Bingo! I really like Hart and his hard hat work ethic but to put him as the starting SG would be a bad idea. SG stands for "Shooting Guard". you have to be able to rely on the SG to score the ball.
Yeah--I dubbed him "Sell-Low Joe" at last year's deadline. That rhymes, and is more applicable. "Too-slow Joe" doesn't quite make sense.
That's like saying starting Dame at Point Guard is a bad idea because he scores too much and doesn't focus more on getting other teammates involved. Hart wouldn't work next to a more traditional PG but I think he would in the Blazers lineup and would put him in a better spot on defense. It would be great if they trusted Sharpe enough to play starters minutes but don't think he's quite there on the defensive end yet.
I spent too much time criticizing the Clippers trade last season and wondering what else might have been out there had Cronin taken that one closer to the deadline to be in a rush for him to just do anything right now. The bottom line is none of us know if that's the best we could have got for Norm and RoCo or not. I think what Joe did prove when he got the Jerami Grant deal done and when he signed both Ant and Nurk is that he plans ahead, also that he knew that he got both Hart and Grant for CJ and Nance, which is a really good trade both for Chauncey's system and for purposes of complementing Dame's game. So, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that he's not married to Ant because Ant and Dame are less than the sum of their parts and that he can find both a trade partner for Nurk and get a replacement for him that makes sense in Chauncey's system but I don't care if it takes him until next Thursday morning. As long as any deal we make makes the team better and not just because we get guys that are considerably worse than what we send out but might fit better in theory with Chauncey's system. We've learned this season that Keon is "two years away from being two years away" and Justise is who we thought he is, a good bench piece if he can stay healthy who cannot stay healthy. I don't want to argue if the NOLA deal was possible without the Clippers deal because there is nothing within the structure of the NOLA deal that would be contingent on anything in the structure of the Clippers deal. I also have no clue what pressure Cronin was under to just get anything done that would both keep that roster from imploding due to a lack of chemistry, get the tank rolling and/or that would get us out of the tax or even if there was some kind of weird Microsoft nepotism to it all. I'm hoping the NOLA deal is indicative of what we can expect to see from Cronin, some crafty shit that makes sense with exactly what we're trying to do in the moment we do it in and that the Clippers deal was an anomaly that was made for one of the above reasons and not because he thought that Justise, Keon and a second were better than Norm and RoCo because that's just objectively not the case. Go Blazers! Go Joe! Let's get this team better in the next nine days or so.
yeah, the 5th option in the starting line up is tough offensively unless you can be a ball distributor and know what to do with it on a fb, which he does.
I really think Ant is the piece that needs to go. I like the guy. I think he has a bright future, but I think he's clearly a point guard now and we should just make the move. We can weather losing a two guard. If we could get a really good 3/4, I would be happy. Whether it's OG or someone of that caliber.
I think he thinks he is an OK shooter but he would rather pass to someone he knows is a better shooter.
Agree, except for the bold font. He is certainly not a point guard being arguably the worst passer on the team. Small combo guard is more like it leaning toward an undersized 2.
Yeah, I would be happy with someone like OG for Ant. I still think Nurk has to go, the defensive schemes we're running just don't maximize his best attributes on that end of the floor and given how fucking stupid Nurk is about how he uses his offensive skills and talents, if we're not maximizing him on defense, what the fuck's the point of having him here? All of that said, I really hope Joe isn't looking to make a minor tweak even something as significant as Ant for OG and Nurk for a C that makes more sense with what our schemes are wouldn't be enough for me. I really think Cronin has to make a huge move or moves otherwise his stated goal of doing everything he can to win now with Dame is bullshit. Dame and Jerami should be on this roster next Thursday afternoon, a second star (better than Jerami both in talent and fit with what we're doing) should be on the roster with them and complementary role players should be on the roster too. Some of the guys we have are the kind of complementary role players we need... OG would also be a fantastic role player around a core of Dame, a second star and Jerami but he's not the second star that we need. What I'm asking for might sound unreasonable and they are my hopes, not my expectations but I don't think they are pie in the sky hopes. If Joe isn't full of shit about doing everything possible to being us a champion with Dame as team captain then the pick we owe Chicago should be guaranteed and all of the assets we have should be leveraged to get that second star and make this roster make sense around that core.
He's not only clearly better as a lead guard on offense but it is unfair to him and Dame to play them extensive minutes together because of their redundancy on O and their lack of size on D... both guys deserve to be the smallest guy on defense by a good margin and our team deserves players who complement each other on both ends, not guys who make each other worse. If people don't see that Dame takes away from Ant's game and that Ant does nothing for Dame's game on O and hurts him on D, I don't know what the fuck they've been watching. Asking Ant to turn into a player that is a great complement to Dame is the same as asking CJ to do that for all of those years. Ant and CJ are not the same player but it is asking someone to do the same impossible thing, in my opinion.
I don't buy the noise about Ant being better as a lead guard, mainly because I think it lacks context CJ isn't better as a lead guard; he just looked a little better in N.O. initially because the Pels had crappy guards and their talent was all front court. Meaning Ant would have to go to a team with loads of front court talent, including guys who can pass well. That really limits the market the problems with Ant, at this point, are that he doesn't have the court vision or timing of a PG; and he doesn't have the length or defense of a wing. He's mostly an undersized SG who plays bad defense. And he hasn't demonstrated the talent of a #2 option on a good team. He's looking like a #3 option at this point, making 25M/year. All that limits his market as well sure, if the Blazers can get a player like OG for Ant, go for it. But I'm skeptical that Ant has established that kind of value
