NBA Portland Trail Blazers

Portland Trail Blazers Need Meyers Leonard To Improve Drastically

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By @b2brennan

Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Meyers Leonard is in the third year of his career, all with the Portland Trail Blazers, and he hasn’t shown much sign of important improvement. He’s only 22 years old, but the former lottery pick out of Illinois needs to significantly improve aspects of his game or I fear he might not be on the team much longer.

Leonard is 7-foot-1, 245-pound center with pretty good athleticism. Good size with jumping skill and ability to the run the court normally translates into a good player. Unfortunately in Leonard’s case, it seems as if he’s taking all the potential he has to become a solid center and using it on areas of his game that aren’t essential to his position. He apparently spent this entire offseason working on three-point shooting when he can barely finish in the paint. He settles for deep jumpers, doesn’t seem to crash the offensive glass, and on defense he rarely blocks shots and typically picks up fouls. Two plays stood out to me in last night’s game with the Miami Heat.

1. Leonard took a three-point shot with more than enough time left on the shot clock and airballed it.

2. Leonard received the ball in the post in a four-on-four situation, and instead of going up against the smaller defender, he dribbled a few feet out and took (actually made) a fadeaway jumper.

Leonard did end up with nine rebounds on the night, but most of them were in garbage time. It frustrates me to see two lottery picks, Leonard and Damian Lillard, have extremely different paths. Lillard was taken five picks ahead of Leonard and is a superstar, whereas Leonard barely gets on the court and when he does he usually makes at least one boneheaded play. On a team with Robin Lopez, Chris Kaman and Joel Freeland, one would think Leonard would be honing his rebounding and low post skills, not working on fadeaway jumpers and three-pointers.

I find his statistics this season quite amazing actually (22-of- 50 FG (44 percent), 11-of-25 three-point shooting (44 percent), 6-of-7 FT.

Yes it’s nice to see a center shooting 44 percent from three-point range and — granted in a small sample size — shooting 85 percent from the free-throw line. But as a center, you should never have half of your shots be three-pointers and you shouldn’t have 18 more three-pointers taken than free-throws. Those statistics right there prove that Leonard has taken all of his talent and pushed it aside to become a center with an unnecessary skill set.

Hopefully Leonard’s game develops and he becomes the solid young center that Blazers hoped for with the No. 11 overall draft pick. I’m wishing for the best from the young man, but if he keeps this up, don’t be surprised if he’s shipped off for draft picks or not even re-signed after his contract is up.

Brian Brennan is a Trail Blazers writer for www.Rantsports.com. Follow him on Twitter @b2brennan.

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