I think all pretty much recognize there doesn't appear to be any real chemistry on the team. I'll toss out a few thoughts about potential causes for our lack of chemistry and would be interested to hear others thoughts. As I think about it, the last time I felt like the Blazers had some chemistry, it was the year we made the finals. Sure, there were complaints about Aminu & Harkless but I felt that, overall, we played together as a team. What has happened since then? We've had injuries. We've had significant roster change. We've had no defense (but that's nothing new - haven't had that for years). What is the cause? Two things come to mind. Management/Coaching & "Leading players". Management/Coaching: Unwillingness to make the necessary changes to take us to the next level. This meant that two players with extreme overlap and widely recognized defensive deficiencies continued to play without accountability or being forced to change. Olshey was unwilling to make trades. Stotts was unwilling to force Dame & CJ to play defense and play more of a team game. Leading Players: Who is this? See the prior paragraph, Dame & CJ. Dame-time became a thing and, to a degree, he bought into it as part of every play rather than just a crunch time thing. CJ is a good player in the right role but he hasn't been held accountable for either his shooting or lack of defense (or passing) and hence, just continues to shoot. In Star Trek lingo, we have Kirk and Spock and a bunch of Ensigns that beam down to a planet and you know that nothing bad will happen to either Kirk or Spock but the rest of the "team" is fair game for getting killed, injured, etc. In a "team" perspective, that means that from an outsiders perspective, it appears there is not accountability for either Dame or CJ but lots of accountability for everyone else (hence the constant references to Stotts pulling someone for some minuscule mistake while Dame or CJ may make more significant mistakes but get to play through it). Conclusion: The only way I see this changing is one of two ways: The "Rebuild Around Dame option" or the "Blow it All Up option". The Rebuild Around Dame option means that CJ and ideally several others get traded and we have a fair amount of roster change that forces a new team makeup/"chemistry". If that doesn't work, we go down the blow-it-all-up path. Much as I love Dame, he has to be held at least somewhat accountable for the current train-wreck of a team. Recall when we used to hear about Dame calling and inviting the and the team to get together prior to training camp starting so they could work together? I can't recall the last time I heard about that happening. Chemistry take effort. I don't see the effort. I don't see the chemistry. I am more ambivalent about the this Blazers team then any since the Telfair/Monia, et al. era. Sad but I just have little expectation, hope, or for that matter, interest. They play boring ball. There is no chemistry. Perhaps the loss of Paul Allen impacted the team more than we realize. Having an owner personally vested in the team builds the team. Having an unaccountable, untouchable Olshey driving the team has led to us having a team that seems to have no direction or willingness to sacrifice for the good of the whole - in short, they seem to have taken on the kind of personality often attributed to Olshey. Here is to hoping for significant changes. What they are at this point, I don't really care. Whatever they are, the result would be difficult to be worse than what we are seeing now. Gramps...
ZCo and Hood were supposed to slot into the Aminu/Harkless spots and build on the playoff success. They both got hurt and we’ve sucked since.
I wouldn't be surprised of nobody is offering much for any of our players. Other GM's can see we are a train wreck and they are waiting for us to do a fire sale (like we've been hoping Morey would do with getting rid of Simmons). He may be trying but trying to get anything of value without mortgaging our future (which Olshey has already done), may be impossible and unless it is one heck of a deal, I don't want to give up picks. We've traded too many picks for guys that have landed us in mediocre-ville with no visible way out.
I actually think this has been a problem for a couple years. Fans think we had a deep, contending team, where CJ/Nurk were near all-stars and we had promising youth. The rest of the league never believed any of that to be true which made finding a trade partner very difficult. To your point, that is likely still the case.
You can't improve selling low on your best players....you sell high on your friendly contacts and youth....if you want to build Dame a competitive team
If your "best" players are what is holding you back and selling low is the only option, you do it. The only other option is to let them play out their contract and walk away with nothing in return.
Your philosophy seems to be sound but in this case it's not. We can definitely improve by selling low on CJ. If we can get a contributor for him that plays on both ends of the court and fills a position of need the dude doesn't need to be a multilevel scorer who is an assassin from outside. He doesn't have to be elite at anything (like CJ is), just someone who contributes everywhere... we can even trade CJ for an effective bench player and get better. Ideally we can get higher value for him by pairing him with other assets but this team needs shaken up. So as long as it doesn't mean tying ourselves to bad long term contracts we definitely can get better by trading low on CJ, RoCo and Nurk. All of whom I'm hoping to see on other teams come February 10th. Edit: Also there is no competitive team built around Dame with CJ starting next to him in the back court... not if your definition of competitive is contending.
I've said so many times for years CJ is your 6 man...didn't say starting him next to Dame is a winning setup at all..and I'd trade CJ for somebody who makes us better in a heartbeat...although Norm and Dame aren't setting the world on fire together yet either with him out.....Dame needs vet help and I think you have to improve from trading Ant number one priority while he has value. I'm not attached to anybody on the roster but Dame but you have to actually improve in a trade and it seems that isn't an easy trade to make so far.....CJs contract just isn't that attractive to teams....Philly is facing that with Ben Simmons too....these guys are expensive
I just don't think it's manageable to put together a competitive roster keeping a sixth man who is not compatible with your best player and making 30M+ per season. Also I don't think CJ would have the best attitude coming off of the bench. Trading CJ is really the only option if we want to move forward and ever be a contender with Dame leading the team or even a significant part of the team.
we've had this conversation...it's all good...but CJ is paid well enough to be a Manu Ginobli for his coach if that helps us win...that's my bottom line...he's here, use him for his natural position...bench scorer...if he doesn't like it...trade him. I think as I said...teams are shy about his contract probably because just like for us....he's a natural 6 man paid like a starting allstar
IMO it’s squarely on ownership. It’s a rudderless, ambivalent, after thought of a business empire 200 miles away. The team is out of sight out of mind. There is zerooooooo sense of urgency to win from senior leaders over the past few seasons. Nobody to tell Neil to get his shit together. Nobody now (I assume) telling Cronin to make something happen. No interviews, no input, nothing.
