But see, now you're just saying short guys. Ellis is a poor 3 point shooter. He's a slasher. Him and curry weren't similar. Dragic and Bledsoe aren't great 3 point shooters. Dragic best shooting season did coincide with them winning 48 games. But neither are overlapping types like Lillard and cj are. They were different players. It's an easily disprovable point, I'm curious to see when a team had 2 very comparable players at the 1 and 2 and failed with it.
CJ is not even a Restricted free agent this summer so teams can have all the cap space they want, they still can't make an offer on him.
That's actually a bad thing Bc we coulda locked him up on the cheaper max scale this summer. The cap is going to only rise when Cj is due for his services which means we will have to lock up Cj on the higher cap
Thing is, people say you can't win with x. Why not? Well, when had it worked before? So then the answer is to say yeah, you're right, I'll build a team designed to beat past champions. Or, you can ask but why not? "You can't win with a score first pg" "You can't win without a dominant post presence" "you NEED a big 3 to win" "jump shooting teams don't win" etc. So never do any of those things. And then GS comes out last year and breaks not one rule, not 2, not 3 but 4 different rules people like to trot out as "the ways to win". Do people learn anything from it? Nah, just an outlier.
Wasn't that the whole point of, "They were all, at some point in their Blazers career, if not untouchable then at least priced extremely highly by management and Blazers fans."? All of those guys you listed, they weren't nearly as untouchable as they once appeared, and they had little value once we finally let go of them. I don't see how Lillard is any different. Controversy, and fear of making a mistake, is why we were paralyzed into doing nothing with the others.
No idea what you are talking about? Cap is already up this summer not next. So last year we would have had to extend him which was not possible.
I just want to see CJ play a whole season healthy for the first time in his career...then think about money
Good point! We threw away Gerald Henderson on his climb to perfection for a six pick. Those early draft picks are worthless as we all know. /s
No. Of course Lillard does but I would think CJ was a PG if I saw him as a PG. I just don't. The dude has a SG game. If I agreed with you that he is a PG then I would look to trade him to upgrade other positions but the man is a SG. His game is lot more SG than PG. He just happens to be decent at PG during limited minutes there which is great. He isn't a pure PG though and we won't ask him to be.
This "modern NBA" hasn't seen a duo quite like CJ and Dame. What recent history? And don't say Ellis and Curry because they were even worse defensively and weren't the same style player as each other offensively. You guys are acting like Dame and CJ hit their peak and are 29 years old. Theyre 24 and 25! They still have 3 or 4 years before they hit their peak! You don't think they'll both improve on both sides of the ball?.. I've never heard of "selling high" on a 24 year old SG averaging 21 a game. It's not selling high because his stock will keep going up! He works too hard for it not to. It's easier to teach and develop guys defensively than offensively, which is all we need to do with them in the next 3 or 4 years (That's a lot of time!). CJs 55th of 80 SGs in DRPM.. That's slightly below average, in his first year of real playing time. Give him time. We just need to hire a good defensive coach to the coaching staff to work with them. (Thibs where ya at?) In 3 years they'll be a top 2 NBA backcourt. We just need to surround them with pieces up front that compliment their skillset.. You guys are trying to get way too cute with how things should be done, and that's coming from the guy who comes up with trade scenarios like it's no tomorrow.
Never said he should. That's the way some people look at it. "Sacrifice CJ for our precious draft pick!" And then they come up with some BS to justify it.
Reevaluating this I think I'm officially off the trade CJ bandwagon. Unless we're getting an uber star we aren't going to find this good of a scorer. CJ is proving that he can be an efficient 20 PPG scorer. That's rare. In less than a year he went from 5 ppg with 32 Fg% to this.
Last year in the playoffs, I might have said or read someone else say that CJ was our new Zach Randolph: a kid who finally got some time and performed like a star. I think this season is bearing that out.
This might be controversial or even sacrilegious to some, but I think we might be starting to be getting to a point where we can have a good conversation on who is better, Dame or CJ. If CJ can keep up this kind of play for the entire season, I think I'd give him the nod. He has the better mid-range game, he moves better without the ball and he's better on the defensive end. The other reason I think CJ is turning into the better player is I think what if the roles were reversed and CJ was out with an injury and Dame was still playing ... I just can't see this team performing quite as well as it has in this stretch. And that's not meant to take anything away from Lillard at all. I think they're both all-star caliber players ... Dame's proven himself in the clutch and when he's healthy his shooting range is amazing, plus he's able to make spectacular plays attacking the rim. Great situation to be in, especially now if you can find a way to entice a good big with an offensive game to join the party without having to give either Dame or CJ away to do it.
Regardless of who you think is better, it's pretty clear that they complement each other, and that we have a pretty good 3.5 guard rotation right now. In three years' time, we will see who is Clyde and who is Terry.
I get it. People like to shoehorn players into roles and overuse comparisons. CJ's game bears a resemblance to Jason Terry and Jamal Crawford. People don't think very highly of either player so they don't want to keep CJ. If he keeps up what he's doing so far, he's already better than both ever were. 21/3/4 on 45/40/81. That is legit.
