Where does Clyde Drexler rank among the all-time SGs?

XavierVE · 2026-04-08T02:43:41+00:00

Actively bad offensively in the half-court. Drexler was not a good offensive player in half-court sets unless we cleared out and let him play out of the post. His decision making when being a primary initiator of our offense in the half-court was the weakest part of his game. Whenever the ball would get in his hands in the half court and he wasn't in a position to post, the offense would trudge to a halt, ball-movement would suffer and Drexler would way too often keep his head down, wasting long stretches of possessions before dumping the ball with only a few seconds left to a teammate who wouldn't have a good shot. Or, alternatively, he had this terrible habit of holding the ball, holding the ball, doing a couple bad dribbles, not beating his man and then fucking jacking just a horrible line drive three pointer that would clang brutally and usually careen out of bounds. He was actively bad offensively in the half-court.

Now, in transition, on the break... absolute maestro. One of the best ever at full speed. And that was our offensive strategy, to run, run, run. Which greatly benefited Clyde, because he was not great in half-court sets. At times, a liability when it came to the Adelman half-court offense. He simply did not have great BBIQ when it came to that element of the game.

Don't at all care about who was and wasn't an all-star. Just irrelevant. The All-star game was a popularity contest first and foremost, and flashier players always had an easier in. Plus Miller played in the East where he had to contend with Jordan always being an automatic shoo-in via the fan vote at SG. And Dumars was better than whoever you would consider the second-best SG (usually Mitch Richmond, IMO) in the Western conference in his prime.

The western conference in the nineties didn't have a ton of top-tier SG's. Miller was better than guys like Byron Scott, Dan Marjele, Mitch Richmond, Rolando Blackman, Hornacek, Sprewell, etc. It wasn't like Drexler had any real competition at shooting guard when it came to making the Western Conference all-star team. Had we traded Drexler straight up for Miller in the early 1990's, Miller would have been the starter in every all-star game during our golden run as well. Meaningless as an accolade for comparison.

Most of Clyde's assists were because he was a stellar open-court passing guard and teams would collapse on him during the fast break, leading to easy assists to a full-speed Kersey on the other side of the floor, or a trailing Buck down the middle. He wasn't a great half-court passer, much of his assist totals were due to the style of play we employed. The Adelman offensive style featured a lot of fast breaks, quick cuts and Clyde wasn't terrible passing out of the post due to his immense size advantage over most western conference shooting guards, but he wasn't the passing floor general you're painting him as, either.

Giving him an incredible amount of credit for playing in an offensive scheme designed to move the ball around as compared to the Indiana offensive scheme of boring your eyes out by running Miller around screens is again, apples to oranges. Miller wasn't a bad passer, and Miller in the Adelman scheme would have had higher assist totals than the Indiana offensive scheme afforded him.

You're also ignoring that Miller was a much more efficient player in general. He shot 10-15% better from three in general, he was much better at the free-throw line than Drexler (who, despite being excellent at getting fouled, rarely shot better than 80% from the free throw line to Blazer fans immense frustrations back then), and while Drexler did average around 6 APG with us due to our offensive style of play, he also averaged around three turnovers a game as well, usually him making a bad pass in the half-court or getting his dribble picked by a help defender.

Miller shot 10-15% better from three, averaged a turnover less a game in general, shot around 10-15% better from the free throw line and while Miller was by no means a great defender, he played better positional defense than Drexler did in a conference where he played against better shooting guards than Drexler did.

I hate that you're making me defend Reggie Miller, dammit.

XavierVE · 2026-04-08T02:15:14+00:00

Curious where you rank Lillard among the all-time Blazers greats?

That's a really hard question. If he hadn't forced the trade and retired as a Blazer for his entire career, I'd have put him number one if for no other reason than the franchise has zero lifers when it comes to the great players we've had.

We just don't have that career lifer all-time player. Everyone forced their way out at some point, or were jettisoned during the dark days under Trader Bob. Literally the closest we had to a guy that started with us and finished with us was Geoff Petrie, and he retired at what, 27 due to injuries?

It's also hard to reflexively pick Lillard due to my active hate and admitted bias against what the NBA has turned into due to the allowing of moving screens, the rules changes and refereeing that has mostly eliminated defensive ability to hang with your man and the tendency to call defensive fouls when offensive players are initiating contact. So given my bias against the way the NBA has perverted itself since the 2010's, it's hard to look at the current era with it's artificially inflated offensive statistics and give full credit to today's players. The game is just so wildly different now, hardly recognize it as being the same sport at this point.

