Portland Trail Blazers: Chris Kaman Has Been Impressive

I don’t think anybody could have envisioned how impressive Chris Kaman has been for the Portland Trail Blazers to start the season. When he was signed to a two-year contract, I had high hopes for him as a fairly productive backup.

I didn’t think he could be as good as he has been to start the year and that signing has turned into an excellent one for Portland.

Going into this season, Portland had some question marks on the bench. The perimeter players were set as the team had quite a few players who could shoot the ball well from downtown. However, when it came to back up big men, the Blazers were not in a very good place, to say the least.

Between Joel Freeland, Meyers Leonard and Thomas Robinson, the team had pretty slim pickings in the frontcourt once LaMarcus Aldridge and Robin Lopez hit the bench.

Five weeks ago, we covered the importance of Kaman staying on the court, with the main reason being depth purposes. With how well he has been playing, it might be even more than that. Chris Kaman is just that good for Portland. Taking a quick look at his stats, we can see exactly how good:

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 11/14/2014.

At face value, his stats don’t look too impressive. A lot of players can score 10 points per game or haul in 6.8 rebounds per game. Total stats isn’t the name of the game. If it was, volume scorers would be considered a lot better than they actually are.

No, it’s all about Kaman’s efficiency on the court. I’m not just talking about his extremely impressive 61.2 percent shooting from the field. I’m talking about the amount of production that Kaman puts up in the amount of time that he gets. 10.1 points and 6.8 rebounds per game are very impressive numbers in only 19.4 minutes per game.

To give you an idea of how good, if Kaman plays 36 minutes, those numbers average out to 18.7 points per game and 12.5 rebounds per game. Those kinds of numbers are all star caliber numbers. Clearly, he is doing something very right under coach Terry Stotts.

Kaman has helped shore up Portland’s defense as well, routinely cleaning up defensive miscues when he is out there, evidenced by his stellar 1.7 blocks per game. Kaman is doing excellent work for Portland off of the bench, as he has partnered with fellow off season acquisition Steve Blake to anchor a bench unit that wasn’t a very strong one last year.

Despite how good Kaman has been, he definitely should not be starting over Robin Lopez, who is also playing at a high level. Kaman is a better one-on-one scorer, so his scoring prowess would be much better suited with a unit that doesn’t feature Aldridge and Damian Lillard as it’s prime duo.

Kaman is also very, very slow. Having him on the starting unit wouldn’t be ideal because it would force him to move up and down the court at a pace that he might not be able to match. Keeping him on the bench is the right call.

Chris Kaman was a great signing for the Trail Blazers. It’s not only his production, it’s also because of how cheap his contract is. At 2 years, five million per year, you can’t get much more bang for your buck than that. Hopefully, Kaman can stay healthy and keep his excellent start going for well past nine games.

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