OFFICIAL AROUND THE NBA THREAD -April 2021

I'd be willing to take the bigger gamble and get the MUCH better player.
I'm not an Olshey fan, but this was a very good trade for Portland.

 

Denver hasn't lost since acquiring Aaron Gordon. It's not that he is putting up huge numbers....but he seems like a really good FIT for what makes them better.

 

All I needed to see, in order to agree with this, was last night when Powell went one one one with Kawhi on the baseline and had no problem getting around him and finishing at the rim. Trent could have tried that 100 times without success.

Gary can be a lights-out 3pt shooter, but everyone on this board bitches about not having two-way players.....Powell offers that.

 

and he got to the line 15 times! Powell is showing me everything we want in a SG next to Dame. I'm hoping and praying that Philly flames out in the playoffs and Morey trades us Simmons for CJ+ whatever else they want in the summer

 

Even if Simmons becomes available, I don't think CJ+ is going to win the bidding war, or even come close.

 

I'd trade everything but Dame on our team for Simmons. Just hope for a Philly flameout in the playoffs. Could happen-- they were after Beal. CJ is a reasonable facsimile, and we can extract value from Nurk that we can also send to Philly in the process.

 

The only way they trade us Simmons is if the reason they flame out is because of a career ending injury to Simmons.

 

Even if Philly went for it, what would that accomplish? Simmons and Dame in the back court together is more redundant than Dame and CJ. At least CJ is comfortable playing off the ball and can play the catch-and-shoot game. Dame doesn't seem to like playing off the ball, and Simmons would be borderline useless in that role (at least on offense).

I'd be more interested in the Simmons + CJ pairing -- Dame for Simmons would be more likely to get Philly's interest, also -- as you'd get a better mesh of offensive roles. And back court height would go from poor to pretty darn good, with CJ being the shorter comoponent instead of the current taller one.

 

Meh. Denver, which has primarily been healthy (certainly moreso than Portland) has barely had any more success than we've had. Not sure that's an argument in Malone's favor.

 

said one blazer fan to another....ironically

 

might be apples to oranges though

if you set Portland and it's 30 wins as the floor, then against teams with 30 wins or more, the Blazers have a 3-10 record; and 2 of those wins were against Philly, while the other was more than 3 months ago against the Lakers. Meanwhile, Denver has a 9-6 record against teams with 30 wins or more

that's a pretty dramatic difference and there's no doubt which is a better indicator for the playoffs

 

I agree, for the most part. However, to play devil's advocate, I could say that this shows that Denver is able to "get up" for a big game, but then suffers let downs against lesser opponents. Yes, those lesser opponents won't be in the playoffs, but, will they be able to "flip that switch" for an entire series, versus a Thursday night TNT game?
Is it a coaching issue that they're losing to teams lesser than us? Is it a focus issue?

I 100% agree that it is problematic that we just aren't showing up for big games. Absolutely. At the same time, I feel like if we were mediocre against lesser teams, a lot in here would use THAT as evidence of Stotts not being able to...keep us focused, get us up each night, etc.

 

Yet another predictable scenario

 

I want to disagree with you because that's what I do. But I can't fault what you're saying. The Nuggets appear to have more variance, and it floats between stink and great. They play to the level of the competition at a wider scale than Portland. Lower floor, higher ceiling. Denver seems capable of putting together elite games against elite competition. Portland, not so much

I'm not sure if it's because the pieces fit together in better in Denver than in Portland, or if the Nuggets are simply more talented; maybe some of both. It might also be something as simple as Denver being capable of playing well for a longer time in a game than Portland is.

but this has pretty much been Blazer DNA in the Dame/CJ era (and the dame/Aldridge era too). Consistently work over the lesser teams and fall short against top-4 seeds. They kind of rose above that some in the 2018-19 season. At least that's how I'm remembering the seasons

 

Guys. Durant’s back. Harden is out maybe a month. They’re up 32. Durant made all his shots. Aldridge scored 22. Fuck.

 

Brooklyn your 2021 nba champions. Fuck the lakers!!!!

 

Denver's interesting.

Think their first unit fits great together offensively. They are really hard to switch against and Malone is really good at using his guards as screeners. Gordon blends in right in with what they like to run. I'll be interested to see that it looks like if in the playoffs teams choose to ignore him to muck things up although I think with their personnel, he could easily just become and screener/hand off guy and be effective, especially when all 4 of the other guys are threats to handle and shoot. Also can just put him the dunker spot and let him be finisher and still be ok.

Defensively I still have a lot of concerns. Their respectable ranking is largely coming from their bench units (Compazzo, Dozier, Green, Millsap and Morris are all above average defenders for their position) and although Gordon gives them a better option against LeBron and Kawhi, still not sure they have a great option against the Lakers vs AD at center lineups and their scheme vs the Jazz and Clippers opens them up to get lit up from 3. Less so against the Clippers though as they are more of an iso team rather than heavy pnr / drive and kick.

 

Dallas loses to Houston.