I got your point. But CJ is young, he can improved his defense, otherwise he can score. Trade everyone expect Dame and CJ and im ok. Trade Aminu, Turner, Mason for a big man, thats all.
This team would be just as good (I'd say better), if Napier, Layman and Vonleh were getting the minutes of Turner, Crabbe, and Leonard in the lineup. And that's 40 million of wasted space right there. Good teams don't massively over-pay for scrubs. Look at the Spurs/Patriots, they've never been afraid to let players walk.
I totally get where you are coming from as well. I'm just not sure that CJ's style fits this team when you already have someone like Dame on it. They are just both too ball dominant without either of them being much of a facilitator. Countless times I've watched CJ dribble the ball for 20 seconds and then throw up some off -balanced shot that because of his ability, often goes in. The down side of that is, no one else even touches the ball, gets involved other than countless screens or develops any rhythm. If you rarely touch the ball on offense, for most players it can affect them on the defensive end as well. Few players want to just run around setting picks and then run back on defense play after play. CJ has a TON of talent but I'm afraid for his career and for Portland to move forward, both of those might be better served if he is elsewhere. Portland is just too one-dimensional with him and Dame on the court at the same time...and that dimension has nothing to do with passing or defense.
sadly I have to agree for the most part. although I think for the case of dame its a little different, he still gets a fair amount of assists but because this team really relies on him to score, and he knows he doesn't have much after him for scoring, so he just goes for it. CJ on the other hand, I feel like we could go a full quarter and not see him make a meaningful pass (ie one where they don't just pass it right back to him), he is a SG playing PG, I think that's the main issue, he needs to play next to a PG.
CJ on, Dame off: 0.91 points per possession Dame on, CJ off: 1.01 points per possession Dame on, CJ on: 1.14 points per possession Trading CJ for offensive reasons is a dumb idea. You don't trade CJ unless you're getting a star big man in return -- meaning AD/Boogie caliber. Ideally, you want a trio of stars with Dame and CJ as the foundation. Now is not the time to let go of a MASSIVE advantage we have with guys who can give you 48 mins of terrific P&R play. There is a reason Jerry West blocked a trade that would have broken up the best backcourt in the NBA for Kevin Love. And we're ready to move CJ for Nerlens freaking Noel? And CJ is a lot closer to Klay than he is Monta. We need to learn lessons from what GS did.
Olshey dropped bucket loads of cash on a bench that can't even break even. Let that really sink in. We've got two 17 million dollar players coming off the BENCH and they continually lose ground to the opponent.
So let me ask you this.... When is it NOT going to be "too early" in the season? When do we start panicking? Because if we don't do something to fix this now, it's going to be too late. I think perhaps some of this has more to do with Stotts than Olshey. There's only so many times you can call up the same vanilla plays before the defenses adjust for it, and only so many times that you can let an opponent take a 10 point lead (or higher) before you call a time out. He does both of these things very poorly, add to the fact that he's not a Defensive-minded coach. For the record, I did not watch the game last night. But the score speaks for itself, and I have a good feeling that God Almighty Stotts is responsible for a good portion of it.
Go back through what I've said about CJ. He is a HUGE offensive talent but does little to help the rest of his teammates be better. He and Dame on the court should be good but it actually makes the rest of the 5 worse because they are rarely involved. As for CJ vs Ellis, they both could score, neither played defense but Ellis was a better distributor. I never advocated trading CJ for Noel so not sure where that came from. But having a big like Boogie to balance the floor out in a much better manner would be a good thing IMO. As for having a massive advantage with them both on the court, that has not been the case when they play good teams so far this season. They already been blown out 3 times in just 12 games and 2 of those blowouts came at home. Dame and CJ are very good offensively but neither passes very much, neither plays defense and they are both ball dominant. That is a lot of holes to fill.
