The last time we had a motley crew of rejects...

Pretty sure Biebs is Jar Jar.

 

I would bet you that 30 GMS would rather have Nic Batum as their starting SF than Aminu!

 

29..... one GM just traded him

 

More like 29 GMs........

 

wrong dude...Olshey traded him, 29 is as high as you can go

 

Too slow gentlemen, too slow...

 

Hey, we're a pair of old guys. Give us a break. We may not be able to mow lawns but at least we can count.

 

Then they're assholes with character.

 

Assholes are usually just full of shit

 

Jason! This repetitive message is why I skip your articles.

 

Dammit BGD!!! I told my wife I was going down to the coast for a couple of days to let the dog run.....!!!!!

 

I think you're wrong. Batum seemed like a really nice guy, but as a basketball player, he was just way to lax. He basically slept walked through the playoffs. On the other hand, look at what Aminu did for Dallas in their series.

 

I wonder if Mike and Mike are secretly as doom and gloom about the season as HCP.

 

An All-Star on this team outside of Lillard? I think McCollum and Leonard have the potential to be quality players and Henderson, Davis and Aminu will have set roles with the team, but I'll bet 80 per cent of this team is turned over before we make the playoffs again.

 

Now I disagree with HCP about plenty but this time he has a good point. Batum is a superior basketball player to Aminu. I believe all 30 NBA GM's would rather have him on the floor. The problem is Nic will be an unrestricted free agent next summer and likely earn $20 million a season. We received a lottery pick in return for him. Aminu was signed for cap room at $7.5 million per season. If we could swap out Aminu for a Batum on a 4 year $7.5 mil year contract we do it in a heartbeat. But considering the players actual value relative to cap hit and opportunity cost of Vonleh in a trade the changes were a great move.

 

Maybe we'll pull a Darrell Revis and Batum will find his way to Rip City again? You never know....

 

I generally defend Batum, as advanced metrics show he is one of the hardest runners in the NBA. He runs 4.3 miles per game--the most in the league is 4.5. He looks lax because that's just his demeanor.

However, you bring up a good point about the playoffs. Compare Aminu's 5 games of experience to Batum's 35, and it's hard to say Batum is the better player in the playoffs. He pretty much vanishes. Especially the advanced stats--20 PER vs 12.4.

You could say, "Well Aminu had one hot series--you can't extrapolate much from that." But look at Batum's cumulative record over 5 different playoff runs. Not once did he put up better numbers than Aminu did in his first time out. Remember all those Blazers 1st-round-and-outs? How many of those did you say to yourself, "Well, at least Batum showed up." Because I fucking don't.

Maybe Batum's commitment to France leaves his tank drained by the time the playoffs role around. Who knows. If I want to win more regular season games, then yeah, Batum is probably your man. But if I want a small forward who I can be reasonably sure isn't going to disappear in the playoffs, Aminu is the obvious pick to me.

 

I think this team is going to surprise a lot of people. We may come out of the gate strong because teams won't know how to play us. We have a lot of new talent, and it's not predicated off of Aldridge's game.