Posts tagged ‘damian lillard’

[Editor's note: This is Mohamed Abdihakim's debut for TAI. Mohamed blogs at TheHoopDoctors.com and is an editor at Hoops-Nation.com. He is currently working toward a multimedia journalism degree from Florida Atlantic University. —Kyle W.]

82games.com has made available a certain simplified metric.

Belying otherwise extensive research, “Simple Rating” (SR) provides a relatively digestible look into a player’s value on the court versus their positional counterpart. The values used in this rating are Production—”a variant of John Hollinger’s PER”—and a plus/minus unit.

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Extra! Extra! The Washington Wizards are winless no more.

“I told them we just broke through the ice,” Randy Wittman told the press after the game. “I lived in Minnesota for 15, 17 years—that ice was four or five feet deep, but it’s broken through now. This is obviously a good win for us.”

It was a good win. But it’s their only win. The first. A step in the right direction. Had the Wizards lost to the Blazers, they would have been the 10th team in NBA history to have started a season 0-13. “We don’t want to go down in history as one of the worst teams ever,” said Chris Singleton in the winning locker room. The Wiz avoided that peculiar honor … for now.

What did the Portland Trail Blazers have to say about it? Glad you asked.

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Before tonight’s game, TAI spoke with Portland Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts about how Nene, who is playing tonight, affects his game plan; about not wanting to be the first to lose to the winless Wizards; and about what positives he does see out of Washington.

Stotts: “They know their record. I think every NBA player has a lot of pride, and everybody in our locker room has a lot of pride. None of them want to be part of the team that gives the Wizards their first win, and, at the base of it, I think that’s what you try to instill or appeal to is their pride, and go out and play as hard as you can.”

TAI also briefly spoke with Wizards point guard Shaun Livingston, who is also a go tonight against Portland, about facing heralded Blazers rookie Damian Lillard.

Here to provide the DC Council Opening Statements for Washington’s 13th game of the season against the Portland Trailblazers in D.C. are TAI’s Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It) and guest Sean Highkin (@shighkinNBA), who writes about the Blazers for the ESPN TrueHoop blog Portland Roundball Society, as well as Hardwood Paroxysm.

Wizards Starters (0-12):

A.J. Price, Bradley Beal, Trevor Ariza, Kevin Seraphin, Emeka Okafor
(They started last game, they’ll probably start this game.)

Blazers Starters (6-8):

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