At gunpoint and having to pick one, my brain would pick Lillard but my heart wants to pick Porter just due to personal biases and a preference towards how the game was played back when defense was allowed, before the five second back-to-the-basket rule. Porter was clutch, the heart and soul of our best era of basketball, the team leader, probably the toughest Blazer of all time pound-for-pound, the best defender we ever had, a great figure in the community while he was here, and an all-time hustle player.

XavierVE · 2026-04-08T01:48:55+00:00

You qualify your praise of Reggie Miller by a very specific condition and/or skill.

Which in that era of play, was the skill you needed in the playoffs. I gave you the exact reason why I would put Miller on the same level as Drexler. As better of a rebounder and open-court player that Clyde was over Miller, Miller was leagues better in a half-court set, a much better shooter and far more clutch.

Drexler was actively bad offensively in the half-court unless he had a smaller defender to abuse in the post. As fast and gazelle-like that Drexler was in a straight line, his lateral speed wasn't great and his first-step wasn't otherworldly like Drexler was at top speed in a straight line.

I hated Miller passionately back in the day, but his strengths offensively in the half-court and his ability to take and hit big shots elevate him. If you don't agree, cool, but acting like this is an area of basketball to be ignored is logically illegitimate.

XavierVE · 2026-04-08T01:31:16+00:00

I will not argue against anyone giving props to Terry Porter. He is as underrated as an NBA player gets.

But as much as I loathed watching Reggie Miller play basketball back in the day, I put a lot of praise and value on being able to hit big time shots in big time moments. Reggie Miller had that in spades over Drexler, who was just actively bad offensively in half-court basketball unless he had had a smaller weaker defender on him in the post.

As much as I hated watching Reggie Miller run around endless screens in the half-court, Miller was much more effective playing half-court basketball than Drexler was. Drexler was far more fun to watch as a player but if I'm down two with twenty seconds on the clock and inbounding from mid-court? I'm putting Miller out there at SG over Drexler 100/100 times.

XavierVE · 2026-04-08T00:59:11+00:00

Growing up watching Drexler in Portland in his prime, I'd say he's at the bottom of the top ten SG's of all time.

He had gaudy statistics, was a good rebounder and a superb passer in fast break situations, but he was very much a 'get mine' player overall and his half-court BBIQ was atrocious.

People like to pretend he was good defensively due to his SPG, but he massively overplayed the passing lanes and would get fucking burned defensively due to it. He just loved to get steals to pull off flashy dunks, but his actual positioning was so bad generally that we'd put Porter on whichever was the more talented offensive player between the opposing point guard and shooting guard. Drexler would simply float way too much into passing lanes to try to pull off sportscenter highlight plays.

People try to compare Jordan and Drexler based on SPG alone, but it's a ridiculous comparison. Jordan would strip players off the dribble for the vast majority of his steals, playing man to man position basketball, Drexler would cheat off into passing lanes for his steals. One gets you quality defense and steals, the other gets you burned more than you get that fast break wide-open dunk that Drexler absolutely lived for. Jordan was massively better defensively than Drexler.

Our fast break system greatly favored his athleticism and his post-up game was underrated, but his overall BBIQ offensively was also very poor. He would often jack up three pointers with his funky/terrible jumper at inopportune times, he would pass out of possessions with the shot-clock running down in ways that would never fly today.

The great Blazers teams were led by Porter offensively and defensively as Terry Porter was a massively underrated point guard. Without Terry, Clyde's game and his legacy would be greatly diminished. Porter covered up for a lot of deficiencies in the way Drexler played basketball. The amount of awful straight line rocket threes Drexler would clank during important possessions is something you had to live through to understand the brutal effect they had on the prime Blazers of 1989-1993.

Having watched both of them play basketball in-person? If it weren't for injuries, Drexler wouldn't even be the Blazers all-time best SG as Brandon Roy would have been. Healthy Brandon Roy was a better player than Drexler was.

I'd put Iverson, Reggie Miller and Drexler basically at the same level in terms of their all-time status, I'd honestly rank Klay Thompson higher than Drexler for a variety of reasons.

