The Lakers started Danny Green, KCP, and JaValee McGee.... Lillard was literally outplaying LeBron and Davis in the bubble. Nurk is way better than the Lakers 3rd best player. I don't think the Blazers are favorites or anything... but Cov&DJJ at their best match up fine with many 4th and 5th starters on title teams. It really comes down to if Lillard/CJ/Nurk can be a dominant trio. Last year the team didn't have role players worth shit to even give those three a chance.
Not to nitpick, but what exactly are you betting on? 1) Melo starts opening night, 2) he starts at least 50% of games, 3) he becomes the starter at any point in the season for any number of games.
Covington a "journeyman"? Not sure where you get that unless you're going with the British take on a "journeyman" being an athlete who's played for a lot of clubs. The American sports definition of a guy who is competent, but not able to excel is certainly not applicable. Covington has been a starter every year but his first season and he's been seen as a borderline star, primarily due to his defensive prowess. The Blazers' claim to being contenders this season rests on the addition of Covington and DJJ, who should dramatically boost the Blazers' woeful defense of last season, and also the return to health of Nurkic, Collins, and Hood, all of whom are impact players. The Blazers are now DEEP and they will be much better defensively. Does that equate to being a contender for the title? I think that remains to be seen, but we haven't yet experienced a mature Damian Lillard backed by a stacked team. I wouldn't bet against him.
Lakers starters last year: Caldwell-Pope Caruso Danny Green I would say that Covington is better than all three. Now if only we had the two best players in the NBA in our starting lineup...
You have a generous definition of "impact" player. Collins and Hood are not even close to being on the same level as Nurk. I wouldn't even put them on the same level as Covington.
They have a hell of a lot more impact on the court than guys like Hezonja, Bazemore, Tolliver, Gabriel, and Swanigan, all of whom got minutes last year.
We had 19 or more different starting lineups last season....let's hope this season we have 1 starting lineup and a spare you use in emergency
Once well known psychologist Fritz Perls wrote an essay discussing the differences between "chickenshit, bullshit, and elephantshit." Just because there is a distinction doesn't make the distinction important. Hood was nothing special before the achilles injury. What are the odds he becomes the first player in history to improve post injury? More likely he ends up like Wes Matthews and loses significant value. As for Collins, IMHO he is the 2nd most over-rated player to come out of Gonzaga. Healthy he was a back of the rotation guy. Now he is damaged goods. We have as much chance getting positive production out of Giles.
Everyone is important on the team and everyone has different roles to play to achieve the outcome you want.
I don't know what your definition of special is, but before his injury last season Hood was shooting .493 on 2pt shots and .519 on 3 pointers. I'd take that kind of "not special" every day of the week and twice on Sundays. He's going to be playing with the second unit and adding considerable fire power there. Combined with Trent, Melo, Kanter, and either Ant or CJ, I don't expect to see any scoring droughts with the second unit like we have in past years. Regarding Collins, calling him "damaged goods" for a stress fracture is absurd. If he's the third string C/PF, which I doubt by the time he's fully back to NBA conditioning, he's still one whale of a lot better than what we had there last year.
Gotta be: Dame CJ Hood Covington Nurk but id expect Trent, Melo, Giles, Kanter to get strong minutes and we'll probably see a lot of lineup changes at the SF/PF spots depending on matchup and testing configs.
This is what has me excited for the season... the talent of the 10-12th men we have on the roster. Often when you have an injury its not that the starting lineup gets significantly worse, its that you replace a rotation player (such as Hood) with someone who should be a 3rd string scrub like Hezonja last year. Its nice that we have a few guys who have NBA talent deep in the depth chart. Also, just the freedom to do things such as play starters short minutes on a back to back. We have to see how these work in the real world, but on paper even if a couple guys struggle and a couple guys are hurt we can have a rotation. The possibilities are exciting.
Last year in the playoffs: We had Davis/LBJ guarded by Wenyen/Trent, both of who did yeoman's work, but were outplayed nevertheless. This year: They will be guarded by "RoCo/Jones", which should go much better AND we still have Trent that can take a shift on LBJ. Hopefully, we'll have a healthy Collins who can take a shift on Davis. Honestly, this is pretty freaking great, imho.
That's a good point! I'd take bets on Melo not starting opening night, Melo not starting 50% of the games, and Melo starting at least 1 game during the season. Any takers on one of those 3?
I think the idea might be that it's crazy that RoCo is a journeyman and that a 23 year old 6th man might have a lot more to offer than he's previously shown, especially with consistent PT.
I’m hoping for a consolidation trade mid season for a disgruntled level 2 star between the ages of 27-31 that plays the wing position that we don’t have to include our 3 best players for. But until then DJJ starts and plays more than most think, he does things that no other wings on our team do.
