Season Preview Primer

Portland Trail Blazers

Coach: Nate McMillan
2007-08 Record: 41-41
Pythagorean Record for 07-08: 38-44
Offensive Rating: 107.3 (14^th in the league)
Defensive Rating: 108.4 (17^th)
Possessions per 48: 87.9 (29^th)
Min%: 81.7 (13^th)
Four Factors:

Roster (Red indicates new acquisition, Blue indicates rookie)

Man, where to start with this team? No other team in the league has this much young talent. They’re 12 deep for goodness sake.

We’ll start with the team’s MVP from last year, Brandon Roy. Roy is a player who is really sneaky-good. You don’t watch him and think, “Man, that guy is a monster,” but when you look at the scoreboard at the end of the game, he’s piled up 25 points, 6 assists and 6 rebounds with no turnovers, and you’re blown away. In only his second season, Roy is already among the league’s most versatile players. Though he mainly plays shooting guard, he’s one of the league’s best distributors, often dictating the action for Portland and acting as a de facto point guard. That’s not to say that Roy can’t score though. He’s one of the smartest offensive players you’ll see in the game today. Rather than rely on explosiveness, Roy is able to get to the rim with his great ballhandling and ability to change speeds. When you watch highlights of Roy, what always stands out his how absolutely under control he is. Oh, and did I mention he’s also one of the best rebounding guards in the league, almost never turns the ball over, and is an excellent defender when the game is on the line? I have to stop myself because I could go on and on for days about Roy. He plays like a ten-year veteran, not like a guy entering his third year in the league. If he adds consistency to his three-point stroke, he’s going to be all but unguardable.

Those who are crowning LaMarcus Aldridge an All-Star big man are getting a bit ahead of themselves, but there’s no denying that he has huge talent. He’s got great size, length, and athleticism and has made great strides in his game since coming into the league. Aldridge’s main weapon at this point is his face-up jumper. He’s got a very consistent stroke with a very high release point, and forces opposing big men to come out and guard him. That’s something that will serve him well when paired with Greg Oden in the frontcourt. He’s also a very capable ballhandler for a guy his size, with an extremely low turnover rate for a young big man. He’s certainly shown that he has the talent to be a go-to option. The next step for Aldridge is to become a more efficient scorer. He tends to settle for difficult jumpers too often, and his tendency to fade rather than attack means that he draws very few fouls. He shoots 76% from the stripe, so I’m sure Portland would love to see Aldridge getting more easy points that way. Defensively, he has a ways to go. Most notably, Aldridge is a terrible rebounder. His rebound percentage of 12.8 is absolutely atrocious (for comparison, the much-maligned Eddy Curry posted a 10.2 rebound percentage). A guy with Aldridge’s length and quickness should be at least a serviceable rebounder and a shotblocking threat, and Aldridge is neither. If this team is to live up to their potential, he needs to become both.

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t know a whole lot about Joel Przybilla. When I mention his name, I’m guessing you didn’t think “One of the NBA’s best rebounders.” You probably didn’t think “Premier post defender.” Well, maybe you should take another look at the big man. Przybilla had the second highest rebound percentage in the game last year (behind Dwight Howard). In addition to that, he had a high block rate, and drew an absolutely absurd amount of charges (5^th in the league, while playing only 23 mpg on a slow paced team). That’s the holy trifecta of defensive big man statistics. If you don’t understand what it means, look at it this way. Przybilla blocked a ton of shots, but he also stayed on his feet and played solid defense enough to draw a ton of charges, and he didn’t leave his feet or flop excessively because he was on his feet enough to be the second best rebounder in the league. That, my friends, is impressive. Of course, he gives you nothing offensively and his role will decrease to 15-20 minutes off the bench with the arrival of Oden. Still, there are worse things than to have a defensive stud coming off the bench for you.

Travis Outlaw is going to be a critical piece of this team’s future, and he’s probably going to have to be content with coming off the bench. I’ve seen a few reports this offseason that Outlaw wants a more prominent role, which is really the first sign of potential trouble I’ve seen from the Blazers. Outlaw certainly has the talent to be a starter, but Portland is loaded with talent, and Outlaw fits best off the bench. He provides a go-to scorer for the second unit, and can play either forward spot. Outlaw can’t get cocky and full of himself, because despite his improvement last year, he has a long way to go. Though he’s capable of making very tough shots, Outlaw also doesn’t create a whole lot of easy shots, and it’s reflected in his FG%. If he wants to fulfill his potential, Outlaw is going to have to use his length and athleticism to get to the rim more often (only 16% of his shots were from close range last year) and become more efficient with his touches. He also has the potential to be a lock-down defender, but he’s going to have to improve concentration and give a consistent effort.

Martell Webster is a classic case of a good shooter who sabotages himself by not taking enough threes. Webster shot 39% from downtown, but only took about one fourth of his shots from beyon the arc. If he’s going to be a valuable role player for Portland in the future, it’s going to be as a long range specialist. Webster becomes a restricted free agent this year, and the team has to decide what to do with him. He’s already behind the 8-ball since he’ll be out with injury for the first two months of the season, so if he wants to be part of this team’s future, he’ll have to be much more efficient with his touches this year.

