Is the acquisition of Robin Lopez comparable to Buck Williams' back in the Summer of '89? What was the defining moment of this season so far? And is there a right way to defend this Trail Blazers offense? Seven local reporters who eat, sleep, and breathe Trail Blazers basketball give their take in this week's edition of Running The Break.
1. Through 23 games, Robin Lopez has already recorded 10 double-doubles; he had nine all of last year. He's making life easier for LaMarcus Aldridge. The team is leading the West. And his personality fits this town and team to a tee. At what point does the addition of Robin Lopez begin to look like the addition of Buck Williams in the Summer of 1989?
Casey Holdahl (@Chold), TrailBlazers.com: Well, I was a nine year-old living in a suburb of Sacramento and had not yet gotten the prescription lenses I needed, so I'm not sure I'm the right guy to ask about the "look" of anything back then.
But at least initially, the addition of Lopez to the roster has provided the same toughness and rebounding without the need for offensive touches that adding Buck Williams accomplished. But for as good as Lopez has been, Buck was the Rookie of the Year and a three-time all-star by time Portland traded for him, so I don't know that the two acquisitions are exactly parallels.
Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes), CSNNW.com: Robin Lopez’s contribution is similar to Buck Williams as far as impact goes, but the difference is Buck was a proven All-Star when Portland traded for him. He was viewed as the missing piece to a championship puzzle. And they ended up making it to the 1990 NBA Finals. Nobody expected Robin to have such a huge impact on this team. You knew the center position would be an upgrade over last year, but you weren’t sure how much of an upgrade.
Joe Freeman (@BlazerFreeman), The Oregonian: I was 12 in 1989 and living in Tallahassee, Fla., so I’m not going to compare Robin Lopez’ addition to that of Buck Williams’. But I will say that — so far — Lopez has been the perfect fit for the Blazers. His unselfish, team-first approach to playing defense, rebounding and clogging the paint has been as good as advertised — and exactly what this team needed. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that LaMarcus Aldridge is playing the best basketball of his career while playing alongside Lopez.
Mike Tokito (@mtokito), The Oregonian: Well, the Blazers went to the Finals in Williams' first season, so a little later than December. You have to remember, Williams was a three-time All-Star and probably the greatest player in Nets history (at least their NBA years) when he arrived in Portland. Then he willingly took a complementary role with the Blazers, which, as LaMarcus Aldridge would say, was big for them.
Don't get me wrong. Lopez has been great, and his arrival has been a win-win -- great for the Blazers, but also a huge opportunity for him to raise his profile in the league. He's done all the garbage duty, but he's also become a legitimate scorer.
Erik Gundersen (@BlazerBanter), The Columbian: I wasn't alive in the summer of 1989 so for me to compare it to that addition is impossible for me to do. Coach Stotts has been hesitant, and for good reason, to compare these Trail Blazers to the 2011 Mavs. But if you remember, there was lots of press coming out of Dallas the year they won the title with Dirk Nowitzki praising the acquisition of Tyson Chandler. Now, nobody is calling Robin Lopez Kevin Garnett or Tyson Chandler, but if you listen to what guys like Aldridge and Batum are saying about him, you see he's had a similar effect. Lopez has made a huge difference in the numbers, too. The Blazers are realistically looking at having home court advantage, at least in the first round, and Lopez has been a big part of that. They all play off of him and he does the work that nobody on the roster was willing to do last year. Lopez is doing the little things and he's young. Lopez can still get better and his career year this season shows that we haven't seen all that he can do yet. Both teams relied on jump shooters and a jump-shooting four man, but that's where the comparison's end. Guys on that Dallas team had been through the playoff fire many times and Nowitzki and Terry had been to the Finals. This Blazers team is much younger and less experienced in the playoffs than the 2011 Dallas group that won it all.
Mike Acker (@mikeacker), Willamette Week: There have been and there are going to continue to be a lot of comparisons between this current Blazer team and the great Blazer teams of the early 1990s. Comparing the addition of Buck to the addition of Robin makes a lot of sense. The Blazers of the late 80s needed something to get them over the top, and that was Buck. The Blazers of 2013-14 needed something to take them from a four-man team to a team that could actually compete, and Robin has been part of the group that has done that. The real test of how important Robin Lopez is, and whether or not he’s had an impact similar to Buck’s is how far the Blazers make it in the post season. If Portland is going to beat a couple good Western Conference teams in the playoffs, they are going to need some strong performances from their awesome new center.
