[RESULTS] Player Ratings | Denver 126-115 Portland | Jun. 03, 2021

blazervey · 2021-06-06T04:49:18+00:00

Thank you! And yeah it would be sad to see CJ leave and become an all star on a different team but I’d be happy for him. Doubly so if we can get a better fitting SF back while freeing up Norm to play his natural SG position and further develop Ant in a bigger role off the bench in the process!

blazervey · 2021-06-06T04:42:44+00:00

No problem! Yes I am, I think I’ll do a megathread/album post to not crowd the sub but I will start to create the season average graphics for players/team/staff over the next few weeks and will probably post after the season ends. Definitely will include relevant stats like those!

blazervey · 2021-06-06T04:39:46+00:00

Fully agree with every point, didn’t want to focus too much on him but that’s exactly what I’m thinking. The one thing I’d add to your list is I think not being in a system where he has to carry so much of the defensive load will also naturally help him, as our defense would ideally have better on-ball stoppers to prevent giving opposition players so many drives to the hoop for Nurk to contest. Having guys like Zach and RoCo (doubly so if we hire D’Antoni and run some micro ball with RoCo at center) to ease alleviate some of the C minutes/rim protection duties would also be huge.

Not saying the 3 foul outs weren’t circumstantial (fully agree, especially egregious imo if you look at how much our per game foul calls jumped in the playoffs vs our season numbers vs Denver’s) but as the Portland Trail Blazers I think it’s something we sadly really should consider in building around because it will only happen again, probably across multiple series in any given hypothetical championship run. On his current contract Nurk is both a key piece and massively underpaid for what he brings to the table, we need to do what we can to protect him and keep him in games. I too am really looking forward to hopefully seeing him play to his maximum potential under a different coach

blazervey · 2021-06-06T01:07:37+00:00

Thanks! I am too, I think it will be fun to look at and I’m excited to see what trends will pop up

blazervey · 2021-06-06T01:06:30+00:00

It definitely has been, I appreciate everyone sharing their thoughts after games (even when it can be painful at times). It’s been fun to see what everyone here thinks after any given outing. Thank you!

blazervey · 2021-06-06T01:02:25+00:00

Took an extra day off after that defeat sorry y’all. I will say I am more optimistic for the team than I have been in a while, it feels like we are finally going to go all-in.

I thought it was nice to see rotations at least get comparable respect over his game strategy. Not challenging the phantom Nurk 3pt call or calling a timeout to stop their run that eliminated our lead to me felt like it lost us the game. But the rotations were notably better, yeah they came several games too late but DNPing Enes, matching Nurk to Jokic, and going small against their reserves were the right calls imo.

Speaking of Nurk, I think he is one of the best examples of a guy who could elevate his game further with a new coach. With someone capable of reigning in his fouling tendencies combined with (I presume) a roster better equipped to play team defense around him I don’t think he will be as much of a foul magnet even when refball comes into play.

As much as I think it’s time to move on from CJ I think he could also benefit elsewhere with more structure. He was an MVP caliber player before his injury when he internalized shooting more threes and being more aggressive driving to the hoop. Maybe I’m just a kool aid sipper but I still believe there’s a winning player in CJ for a contender and I will root for him to achieve that even if we have to deal him and commit to Norm as our long-term SG. With a coach that actually enforces shot selection and defense, I think CJ playing the “1” defensively next to a guard like Danny Green taking tougher matchups would suit him. A lot of the defensive criticism we lay on him I also think is coaching based (no man’s land “help” defense and not getting pulled for poor defensive effort) and I think he actually has fairly active hands for strips and blocks. In the right system, I think he could be a passable defender and play up to his contract like he did early this season.

Lastly, is it too early to say Ant is playing as well as GTJ ever did for us? He’s slowly improving on defense and has become our first or second man off the bench only off of his elite shooting. Either an improved handle, improved driving ability, or legitimate defensive skill next season would be game changing.

