Catching up on some Portland Trail Blazers links that have been floating around the web the past few days ...
? Ric Bucher of CSN (formerly of ESPN) polled a half-dozen NBA assistant coaches and scouts on the early favorite for Rookie of the Year, with Damian Lillard the early favorite:
?Poise and pace,? said one Eastern Conference assistant coach when asked what impressed him most about Lillard. ?He does not get too rattled when things are going bad and when they are good he appears to keep the same focus. He shoots it well and makes good passes, but the poise and pace, while obscure, are more important to his success. He is not afraid of the big moment, either. Which is big.?(Hat tip to Ben at Blazersedge for that link.)
? CSNNW.com'w Dwight Jaynes on Nicolas Batum's 5x5 game Sunday:
All in all, it was an incredible performance and something, even after decades of covering the league, I'd never seen before. I would have expected Clyde Drexler would have accomplished this at some point but he never did. I think it's possible that Bill Walton actually did do it, but blocks and steals weren't official NBA stats prior to 1972. Batum is a rare player who could have been even further ahead of his developmental curve had he been given the opportunity to play more in previous seasons. It's hard to imagine that just last season he started only 34 of the 59 games he played in and averaged just 30.4 minutes per game.? This one slipped past me last week, but Kerry Eggers of the Portland Tribune has a good piece on J.J. Hickson:
James Edward Hickson grew up in a single-parent family, the son of Kenna Myers, who died of liver failure when he was 10. His grandmother, Marie Myers, took over raising the child from there. Money wasn?t plentiful, but they made do.? Candice Buckner of the Columbian with one of the quotes of the year from Blazers rookie Will Barton:?She worked a couple of jobs to make sure we had the bills paid and I had clothes on my back,? he says.
Hickson gained a spirit of independence from his mother, his grandmother and others in his life during those years.
?The people who raised me, the people I grew up around, they wouldn?t let me fail,? he says. ?They wouldn?t let themselves fail. I was a sponge. I soaked up everything people around me did.?
"Yeah, he's the Rookie of the Year," fellow first-year player and teammate Will Barton said about Lillard. "Except when I look into the mirror."? Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com with LaMarcus Aldridge's thoughts on LaMarcus Aldridge's untouchability:
Being the realist that Aldridge considers himself, he never buys into being labeled ?untouchable.? ?Nobody is safe. Nobody,? Aldridge said adamantly. ?You can never get too comfortable in this league. It's a business. I don't look at myself and think I can't be touched. I'm just being real. All I can do is go out there and play basketball to the best of my ability.?? As the calendar year winds down, Mike Acker of Rip City Project lists the biggest moments of 2012 for the Blazers:
With their sixth pick, the Blazers selected a red-shirt junior from Weber State University. Although nobody knew too much about Damian Lillard or where exactly Weber State was, he led the nation in scoring for part of his final college season, was Big Sky Player of the year, and in three seasons of play finished as the number two scoring in Wildcats history. Lillard was projected to land in the lottery, but a string of outstanding workouts, including one in Portland, elevated his draft stock. The Blazers might have gambled on draft night, leaving Harrison Barnes, Andre Drummond, and Austin Rivers on the board, but at this point in the 2012-13 season every team short of the Hornets that drafted before Portland probably wishes they?d taken Lillard instead of the guy they chose.
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