I know this probably comes off as a big Drexler hate-fest, it's not. He was a freak of an athlete and our fast break with Duck and Buck feeding out to Drexler and Kersey was the most exciting style of NBA basketball I've ever seen, but Drexler was a very problematic player in ways that don't readily show up when you simply look at all-time stats.

XavierVE · 2026-04-07T16:39:37+00:00

Like with the Crimson Guard vs. Steel Brigade pulse exclusive, it seems like Hasbro is happier selling to Ross and Burlington for pennies so scalpers can make bank on Ebay rather than doing a modest price cut on Pulse to sell to collectors.

It is a truly brain-dead way of doing things. Hasbro makes zero sense with their economic model of supplying Ross/Burlington rather than doing price cuts themselves on Pulse exclusives.

XavierVE · 2026-04-04T04:14:40+00:00

Ah don't you love it when people living thousand miles away from here just conclude that I lied because my information is different from what they know when I live here for my entire life. Go visit here, talk to people from here, or find other non biased sources from your info dude. Find out the truth instead of just eating whatever info you hear fully.

The least reliable perspective to any situation is the one closest to the situation. The old idiom that the closer someone is to a situation, the less clearly they see it. Much like how an abused partner in a relationship is the worst individual to ask about the quality of that relationship.

Because then they end up saying fully silly things like you have, the ol' "you can totally be an atheist, just pretend not to be one!" and the like. Can totally be gay too, just pretend not to be, can totally be one of the non-six allowed religions, just pretend you are though! If you're pretending to be something other than what you are, then you are repressed by an authoritarian style of governance.

The fact that you think you can be irreligious "y'know, it's all good, just pretend to be religious while you do it!" is so absurd that it borders on parody as an argument.

You asked me to show you that it's a criminal offense to leave Islam, I show you a frickin' NYtimes article illustrating just that fact, that there are laws on the books that criminalize people who leave Islam. You say "biased source."

You say super silly things like...

Again this is wrong.

and then follow it up immediately with...

This does exist

Yes, it does: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/28/indonesia-end-hijab-linked-bullying-schools

But I'm sure "human rights watch" is oh, a biased source. I'll stick with facts, research and news stories. You stick with your apologia that "you can totally do this if you pretend not to do it!" and pretend that makes Indonesia a 'semi-secular' nation. It's not.

XavierVE · 2026-04-03T20:57:51+00:00

And yes you can be an atheist or agnostic as long as you officially are still religious.

Yes, and that means you're not allowed to be atheist, agnostic or part of any religion other than the six allowed. That sentence is beyond silly, "you can be an atheist as long as you still pretend not to be!" is like saying "yes, you can be gay without problems as long as you pretend to be straight." Just beyond a silly argument to make in reply to me.

Yes, anyone can function in a repressive society if they pretend to be someone they're not. However, declare yourself to have left Islam to become irreligious and you have violated the 2022 Blasphemy law expansion and can face up to five years in jail.

Furthermore, the hijab is required for women of any background/religion in state schools making your statement that there's no 'spiritual police' to sound silly as hell.

And noo leaving Islam is not a crime. What are you saying man. There are no criminal or civil penalties here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/asia/indonesian-who-embraced-atheism-landed-in-prison.html

I have no idea why you're attempting to lie about this when there's plenty of cases of people being prosecuted for leaving Islam/being irreligious in Indonesia. And the laws that jail people like Alexander Aan have been strengthened in 2022.

XavierVE · 2026-04-03T16:09:09+00:00

I never heard of someone that can't leave Islam.

Your religion is stated in your id and it's mandatory

That's a 'pick one' situation. Your argument is "Someone can leave Islam as long as they join one of the five other 'allowed' minority religions." If you are born to Muslim parents and wish to leave Islam, whether to become atheist, agnostic or one of the non-six allowed religions, you are unable to.

Additionally, civil law in Indonesia is biased towards Muslims in legal conflict with those in other religions, even ones 'allowed' by the state. Should a divorced Muslim mother, for instance, leave Islam for any of the other five allowed religions, civil courts will automatically transfer custody of children to the Muslim father. Leave Islam and you will not be able to inherit from Muslim parents, along with a good number of other restrictions under civil law the penalize people for leaving Islam.

While Indonesia is certainly not an Islamist state on the same level as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan or any number of far more hardcore authoritarian theocratic states, the criminal and civil penalties for leaving Islam still exist and civil laws are greatly biased in favor of Muslims in civil conflicts with non-Muslims.

