I straight-up forgot DA’s first name for a minute. All I could think of was “Dominayton” lol.
TheLetterOh
Scoot in the first half was incredible. The chemistry him and DA are developing is next level and makes me excited for the future.
The second half was rough because the Pelicans adjusted well and we couldn’t punish the zone.
crab90000
KRIS MURRAYYYYYY
KillingTime_ForNow
8 fts to 29 fts is quite the gap.
blazer4ever
DA+Scoot low key like Deron Williams + Boozer game
Piano9717
Here are my thoughts on this game:
Positives:
* I really liked the energy we played with during this game. We’re losing a lot of games, but everyone plays hard and unselfishly, and I think the team (and Chauncey) deserve some credit for that. For the record I still think Chauncey is not a great coach from an actual basketball perspective (before people start calling me a Chauncey defender lol) but I do think the leadership and culture he’s brought deserve a mention. Joe Mazzula the other day called the Blazers “scrappy and physical” and I think that embodies this team pretty well. * Scoot in the first half was the best I’ve seen from him all season. He’s had other big assist games before, but in the second quarter today I thought he displayed a great command and he was truly in control of the entire game. I was really impressed with how he was super patient waiting for passing angles to open up on some of those passes into the paint – multiple times he held the ball and looked off a defender to create an open passing angle – he was incredibly creative throughout the whole game with his passing. I feel like earlier in the season, maybe Scoot doesn’t hold the ball and wait for his teammates to open up, but instead makes a dribble move or passes the ball. I think this kinda shows Scoot’s growth over the course of the season – he’s been more patient and confident especially in the last few games. I also was impressed about a lob he threw to Ayton rolling down the middle, with his left hand without even picking up his dribble – that’s way harder than Scoot made it look. Anyways, Scoot really displayed his creativity, processing, court vision, and decision making today. Best game of the season by far. It also helps that he made some jumpers today when the defense backed off him. I posted this in an earlier thread, but his pull-up jumper isn’t THAT far away from being serviceable – he’s basically shooting a league average percentage on pull-up three pointers already. I think his shooting will be just fine in the long term.
* Remember the beginning of the season when nobody could figure out how to get the ball to Ayton? That seems like forever ago. Props to the guards (Ant, Brogdon, and Scoot have all had their moments feeding Ayton), and to the coaching staff for being able to figure out how to get Ayton the ball in his spots. He’s super efficient if he catches the ball in a place where he can score – but he has an…unconventional game for a center. So, props to everyone for figuring that out, because Ayton has been so good offensively the second half of this season. * Also, Ayton and Jabari did a pretty good job slowing down Zion, which is not very easy to do. * Rupert had an underwhelming statline but he looked like he belonged on the court, which is a really positive sign for a 19 year old second round project rookie. Plus, he’s shooting like 40% from three this year, which is…a little bit unexpected considering he shot 36% from the field and 25% from three last year in Australia. * Murray made some shots which is nice to see. I also thought he had some really nice looking defensive plays when he was rotating in help and getting deflections and stops. I love his instincts defensively.
Negatives:
* We really struggled offensively when the Pelicans benched JV and started switching 1-5 in the third quarter. There’s nobody on the roster really who can take advantage of mismatches 1v1. As good as Ayton is when he gets the ball in his spots, he’s equally bad bad when he’s asked to create anything in the halfcourt – it’s going to end in a contested turnaround fadeaway or a turnover 99% of the time. And Scoot just doesn’t have the 1v1 chops to be able to create anything against a switching defense yet, and he ended up forcing a bunch of passes resulting in a bunch of turnovers. Eventually, he’s going to need to be able to take bigs off the dribble 1v1 because if not, it’s gonna really handicap our offense. * Along the same lines, we also just didn’t have the shooting to punish the Pelicans for sitting in their zone for a lot of the fourth quarter and our offense just fell off a cliff. * Speaking of offense, you’d think that for a young athletic team that struggles to score in the halfcourt, you’d think it would be more of a priority to run in transition some more. But it feels like Banton is the only one who looks to push the ball up in transition, and we burn a ton of time in the halfcourt trying to get the offense sorted out. It feels like by the time we do the weave action at the top of the key and get into our offense, there’s like 12 seconds on the shot clock. Just really uncreative and boring to watch (and it doesn’t work very well because we just don’t have the personnel to run such a slow offense). Right now we are playing at the 19th ranked pace in the league, and we have the 5th lowest transition frequency in the NBA. It just doesn’t make sense for a team as young, athletic, and bad at halfcourt offense as we are.