You know, I wasn’t terribly impressed with Nicolas Batum when I saw him in the Summer League, but he’s drawing rave reviews from Nate McMillan in the Blazers training camp. There’s even been talk that Batum might be the starter at SF while Webster is out (which I’m sure Outlaw loves to hear). I’m not sure how seriously to take that since the Batum I’ve seen didn’t look anywhere close to being an NBA starter, but if Batum has progressed more quickly than we all thought, it’s just one more extremely scary piece that this team adds. Batum is a smooth, athletic forward with a great wingspan and a lot of defensive potential. If he does earn minutes, it’ll be because McMillan thinks he can be a disruptive defensive presence.

I’m interested in seeing what happens with Jerryd Bayless this year. Unlike Batum, Bayless was the most impressive player I saw this summer. He looked like that guy at your local gym who used to play college ball and is just way too good for everyone else, the guy whose team runs all day and he never even looks like he’s trying. That was Bayless in the Summer League, he just did whatever he wanted. He also happens to be a perfect fit with Brandon Roy in the backcourt. Bayless is more of a scorer than a point guard, but that’s fine because Roy can handle the point guard duties. Steve Blake will be the opening day starter just to keep the pressure off the rookies, but I’d be shocked if Bayless didn’t start at some point this season.

Along with Bayless, what the heck is Portland going to do with Rudy Fernandez? There’s such an embarrassment of riches here that I’m not sure where all the minutes will go. Surely though, McMillan will find playing time for the Spanish guard who lit up the US in the Olympic finals. Fernandez would’ve been a top 5 pick this year if the Blazers hadn’t stolen him with a late first-rounder the previous year.

X-Factor: Greg Oden – Like this was going to be anyone else. Oden is maybe the most intriguing story coming into this NBA season. Just how good is he really? Will he dominate immediately, or will he need time to adjust and recover from his surgery? Me, I’m expecting something like 25 minutes a game where he provides great rebounding and defense, but won’t be looked to too much offensively. The Blazers have to many weapons and so much depth that there’s no need to rush anything with Oden. They’re certainly not going to risk overtaxing him, and since he needs to improve his conditioning after the surgery, I think they’ll limit his minutes to keep him fresh deeper into the season. At bare minimum, Oden should immediately make this team much, much better defensively. He’s one of the most dynamic defenders I’ve ever seen at the college level. He would follow guards through the lane, match them step for step, and block their shot without ever leaving the ground. It got to the point where teams just wouldn’t even try to take shots in the paint against Ohio State, Oden was so intimidating. Also, lost in all the defensive hoopla was the fact that Oden was one of the nation’s best offensive centers despite playing basically the entire season without his dominant hand. The guy shot 63% from the foul line with his left hand, for goodness sake. This team will eventually go as far as Oden takes them, and from everything we’ve seen, that means they’re going awfully far over the next decade.

(At this point I’d like to note that I didn’t even mention the following players who are rotation players or valuable young pieces on any team in the league: Sergio Rodriguez, Steve Blake, Channing Frye, Ike Diogu and Petteri Koponen. I’ll take “Embarrassment of Riches,” for $1000 Alex.)

Overview

The rebuilding project proved to be a bit ahead of schedule last year. Though Portland was a trendy dark horse playoff pick after drafting Oden, people quickly cooled on them when the star center was out for the season. Silly us. Even though they weren’t able to keep pace with the ultra-competitive West playoff race, Portland represented themselves far better than expected, winning 41 games and reeling off a 13-game win streak early in the year. Suffice it to say, people were surprised. I mean, we knew Brandon Roy was good, but that good? The thing that makes Portland so interesting is that they were super-young, but their play was about as old-school as it comes. As you can see from the numbers listed at the top of this page, they played at an extremely slow pace, only faster than the turtle-like Pistons. They also played smart, rarely turning the ball over, forcing opponents into poor shooting percentages, and rarely fouling opposing shooters. The biggest thing that they struggled with was rebounding. Now if only there was someone who could help them with that…

Prediction

If you’ve read any of my writing over the past year (The two of you can put your hands down now. Yes, that includes you, mom), you know that I absolutely love this team and have a super-geeky sports fan man-crush on Kevin Pritchard. Say what you want about the luck of drawing the Oden pick, but almost every other piece of this roster has been acquired by trade since Pritchard became Assistant GM in 2006 (and his promotion to actual GM in 2007). Roy, Aldridge, Rodriguez, Frye, Fernandez, Bayless and Batum, all brought in by Pritchard trades. He’s just dancing circles around the rest of the NBA right now, it’s almost unfair. That brings me to this point: The Blazers will win a title sometime in the next five years, bare minimum. They will, in fact, probably win several. Barring catastrophic injury, this team is set up to own the league for the next decade. It won’t happen this year because they still need to gel and figure out everything, but as early as next year I wouldn’t be surprised if they won a title. That brings me to another interesting thought that keeps bouncing around in my head. The Blazers’ weakest position in the future is the SF position. If they don’t go out and bring anyone big in this offseason, the Blazers will be way under the cap for the 2010 offseason. If you’re LeBron James and you want to stamp your legacy on the record books forever, don’t you at least have to consider going to the most talent-packed young team in decades? Anyway, lets leave my idle speculation alone and move on. This team is absolutely a playoff team, and they’re a playoff team I wouldn’t particularly want to face. Portland has the scariest collection of young talent in the league. This year is only the beginning.

6th in the West – The Young Guns and The Old Farts

xphoenix87 is a Contributing Writer for BallerBlogger.com. No, his name does not mean that he is a Suns fan. Please do not make this mistake, he does not suffer fools lightly. He’s writing season previews for all 30 NBA teams. Tomorrow is the Utah Jazz.