Why, it’s almost as if they rented an All-NBA player for a year in the joke of the East and then got to play a Warriors team with no Keven Durant in the Finals. It was a fluke title and the real Nick Nurse is what we see now. LeBron was injured and the Lakers didn’t make the playoffs.
It seems like he’s trying trying to find a set rotation the works. A bold move would be to start Simons at the 2 and bring CJ off the bench but that will never happen. If the plan is to trade CJ, though, may as well throw Ant next to Dame and see if they jibe.
From my observation, the JAGs (Just a guy) who play for Stotts tends to have their best seasons in Portland. Will Barton is an exception but he’s just a role player on a very good team. Am I missing someone? Hassan Whiteside went from a double-double machine for Stotts on a playoff team to fringe rotation player for the loser Kings in less than 6 months.
Let me know if I have this correct: When Nurse had two all-stars, including an all-nba 2 way player, he was a great coach? After losing his all-nba player, his teams have continued to decline? Not too shocking is it?
I've kinda looked into this and there are examples on both sides. There certainly isn't any strong data that points to a trend of players leaving Portland and blossoming; even with a bunch of players in their early 20's who you'd expect to see a natural improvement.
so it’s only a fail if they become all stars elsewhere? Pretty much everyone that Olshey has drafted has at minimum become a rotation player in the NBA. Last year Stotts was playing Anthony Tolliver and Mario Hezonja over the younger players on the roster. One of them is now clinging on to ten day contracts while the other is out of the league. Actually the list of younger players Stotts hasn’t dicked in and out of the rotation at a crucial time in their development is shorter than the ones he has. We’re seeing it again this season with Nas, and everyone saw it coming.
Well if your theory is that Stotts is holding back all these players from being great, I would expect there to be a pretty lengthy list of players who blew up after leaving Portland. I haven't seen that list. Yes there have been players who have left and had better years elsewhere. Yes there have been players who have had better years prior to coming to Portland. There also have been players who came in and had career years. Nothing sticks out as abnormal to me. Olshey is fine at obtaining rotation players, I've never knocked him on that. If you could build a contending team with a 6'2" all-star and rotation players, we'd be golden. Sadly, that combination hasn't won a title in decades. The Gasol, Tolliber, Hezonja, Baze, and Whiteside additons last year was unimpressive. Stotts playing them was also unimpressive.
NBA coaching legend currently has multiple time All-Stars and Olympic players Steph Curry and Draymond Green and they are fighting to make the play-in games with Curry arguably playing the best basketball of his career. Coaching is overrated. Talent wins in spite of bad coaching at times. Not saying Kerr is a bad coach, it just that even the best chefs in the world can’t turn chicken shit into chicken parmigiana. The better the ingredients, the easier it becomes.
NBA coaching legend currently has multiple time All-Stars and Olympic players Steph Curry and Draymond Green and they are fighting to make the play-in games with Curry arguably playing the best basketball of his career. Coaching is overrated. Talent wins in spite of bad coaching at times. Not saying Kerr is a bad coach, it just that even the best chefs in the world can’t turn chicken shit into chicken parmigiana. The better the ingredients, the easier it becomes.
The problem is that Stotts is an Olshey thing. The buck stops with Olshey. He is the president of basketball operations so the coaching staff is his responsibility. Olshey has been spinning Stotts as a championship coach and the roster as a championship roster, neither are. Stotts should be obvious but so should the Dame/CJ pairing.
CJ is a good player, but he is not a star. He comes into the argument of best shooting guards after #7. That is not a star. I would say the Blazers need another top 5 player at their position, not sure who it is, but they are not on the Blazers at this time.
Hot take time. CJ could score 30ppg on a bad team if he was asked to like a Bradley Beal is in DC. Put Westbrook with him and CJ averages that IMO.
https://www.nba.com/2021-all-star-roster Draft them when they're available. Acquire enough good players on team friendly deals to trade for an all-star. If CJ were making less money, we could use him to get an all-star. Instead, he's being paid like an all-star and therefore has a lower value around the league than his skill set.
the nuggets, suns, and Jazz have been to the same amount of conference finals in the past five years combined as the blazers.
reasonable explanation would be that the goal is to force organization to make big changes (fire gm, head coach, shake up the roster) like i said, haynes and dame are close and theres a chance dame knew about the article and allowed it to be published... if it was someone else, then who knows, but haynes, that smells like collaboration
I would agree too if he is legitimately asking "What is CJ?" RoCo wasn't a bad get maybe an overpay but not a bad deal. Norm was a bad deal because of CJ and due to the fact that he can just walk at the end of the season. The important thing is to address the question. CJ is redundant with Dame in Terry Stotts' offense while at the same time being one half of the worst defensive starting back court in the league. Remember that Stotts is Olshey's guy so how he uses these pieces is on Olshey. Even if Olshey's hands were tied in regards to Stotts (which I doubt) Olshey is still putting pieces together that he should know won't work. I do not see CJ ever being complementary to Dame under any coach, I definitely never see that back court being the 70 million dollar cornerstone of a championship team and that is what CJ is, he is a horrendous fit next to Dame.
Beal is taking 22.8 2 pt shots per game at 48.8% and 6.3 3 pt per game at 35% CJ is taking 19.1 2 pt shots at 45.5 and 9.4 3 pt shots at 39.6. Beal is taking 29.1 shots per game and CJ is taking 28.5 shots per Game. Beal is averaging a half shot more per game than CJ, but Beal is averaging 8 points more per game and is the focus of the other teams defense more than CJ is. Please tell me how CJ is going to average 8 more points on a bad team than the blazers on .5 more shots per game.