Dave Deckard (@blazersedge), BlazersEdge: I get the comparison in terms of effect but we’re treading on sacred ground here. Williams took his team from defensive mediocrity to one of the elite defenses in the league. The Blazers were already a good offensive rebounding team before Buck arrived but he spearheaded a similar transformation in defensive rebounding. So far Lopez has helped the Blazers vault into great rebounding position but the defense remains bottom-third of the league. We need to see more individually and in overall effect before we start calling him the next Buck. A trip to the Finals wouldn’t hurt.
2. Your thoughts on Fan Voting for All-Star Games. What would you do differently to allow the fans to see their favorite players but make the honor more merit-based than a popularity contest?
I do think adding a games played requirement would be a wise tweak that would improve the system while still allowing fans to have their rightful say. After all, they don't do paper ballots anymore, so why not change the rules so you can't acquire votes until a player plays, say, at least ten games? That would take most of the ridiculousness out of the equation.
Deckard: What are they voting for? It’s not a terribly serious event. It’s a showcase precisely for the sake of popularity and buzz. Let the folks have their fun voting in the big names and getting their fantasy matchups. The coaches make up for it a little bit by selecting the reserves on merit. Besides, whining about a player not getting respect is at least half the fun of this kind of exercise.
Playoff positions are usually decided on merit and championships always are. Worry about those and the rest will come. When the Blazers went to the Finals in the Drexler years they had three All-Stars: Clyde, Terry Porter, and Kevin Duckworth. Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas, and Lionel Hollins all made it during the championship years. If the Blazers get that far again then LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard are shoo-ins for the All-Star game the following year.
3. Damian Lillard recently stated on the Dan Le Batard show that he believed it was the comeback win in Oakland against the Warriors that made him a believer in this special season. What was that moment for you? Or do you think that moment has yet to occur?
Deckard: I agree that the Golden State tussle was a defining moment. A few ages have passed since we’ve seen Blazers go to war for each other on the court. In recent years they didn’t precisely back down but they weren’t that quick to step up when conflict arose. Mostly it’d be Joel Przybilla turning Tyson Chandler into a whining, emotional pretzel and everybody else kind of looking at the ground. When Andrew Bogut and Joel Freeland got into it everybody stepped in but nobody really lost their cool. It wasn’t an emotional overreaction. It was a “Thou shalt not mess with us” statement. The Blazers will need to keep making that statement if they stay among the league leaders because every opponent will put a target on their back and plenty of those opponents will try and knock them around to take them out of their groove.
“Special Season” is overreaching at this point, though. They’ve had a special start for sure. Plenty of work remains to translate that momentum into a full campaign.
4. If you're an opposing coach tasked with the responsibility of defending the Trail Blazers, what's your strategy? Do you double-team LaMarcus Aldridge and leave an array of lethal three-point shooters? Or do you defend the arc at all costs, leaving just one defender alone on Aldridge down low?
Deckard: I employ a similar strategy against Aldridge that the Blazers employed against Dwight Howard in the last Houston game. They knew Howard would kill them if they left Lopez in single coverage. They opted to go that route anyway, figuring one player going ham was far more palatable than getting served an all-you-can eat buffet from multiple directions.
If I’m Portland’s opponent I make the same decision. I know Aldridge will drop 20+ on me. That won’t kill me. Eating up turf three points at a time will. Even if I double-team Aldridge I’m only going to bother him moderately at the cost of leaving Wesley Matthews, Nicolas Batum, etc all wide open. I don’t take away enough to justify the price. If I single-cover LaMarcus he’s probably going to score 6-8 more points. But if I can keep a man close to Matthews and Batum, forcing them to choose between contested threes and dribble-drives, I can chip way more than 6-8 points off of their scoring averages and come out ahead.
The only exception I’d make is if I had fairly long, fairly fleet defenders who could cover the weak-side in a three-man zone. If I can space three defenders well enough to cut off the initial shot once the ball gets reversed, the extra guy watching Aldridge should be able to recover by the time the next pass gets made.
Defending the Blazers shouldn’t be as much of a headache as it is in theory. Some teams aren’t disciplined enough to keep to the correct coverage and other teams seem to stick to their all-purpose defensive strategy even when it doesn’t make as much sense against Portland as it does against your average team. One great thing about the 2013-14 Blazers…sooner or later they make opponents pay for that kind of mistake.
5. Anthony Davis, Marc Gasol, and Andre Iguodala are all sidelined with injuries right now and it's no coincidence that their respective teams are struggling a big. Which player's return will have the biggest impact?
Deckard: This is the great thing about the West this year so far. Only one of those three teams is below .500 as I write. That’s Memphis and they’re only a single game under. But I’m going to say Gasol because the Warriors can cover Iggy’s absence better than the other two teams can do without a center and because New Orleans is kind of a crap shoot even with Davis.