In recent articles, I’ve looked closely at Zach Randolph and Kevin Love. Now it’s time to touch on LaMarcus Aldridge, perhaps the most noticeable omission from Sunday’s All-Star game apart from Steve Nash. 

The Portland Trailblazers are currently holding the 5^th position in the Western Conference with 32 wins and have won their last six games. Their current success is slightly outperforming their point differential and both the Hornets and Nuggets are considerably better in that category, but what we can take away from this is largely that LaMarcus Aldridge is playing some incredible basketball.

He’s averaging 34 ppg over the last five games, just under 32 ppg over the six-game winning streak and 27.9 ppg over the last 10 games, during which the Blazers are 7-3.  This is a stretch that includes two games with 40+ points and three other games with 34+ points. The schedule has been way light on the win streak, but who cares? The Blazers are taking care of business and it’s mostly Aldridge helping them do it.

With the bad news about Brandon Roy and some recent problems with Marcus Camby, Aldridge is getting it done without a really stunning supporting roster. Wesley Matthews Andre Miller are nice, but they certainly are dominant secondary talents. 

But this 10-game stretch isn’t a new thing. Aldridge can score, we’ve known this for a while; he’s posted at least 17.8 ppg in each of the last three seasons, so what’s changed this year? 

Well, for starters, he’s been averaging over 20 ppg for 39 games now, or roughly half the season. So this is a little bit more than just a streak. His really high-volume work has mostly been recent, that’s true, but Aldridge averaged 20.4 ppg over 16 games in December, then 24.9 ppg over 14 games in January and has averaged 29.1 ppg over 9 games thus far in February. 

I doubt anyone expects him to keep scoring at a level comparable to peak Shaquille O’Neal, but we can expect his seasonal average to hold in the low/mid 20s. One thing we should watch out for is that he’s playing almost 41 mpg over the last 23 games and that is probably not going to continue for the balance of the season unless the Blazers are actively trying to get him injured. Nevertheless, he’s averaging over 20 points per 36 minutes on the season, so he should stick around 21, 22 ppg if all goes well.

A lot of people are discussing the post work he’s been doing this season as a big part of why he’s making this push. It’s true that post-ups and isolations account for nearly half of his offensive possessions this season and he’s scoring at a point-per-possession rate very similar to Al Jefferson over on the Jazz (0.87 PPP for Aldridge, 0.86 for Jefferson). That’s not quite as good as, say, Pau Gasol at 0.92 PPP, Blake Griffin (0.91), Kevin Garnett (1.02), or Dirk (1.13) but it’s the same as Carlos Boozer (0.87) and Chris Bosh (0.86). And apart from Dirk, LaMarcus has tended to use the post on a higher proportion of his touches this season. 

And generally speaking, he’s doing about the same thing that he did last year. He’s shooting a little worse from past the foul line and right at the rim, noticeably worse from 10-15 feet… and yet he’s scoring more efficiently on higher volume. How does that work? Well, the big deal is that he’s increased his FTA/FGA ratio by about 0.07, which is pretty big; drawing more fouls, especially while shooting a career-high at the line, is bound to do wonders for your scoring efficiency and make you a more effective offensive player and that’s precisely what Aldridge is doing. He was hovering around 0.26 the last two years and has made a big leap so far this season. He’s also a guy who takes care of the ball well and rarely turns it over. What we’re seeing is that he’s getting a shooting foul on almost 11% of his touches in the post, and as we’ll see later on, that he continues to excel as a transition player and on action where he makes a cut to the basket. 

Like most big men, apart from the truly dominant scoring centers like Shaq, peak Olajuwon/Ewing, Kareem, etc, the most effective plays involving Aldridge are pick and rolls where he’s the roll man, as well as offensive boards (where he’s doing quite well this year as he did earlier in his career), transition plays and team action where he cuts to the basket and gets a pass. He’s far more equipped at scoring efficiently on those plays and he or the team in general typically score at a far higher rate on such plays than on his isolations.  In general, a hair over half of the time Aldridge touches the ball, someone on the Blazers scores at least a point.  On post isos, it’s a little under 45% of the time. 

Now, it would be nice and simple to say “oh, so why don’t the Blazers do X, Y and Z more?”  That would make sense, but you still have to establish a basic offense, and posting Aldridge is still clearly an effective proposition.  

For a point of comparison, Dwight Howard uses post-ups on about 57% of his touches, scores at 0.92 PPP and Orlando (either Dwight or someone else) scores at least one point just over 49% of the time. So a 4% difference between Aldridge and Dwight Howard is an acceptable difference here, at least in my opinion. The idea is that he’s been efficient enough to justify going into him on those possessions. 

Dwight, for reference, shoots a hair above 50% on those possessions and draws a foul about 15% of the time. LaMarcus shoots about 41% and draws a foul around 11% of the time. Dwight’s obviously better, but we knew that. The notion here is that he does alright for himself. 

Pau Gasol shoots 44.5% FG and draws a foul less than 8% of the time, and everyone hails him as a very good post player. Which Gasol is, but that speaks well of what Aldridge is achieving, the point I’m trying to really drive home here. 

The other thing is that he’s getting to the rim quite a lot, which is why the fact that he’s shooting around 2% lower from there than usual is totally unimportant. Last year, Aldridge took about four shots per game right at the rim, but this year he’s getting there nearly seven times a game. All that posting up is doing very good things for him, and the Blazers. Offensively, he’s been a force to be reckoned with and has looked outstanding.

OK, so he’s posting up well and he’s doing a very good job of drawing fouls, which is making the lion’s share of the difference in raising his scoring efficiency over years past. As ever, Aldridge continues to be a big with good range who moves well without the ball and has a pretty strong impact on his team’s chances of winning. He’s actually 12^th in the league in win shares at the moment. He shoots the long jumper too often out of the pick and roll rather than actually rolling, which is a big part of why he’s so weak at drawing fouls in that play, but he shoots it well and does get some closer looks, which evens things out in the end. 

About the only negative things that can be said about Aldridge are that he’s probably going to see his averages dip back to mortal levels once those minutes come down (and they really should) and that he’s an unimpressive rebounder. Now, we’re having a relatively poor year for rebounding, so he’s actually 12^th in the league in raw rebounds per game, but he’s under 14% TRB and only three positions removed from Amar’e Stoudemire, which says all it needs to about that ranking. Aldridge is doing a great job on the offensive glass, but he’s been quite poor on the defensive glass. 

Aldridge’s omission from the All-Star game was a fairly big mistake by the coaches. He’s been the driving force behind the success of the Blazers thus far and they are on pace for 47 wins despite significant roster problems (mainly Roy playing only 23 games to date and likely never returning to the form he displayed in recent years). That’s worth some note. 

Kevin Love is a statistical marvel, so I’m not shocked that it happened, but his Wolves versus those Blazers, I mean, Aldridge likely should have been the one selected. What we should take away from this is that we might be watching LaMarcus Aldridge have his breakout season as an offensive force.  He’s playing some incredible basketball on that end of the floor and should be getting a lot more press for what he’s accomplishing out in Portland.