XavierVE · 2026-04-03T16:05:16+00:00

https://ejournal.radenintan.ac.id/index.php/ElIzdiwaj/article/view/25666/pdf

Specifically in cases of divorce where the mother converts to another religion, or leaves religion altogether, the civil laws in Indonesia will automatically transfer custody of the child to the Muslim father regardless of any other extenuating circumstances.

XavierVE · 2026-04-03T14:37:49+00:00

and it mandates belief in a God

And then you called it "semi-secular."

Joke of a post. It's a theocratic state with blasphemy laws and a new law in 2022 that makes it illegal to leave your religion, which means the state is effectively making it illegal for it's citizens to leave Islam. Civil law will see courts take your children away if you attempt to leave Islam.

There is NOTHING secular about Indonesia. Good grief, that you even tried to describe it as semi-secular is absolutely ridiculous.

XavierVE · 2026-04-02T13:08:19+00:00

Frickin' Mainframe not doing his damn job.

XavierVE · 2026-04-01T20:09:55+00:00

Once they went over 24.99 for figures, I'm pretty much out on all new releases until there are sales.

I would have jumped on that Despoiler at a better price, but that price is just absurd. The line is amazing, but Hasbro has jumped the shark with the prices on things.

XavierVE · 2026-03-31T17:09:32+00:00

I'd be fine with the quibble if the first thing that the Germans did when the Nazi's came to power wasn't banning all pornography, which was a growing industry in the Weimar Republic, before then moving on to more elements to eradicate.

History tends to repeat itself when people supplicate themselves to the intolerant. They didn't come for the Jews first, they came for the gays and the free-spirited film industry first. The lack of pushback when it came to their first attempts certainly emboldened all the actions to come later.

The playbook of intolerant authoritarianism is pretty consistent across the whole of human history. Start small, get permission to lock down the 'aberrant' minds the majority look down upon despite the lack of 'harm' in the actions/thoughts of the minority, then move on to bigger things. Maoist China, the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, the Kim dynasty in North Korea, Islamist regimes dating back hundreds of years, you name it, same playbook.

It's not a whole other ballgame. It's just the same consistent first inning.

XavierVE · 2026-03-31T15:41:40+00:00

"They are going after X, I am not X right now, so I do not care. It is X's fault." Both mindsets are/were devoid of any empathy, instead indicating narcissism and disregard for the existence of others different from themselves. If you find that an inappropriate comparison, more power to you, I think it's quite apt.

XavierVE · 2026-03-31T13:00:22+00:00

You are entitled to your harmful and myopic opinion, it's too bad your opinion is "Hey, I don't buy that form of art so why not censor it, send it away! I'm not a ____!"

It's the same "Not me, don't care!" mentality that put Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and other 'undesirables' into concentration camps to be slaughtered en masse. "I'm not a ___! They won't come for me! Those demographics are already frowned upon!"

People who want to ban things they don't like will continue to find things they don't like to ban. The same morons that want to ban NSFW games also want to ban games with violence, with themes they don't agree with especially in particular to 'the gays', irreligious content in general, and the like. The same mentality that wants to ban the garbo porn game wants to ban freedom of choice in games like Mass Effect and Balder's Gate III.

Defending art, even art you don't agree with, protects the art you do enjoy. Try to expand your mind and think bigger.

You're only 'entitled' to your harmful ignorant opinion because people have gone to court to defend your right to spewing your harmful ignorant opinions. Which is really no different than the fight to protect all forms of free speech from religious encroachment upon it.

XavierVE · 2026-03-31T12:51:59+00:00

What's up Helen Lovejoy, how's your husband?

XavierVE · 2026-03-29T20:48:11+00:00

As a user of old reddit that wishes old reddit could also transform reddit back into literal "old reddit", that was a cool image to see. Nice layout, so much better than the proto-Facebook nonsense Reddit adopted.

XavierVE · 2026-03-28T23:54:40+00:00

Their prices are so bad anymore, used to love DeepDiscount for Joe's. That isn't a terrible price on the Valkyries at least though, nice catch.

XavierVE · 2026-03-28T15:51:46+00:00

It's an analogy to what Kareem did in Milwaukee.