AceMcStace
15 assist is great from a 20 year old I could care less about the TO. He looked like a legit floor general out there during stretches.
Boxinggandhi
Fun game until the 4th. Love seeing the guys start to gel. Side note, if your main thing in life is sit around and talk shit on the game thread, question your life choices.
Bieberkinz
1st half scoot hit really nicely, 2nd half wasn’t as clean but the Pelicans are a team still playing for seeding so knowing the FT and turnover disparity and lose by 10 gives that whole “moral victory” vibe.
batrainbow
The fact that the Blazers achieved nuggets in the last 10 seconds was the most exciting part of the game for me
Okay things got rough at the end but THAT is the type of high end talent showcase I been wanting to see from Scoot!! I thought his first 3 quarters was the highest he has played all year. I was hoping he could build off the good games he had vs bottom dweller teams and he did that tonight. He was picking apart a playoff team and it felt like our best option on offense was to give him the ball. That level of undeniable talent and great decision making is what I wanted to see from him and it was amazing to see. Pelicans had no answer for Scoot either scoring, getting the ball to Ayton, or swinging it to the wing for a 3pt shot or drive. That is the type of guy that can be a franchise cornerstone, I said this all year but I don’t mind the turnovers and inefficiency if he can show flashes of HIGH end talent. Now Scoot took advantage of Alvarado trying to pick him up at full court, which Scoot is too big and fast to get stopped back there, so he would just burst down hill and find Ayton when Pelicans defense got lifted. Scoot actually did have a great matchup vs a slower big who struggled defending in space and Jose/CJ are too small to defend a Scoot/Ayton PnR. Once NOP adjusted, Scoot ended 0-7 from the field. Scoot composure and decision making was still much much improved. I really think a lot of his issues have been mental this year, I want to see him show more flashes of this level of play to end the year.
peakchungus
Fitting end to Chauncey Billups Appreciation Night.
13 Comments
I straight-up forgot DA’s first name for a minute. All I could think of was “Dominayton” lol.
Scoot in the first half was incredible. The chemistry him and DA are developing is next level and makes me excited for the future.
The second half was rough because the Pelicans adjusted well and we couldn’t punish the zone.
KRIS MURRAYYYYYY
8 fts to 29 fts is quite the gap.
DA+Scoot low key like Deron Williams + Boozer game
Here are my thoughts on this game:
Positives:
* I really liked the energy we played with during this game. We’re losing a lot of games, but everyone plays hard and unselfishly, and I think the team (and Chauncey) deserve some credit for that. For the record I still think Chauncey is not a great coach from an actual basketball perspective (before people start calling me a Chauncey defender lol) but I do think the leadership and culture he’s brought deserve a mention. Joe Mazzula the other day called the Blazers “scrappy and physical” and I think that embodies this team pretty well.
* Scoot in the first half was the best I’ve seen from him all season. He’s had other big assist games before, but in the second quarter today I thought he displayed a great command and he was truly in control of the entire game. I was really impressed with how he was super patient waiting for passing angles to open up on some of those passes into the paint – multiple times he held the ball and looked off a defender to create an open passing angle – he was incredibly creative throughout the whole game with his passing. I feel like earlier in the season, maybe Scoot doesn’t hold the ball and wait for his teammates to open up, but instead makes a dribble move or passes the ball. I think this kinda shows Scoot’s growth over the course of the season – he’s been more patient and confident especially in the last few games. I also was impressed about a lob he threw to Ayton rolling down the middle, with his left hand without even picking up his dribble – that’s way harder than Scoot made it look. Anyways, Scoot really displayed his creativity, processing, court vision, and decision making today. Best game of the season by far.
It also helps that he made some jumpers today when the defense backed off him. I posted this in an earlier thread, but his pull-up jumper isn’t THAT far away from being serviceable – he’s basically shooting a league average percentage on pull-up three pointers already. I think his shooting will be just fine in the long term.