I don't get this whole "NO screwed the pooch" mindest. The only real thing you can bitch at is Turner, which doesn't look good but come on were 12 games into the season. So what if we paid a little above market value for our players, its not like we were going to turn this magical "cap space" that we wouldn't actually have next year because of CJ's extension into an allstar caliber player. Yes our players are under preforming but would you rather us have random low paid players instead of Loenard/Harkless/Turner/Crabbe and then have very little money to spend in next years FA and have to overpay a player worse then all 5 of those guys? So NO sucks and we got screwed out of something. Please explain what we could have done differently and how most of our players under-preforming is NO fault.
Quick is on radio right now talking about how this roster was planned/made to make trades. He mentions Ed Davis as a possible piece to move with his contract. Meyers as well, if he can make shots to increase value. He says with these trends in rebounding and given our expectations, trades have to be considered.
That seems like that is the story of Portland. I assume he also put out feelers on Howard. I thought maybe he should have gone after Ian Mahimni, but looks as if he is already injured so probably good he didn't. So who was available and wanted to come to Portland?
I don't know if we need more plays. I was just reading about Popovich's first year coaching and he spent a lot of time on details, making sure they were executing a few plays very well. Of course the other thing he spent a lot of time on was defense which Stotts still doesn't seems to have worked out. I would rather he made the defense a little bit more complicated than the offense.
Noel has been bandied about by others, not you. I myself say if Boogie becomes available, you have to let go of CJ to get him. Ball dominance doesn't matter if together the lineup they're in is scoring a ridiculous 1.14 points per possession. The problem is NOT on the offensive end.
This is surprising: We take the 3rd most contested 3s of anyone in the league. Ball isn't moving to find the open shooters like it should.
I total agree with you but it up to the coach to straighten this out. I believe everyone has to be involved in the game so that make them happy then they try little harder on both ends. It Neil job to give the coach players to work with then its the coaches job to put it together. Now do I think Neil over paid on some players yes.
We are not going to get any worthwhile free agent for a while. Most of the interesting ones will be getting $20M+ contracts in the near future and would pick other teams ahead of Portland anyway, like this year. Also, all our core players and potential players are signed up for the next 3-4 seasons which means we won't be in position to have to resign them and go over the cap. Yes, we will likely have to drop one of our high earners next year to stay below cap with CJ's extension (I think) but it won't be that difficult. It might happen with Ezeli that we don't have the funds to sign him but it is still two years from now. The way I see it Olshey realized we have no chance to sign top tier free agents for a while and even mid tier FAs were going for north of $15M last year so the decision was to develop from within and see where it takes us. We may have been a little careless with that Turner deal but that's about it. With Leonard and Crabbe we believed in their potential, and in Crabbe we have a player who will still have good value if we decide to move him. Leonard could come back to bite us but IMO in current climate someone would take his $10M deal. Harkless was a very good deal. Ezeli will prove to be a good signing. I don't see what else could have been done. We will probably move Crabbe for Noel or Okafor in a couple of months, or put together a huge package for Cousins and everyone will be content again. There is no way we finish the season with this group, IMO we will get at least two new faces in and that has been the plan all along. Whatever happens until January is just bumping value of our assets.
That sounds about right to me. Couldn't lock down Whiteside, so passed on overspending on the second tier bigs, and collected assets instead to make a move at the deadline. This is what Marc Stein quoted execs around the league thought about portlands situation about a week ago as well. And some of y'all are crazy if you don't think Leonard has any trade value. $10m is nothing these days, and a young stretch 5 is extremely valuable in today's NBA.
Exactly. Nets were willing to pay Crabbe the same money. We know there is one team in the league who badly needs backcourt shooter and have a massive logjam of centers, all of them very talented. Trading with Sixers makes so much sense that it almost has to happen. Just not sure who for. With Noel's extension coming Okafor might make more sense but he has no defense. Unless Sacramento deal us Boogie.
Falling in love with CJ ehh? Good thing your not the GM. If I remember correctly the GS fans were in love with Ellis when they traded him also. The owners fiancee was pissed. Look how that turned out. The only untouchable player for the Blazers should be Dame.