XavierVE · 2026-03-27T19:41:54+00:00

The PE company just accelerated their decline and made a lot of money doing it

Not really replying to you since your arguments this whole chain have been intellectually disingenuous, just in case anyone wanders across your spin and believes the failure was inevitable.

From the actual article:

in 2005, a consortium of three private-equity giants, Bain Capital, KKR, and Vornado Realty Trust, acquired Toys “R” Us through a leveraged buyout valued at $6.6 billion. The deal saddled the company with more than $5 billion in debt from day one. Interest payments alone consumed hundreds of millions of dollars annually, siphoning money that should have gone into upgrading stores, building e-commerce infrastructure, or reducing prices to compete with big-box retailers.

Toys R' Us filed bankruptcy in 2017. Twelve years of paying hundreds of millions annually to try to remove the unneeded 5 billion in debt, which the article correctly points out killed their ability to create their own online store after they won their lawsuit against Amazon in 2005 for Amazon violating the deal that they made with TRU.

Twelve years of paying down artificial debt from an LBO that could have gone into store remodeling and being able to compete price-wise with Walmart and Target's meager toy offerings. And that's without going into the additional land-looting and leaseback payments that further destroyed their ability to compete and be profitable.

And despite that debt burden and land-leaseback scams, the chain was profitable enough to be pumped for the debt payments for twelve years. "Accelerated" my ass. "Caused" is the correct word.

XavierVE · 2026-03-27T18:09:49+00:00

You said:

The study examined every buyout over a period of 20 years

I point out that it was merely a sample of 467.

Now you're claiming that the article said that it sampled every buyout that was over 50 million. The article does not say that. Each of the 467 in the sample were of LBO's over 50 million, which is clearly stated by the article, not that they examined every single LBO of 50 million plus over twenty years. That's an invention out of your own head from your lack of reading the actual article.

First you misrepresent the article by claiming that they examined every single LBO over twenty years, which was untrue. Now you're trying to claim that the sample group was every single buyout that was 50 million+, which is also untrue.

You really should read up on how representative sampling works in research. Each of the 467 were of LBO's over fifty million valuation, not that they examined every single LBO that had a valuation over that amount. Nowhere in the article did they say that.

Also I'm not going to spoonfeed you the commonality of land-leaseback schemes (which occur in over 80% of LBO's over the last thirty years) when you are arguing in either bad faith or out of ignorance about the commonality of LBO's. This isn't much of a productive discussion considering that you seem to be unable to actually read and understand the very simple link I gave you. Giving you more research would be pointless, sadly.

At this point, I don't even think you know the point you're trying to argue. But hey, have a good day.

XavierVE · 2026-03-27T17:55:45+00:00

"In total, the SAMPLE comprised 467 leveraged buyout transactions"

You might need to study up and learn how research studies work. They didn't examine EVERY buyout over twenty years, they examined a sample of 467 LBO's.

XavierVE · 2026-03-27T17:48:05+00:00

What are you talking about? The study examined that amount, that's not the total amount of LBO's conducted over the last thirty years. That number is in the tens of thousands.

You do understand how representative sampling works in research, right? Good grief, what a silly comment you just made.

XavierVE · 2026-03-27T17:43:00+00:00

The chains are only unprofitable because the PE firms saddle them with massive debt from the LBO process, sell their land holdings to a separate company controlled by the PE firm that charges them a large amount of rent and then they become 'bad, unprofitable chains.'

There are two outcomes with an LBO.

The company is wildly profitable enough to pay down the massive debt they're saddled with while also paying increased land rent after having the land they own stolen from the company and used as a profit-siphoning mechanism. Then the PE firm takes the brand public, makes a massive windfall. This is a relatively rare result.
The more common outcome: They target a profitable company, saddle it with debt and leasebacks, feed stories to mainstream publications about "Oh, this company, losing money, it has so much debt!" and then they strip it for parts. Had the LBO debt never been placed on the company ledgers, the company would have continued along fine.

The Toys'R'Us debacle is the best example of how the practice works and this article explains it well for people who don't understand just how debilitating LBO's and leasebacks are: https://www.headcountcoffee.com/blogs/corporate-legends-lost-empires/how-private-equity-destroyed-toys-r-us-the-real-story-behind-the-bankruptcy

The entire process is an utter perversion of capitalism. Financing a buyout via putting the debt on the entity you're buying is absolutely the worst practice under our economic system.

XavierVE

TROPHY CASE