Turner's return

I'm the opposite.
To me he's been a severe disappointment.
Especially after his pre-season performance when I was saying. It's going to be difficult to keep Napier out of the rotation.
Regardless of his 5 assists last night, I still saw possessions where he tried to be CJ and dribbled for 10-15 seconds only to take a fadeaway jumper. He hit one of those last night, but generally that's a bad shot. Even worse when it's your backup point doing that.

 

The 2nd unit benefits from having a legit PG playing with it as opposed to CJ and/Turner. That combination with the 2nd unit is just not efficient. I'm in the boat of maintaining a more traditional lineup of PG being your primary ball handler/floor general, 2 wings and 2 posts. Those positions have established themselves over the history of basketball due to spacing and overall efficiency. Occasionally you will find an anomaly that breaks the overall mold and works (Draymond Green) but not very often.

 

His stats are up across the board per 36 from his prior 2 seasons.

I kinda chuckle when people complain about the PG dribbling too much, that's kind of their job.

 

Per 36 is such a dumb way to evaluate how a player is doing. They're not playing 36 minutes a night for a reason.

I kinda chuckle when people complain about Lillard shooting 30 footers, it's kinda his job to score.

 

It's exactly the same as saying "His scoring is down this year but so are his minutes" except someone has done the math so you can use a common denominator that is actually comparable. I agree in many cases it's isn't a good measuring stick like comparing Dame to Quarterman, but when you are comparing a player to his same role from a previous season, or 2 players who play the same role, it's at least a close barometer.

It's good to laugh.

 

He only took the one shot last night. There could not have been too many of those possessions. Regardless I think he has gotten better with more playing time.

 

I had lower expectations.

 

Shabazz was 1/1 last night, could it be that CJ and Shabazz look the same to someone?

 

Spencer Hawes

Passing out and leaving your teammate out to dry because you dribbled for 10-15 seconds is a bad possession too.(Crabbe bailed him out at least once last night by hitting a contested 3)
But hey it's not like I haven't mentioned this previously about Napier.
Napier played well last night, but that doesn't mean he deserves to have continuous minutes.
Unless you both think Layman should be getting minutes for his GSW game early in the year?
I wonder what happened against the Nets when he went 1-5 with 1 assist and 1 turnover.
You have to go all the way back to his former team to find another statistical decent game by Napier.

 

I'm just advocating for about 10 minutes a game so CJ can stay at SG and ET can stay at SF.

I admit I was wrong when I said earlier in the year that ET should be used strictly as a guard. But ET plays well next to Dame and CJ, as does Harkless, as does Crabbe. Amazing since I keep hearing that CJ/Dame just take turns going one-on -one and never pass.

 

They are working with him on his three point shot (but is he really embacing it?), and a lot more stuff here: http://uproxx.com/dimemag/evan-turner-portland-trail-blazers-feature/

 

If we do get into the playoffs, I see him having a big impact in at least a few games.

 

After reading the article, I am rooting for him.

 

I absolutely hate when ET shoots the ball outside of maybe 10 feet. But, there's things I really love about his game. He's a top perimeter defender in the league and is a great ball handler to mix things up and let Lillard or CJ play off ball.

But, he's overpaid, yes.

 

Who isn't these days? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Turner is our backup PG.