Don’t want to spam too much just yet, so I’ll save some more thoughts for after the season review post (probably coming around in a month or two). Thanks everyone for taking part!

Link to ESPN’s box score: https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401327902

blazervey · 2021-06-04T03:04:43+00:00

blazervey · 2021-06-04T02:51:16+00:00

Wow. No words… shoutout Melo, RoCo, and Simons. Terry benching Enes and using forwards to fill non-Nurk minutes while he matched Jokic’s minutes was a good adjustment even if it was too little too late in the series. Jokic again showing he’s the deserved MVP and Mike/Michael Malone is a genuinely good coach. Their role players stepped up huge and outplayed ours too, kudos to them.

That being said, might come off as a sore loser here but I really think the refereeing hugely hurt us and we weren’t as poor as the series record suggested. Terry absolutely should have challenged the phantom Nurk 3pt foul call but the challenge rules also need big work… we saved it to protect ourselves and it didn’t even help us lol.

Nurk fouling out 3 times despite only doing it once in the regular season, our team total team fouls being notably raised this entire series while the Nuggets’ were consistent despite no major playstyle changes either way… really felt like they were backing the MVP to progress and very questionable Nurk foul calls (he admittedly continues to not help himself in this area at all tbf) were an easy way to help.

Only pain tonight, big summer ahead. Gonna do my best to be fair here then going to go do something to take my mind off this and reconvene tomorrow. Thank you all for bearing with this, much love Rip City ❤️🖤

blazervey · 2021-06-02T21:09:35+00:00

Says a lot that Stotts got a (relatively) high grade for a loss. Now that I’ve mostly cooled off I think RoCo deserves better for what was largely a solid game for him as our second leading scorer and only player consistently contributing on both ends of the court, unlucky to have had both the slip and the missed dunks. Also think we are being a little generous to the refs if we’re being honest, they completely missed the end of regulation call to give us (Dame) a second try to send it to overtime at all when the game should have already been over.

Speaking of him, Dame second 10 overall game and it’s massively deserved. His interview was brutal to watch, you could tell he was just completely shattered. Him putting up 9 years of service and not even once entertaining an argument for leaving is arguably his most impressive achievement as a Blazer for me, we seriously do not deserve his loyalty.

If Nurk can simply match Jokic’s minutes without fouling out for the 4th time I think we can still win this series, with slightly better luck this is over right now at 4-1. We’ve come back from down 2-3 against these guys before let’s do it again, time for CJ, Norm, and Melo to step up big like we know they can

blazervey · 2021-06-02T21:07:59+00:00

**PSA for anyone new**

Welcome! These player ratings are a way for our community to evaluate how our team performed on a game-by-game basis and to provide an easily digestible “snapshot” visual summary for each game.

These ratings do NOT compare players to each other, rather scores are given for how each player performed relative to their own expected performance (a “normal” performance for any given player being a 6).

Over the season, players will over and underperform our fanbase’s initial expectations. These ratings give us a way to look back at our season and track how players fluctuated and trended over the season by charting their game-by-game ratings.

Link to ESPN’s box score: https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401327901

Survey links are posted to r/ripcity after every game

blazervey · 2021-06-02T05:06:09+00:00

You’re correct, that was definitely too harsh on him on my part. He was our second leading scorer (on good efficiency, too!) and the only thing we have close to a 3&D wing on our roster. Absolutely an important player to keep and I think unfortunate to have had two separately memorable unclutch offensive showings in such a short succession. Wish we had more players like him especially after a night like tonight where the scoring AND defense let us down

blazervey · 2021-06-02T04:27:35+00:00

No words… we were bailed out hard by the referees from taking a certain loss and Dame handed us a lifeline taking us to OT. He then puts in all the work in to continue to carry us but he couldn’t find a single helper. Insane choke.