* Remember the beginning of the season when nobody could figure out how to get the ball to Ayton? That seems like forever ago. Props to the guards (Ant, Brogdon, and Scoot have all had their moments feeding Ayton), and to the coaching staff for being able to figure out how to get Ayton the ball in his spots. He’s super efficient if he catches the ball in a place where he can score – but he has an…unconventional game for a center. So, props to everyone for figuring that out, because Ayton has been so good offensively the second half of this season.
* Also, Ayton and Jabari did a pretty good job slowing down Zion, which is not very easy to do.
* Rupert had an underwhelming statline but he looked like he belonged on the court, which is a really positive sign for a 19 year old second round project rookie. Plus, he’s shooting like 40% from three this year, which is…a little bit unexpected considering he shot 36% from the field and 25% from three last year in Australia.
* Murray made some shots which is nice to see. I also thought he had some really nice looking defensive plays when he was rotating in help and getting deflections and stops. I love his instincts defensively.
Negatives:
* We really struggled offensively when the Pelicans benched JV and started switching 1-5 in the third quarter. There’s nobody on the roster really who can take advantage of mismatches 1v1. As good as Ayton is when he gets the ball in his spots, he’s equally bad bad when he’s asked to create anything in the halfcourt – it’s going to end in a contested turnaround fadeaway or a turnover 99% of the time. And Scoot just doesn’t have the 1v1 chops to be able to create anything against a switching defense yet, and he ended up forcing a bunch of passes resulting in a bunch of turnovers. Eventually, he’s going to need to be able to take bigs off the dribble 1v1 because if not, it’s gonna really handicap our offense.
* Along the same lines, we also just didn’t have the shooting to punish the Pelicans for sitting in their zone for a lot of the fourth quarter and our offense just fell off a cliff.
* Speaking of offense, you’d think that for a young athletic team that struggles to score in the halfcourt, you’d think it would be more of a priority to run in transition some more. But it feels like Banton is the only one who looks to push the ball up in transition, and we burn a ton of time in the halfcourt trying to get the offense sorted out. It feels like by the time we do the weave action at the top of the key and get into our offense, there’s like 12 seconds on the shot clock. Just really uncreative and boring to watch (and it doesn’t work very well because we just don’t have the personnel to run such a slow offense). Right now we are playing at the 19th ranked pace in the league, and we have the 5th lowest transition frequency in the NBA. It just doesn’t make sense for a team as young, athletic, and bad at halfcourt offense as we are.
15 assist is great from a 20 year old I could care less about the TO. He looked like a legit floor general out there during stretches.
Fun game until the 4th. Love seeing the guys start to gel. Side note, if your main thing in life is sit around and talk shit on the game thread, question your life choices.
1st half scoot hit really nicely, 2nd half wasn’t as clean but the Pelicans are a team still playing for seeding so knowing the FT and turnover disparity and lose by 10 gives that whole “moral victory” vibe.
The fact that the Blazers achieved nuggets in the last 10 seconds was the most exciting part of the game for me
Kris Murray 37 min: -8 +/-
Scoot 41 min: – 31 +/-
😳
Okay things got rough at the end but THAT is the type of high end talent showcase I been wanting to see from Scoot!! I thought his first 3 quarters was the highest he has played all year. I was hoping he could build off the good games he had vs bottom dweller teams and he did that tonight. He was picking apart a playoff team and it felt like our best option on offense was to give him the ball. That level of undeniable talent and great decision making is what I wanted to see from him and it was amazing to see. Pelicans had no answer for Scoot either scoring, getting the ball to Ayton, or swinging it to the wing for a 3pt shot or drive. That is the type of guy that can be a franchise cornerstone, I said this all year but I don’t mind the turnovers and inefficiency if he can show flashes of HIGH end talent.
Now Scoot took advantage of Alvarado trying to pick him up at full court, which Scoot is too big and fast to get stopped back there, so he would just burst down hill and find Ayton when Pelicans defense got lifted. Scoot actually did have a great matchup vs a slower big who struggled defending in space and Jose/CJ are too small to defend a Scoot/Ayton PnR. Once NOP adjusted, Scoot ended 0-7 from the field.
Scoot composure and decision making was still much much improved. I really think a lot of his issues have been mental this year, I want to see him show more flashes of this level of play to end the year.
Fitting end to Chauncey Billups Appreciation Night.