-ran big men out there and he will do fine against them when healthy.
Also, if Green can move into the 3 with another team, he may very well explode. Unfortunately I don't see that happening behind PP, but who knows what they do with him. He only makes around 4.5.
Yeah, but that might be a little mis-applied as Oden's Ohio State injury was kinda a freak thing to his wrist, which is about the only part of his body that has not been an issue in Portland.
I have seen that some scouts had some concerns with his knees prior to the draft (which has clearly been prophetic), but he never had any knee injuries prior to his NBA career.
It's not a coincidence that he had knee surgery almost immediately during that draft summer without playing a regular season NBA game.
Portland took a number of chances on talented draft picks with medical red flags: Oden, Roy, and Bayless all had red flags and were medical "reaches". I'm sure they thought that if they did it enough, one of them would be OK. They were apparently wrong.
I think they are going to use on of the 3 to trade for a power forward during the offseason.
I was surprised they didnīt go after Scola/Perkins or Scola/Mohammed.
It's amazing that the Blazers would be so willing to assume such risk, but I guess when you have Paul Allen's deep pockets, your team can do that.
They sure are paying the price for it now!
No, I meant that, unless there are weird chemistry issues like MIA had early in this season. It was an analogy. I wasn't talking about next season at all.
+1
Harden can clearly play. I'm not sure if he is a legit 3rd option, but I think Presti and the guys think he can fill that role. Otherwise I don't see them making that move. He'll be in a position where he has to score now, so I guess we'll get to see how good Harden is and if he is cemented in as the 3rd option on the team for the future.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)