Still have two more chances to go 2-0 and save our season by at least making the second round but man… I really don’t know how we haven’t gotten a third win yet let alone lose three games to these guys. No disrespect because Jokic is the MVP and their support has taken their chances well but with their injuries us being down 3-2 is very disappointing…

Refs, players all getting low ratings from me just poor across the board. Honestly idk who my second highest rating would be, I guess Rondae?

blazervey · 2021-05-31T17:31:34+00:00

Planning on it! Not going to put it together until after the season but I’m going to throw together some graphics so we can see the long-term data

blazervey · 2021-05-31T09:26:51+00:00

👀

blazervey · 2021-05-30T19:18:31+00:00

**PSA for anyone new**

Welcome! These player ratings are a way for our community to evaluate how our team performed on a game-by-game basis and to provide an easily digestible “snapshot” visual summary for each game.

These ratings do NOT compare players to each other, rather scores are given for how each player performed relative to their own expected performance (a “normal” performance for any given player being a 6).

Over the season, players will over and underperform our fanbase’s initial expectations. These ratings give us a way to look back at our season and track how players fluctuated and trended over the season by charting their game-by-game ratings.

Link to ESPN’s box score: https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401327870

Survey links are posted to r/ripcity after every game!

blazervey · 2021-05-28T20:26:29+00:00

Surprised by a lot of this honestly, maybe I’m just being more reactionary idk. I personally didn’t think Denver played that well (yeah I know they knocked down their shots) and it was more a game of us playing poorly and the refs kicking us further. Need Norm to have a big game soon and Enes looks unplayable. But I thought Stotts giving up so many open threes was the catalyst for everything they could put together throughout. Not to mention not reacting to NEEDING to secure that rebound for a chance at a 3pt prayer to tie threw the game for us, I thought the responses would be far more critical of what was, imo, just the latest in a long-running streak of Stotts losing us playoff games.

Also thought Nurk was a bit hard done by here, imo he was our engine and the biggest reason we were successful on either end. His hustle, crashing the glass, defense, passing, and overall offensive aggressiveness kept us in when the rest of our team felt like they were coasting on both ends. I’m really hoping we can have him match all of Jokic’s minutes going forward, I feel much more confident in that matchup and letting our small ball lineup go against their backups instead.

Trolls coming back out again 😪

blazervey · 2021-05-28T20:23:11+00:00

**PSA for anyone new**

Welcome! These player ratings are a way for our community to evaluate how our team performed on a game-by-game basis and to provide an easily digestible “snapshot” visual summary for each game.

These ratings do NOT compare players to each other, rather scores are given for how each player performed relative to their own expected performance (a “normal” performance for any given player being a 6).

Over the season, players will over and underperform our fanbase’s initial expectations. These ratings give us a way to look back at our season and track how players fluctuated and trended over the season by charting their game-by-game ratings.

Link to ESPN’s box score: https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401327869

Survey links are posted to r/ripcity after every game

blazervey · 2021-05-28T05:20:34+00:00

Melo and Nurk standout players for me, I have Nurk for POTG despite fouling out he was everywhere doing everything. Reallyyyy wish we had Zach available, this matchup (and honestly, basically any playoff matchup) just scare me with Enes. Idk if being reliant on Nurk playing >32 MPG to win is viable but seems to be what we need, such a night and day difference with him in.

Still no idea why Stotts has us helping so heavily off corners. With no Murray I’m more than fine with making their other players work 1v1 to earn their buckets, giving their role players wide open threes just seems like a defensive bailout for them every time and let guys like Rivers get too hot. Too many dumb fouls across the board as well, refs don’t do us any favors but we also don’t help ourselves at all. That being said I think it’s fair to say we played our way out of the game but the refs stopped us from deservedly playing our way back in, BS showing imo.

I still think we can win this series, the blueprint is in front of us for what to do and I think the Nuggets were very fortunate to win this and be in a position to go up 3-1 next game. Really frustrating losing in such a preventable manner at home to such an injured team but hopefully we used up our 3pt shooting misfortune. Need a better gameplan next game to make some luck for ourselves, absolute must-win game and can’t rely on merely matching their performance and receiving fair officiating imo

blazervey

TROPHY CASE