Seeing how much smoother our offense was last night with Blake running the show has me thinking our biggest weakness is at PG, not SF. Bayless is obviously not ready and is better suited in a scoring role. Sergio is a nice spark and looks like he could develop into a decent backup PG. I like Blake but we obviously could be stronger at that position. The player I'm thinking of is Kirk Hinrich. He had an off year and his trade value is quite low because of that. The guy is a stud on the defensive end and can really shoot the ball. He's a rich-man's Steve Blake.
Re: Our weaking link That's some really weird logic there ... the offense ran smoother with Blake, so point guard is a weaker position than the small forward role being filled by a 19 year old rookie with an iffy jumper? Don't get me wrong, I'm not against this team upgrading it's point guard position, but I'd like to give Blake at least a month or two as a starter before passing any kind of judgment.
Uh what? Take a look at his shooting percentages throughout his career, they have been downright horrid.
Can't have an All-Star/max player at every position. If Blake can keep around his consistent 3.5 A/TO ratio, effectively pass into the post, hit the open three, and hold his own on defense, he's as good as this team will need.
Why not? The fact is that you CAN. Most teams just don't have the fortune to acquire that much talent and have that much budget to work with. Portland has three potential max-level players in Oden, LA and Roy... there's simply no reason not to get the best possible players to round out the rest of the starting lineup and roster. No team "only" needs a certain level of player, and especially not a team that has not made it to the playoffs. If Oden, LA, and Roy all develop as we hope and IF they stay healthy, a Blake-level PG might be sufficient to challenge for NBA championships... but why do we want to take the chance that everything breaks just right and why do we only want to challenge for titles? I want to have a dominant team. I want to crush other teams. The best way to do that is get the best possible players who can work together and work under a great coach. Ed O.
This summer I was intrigued with this possibility. But, is Hinrich that significant of an upgrade over Blake? Is he even an upgrade? The more I hear about Blake's improvements and how well he's playing in the first unit, I'm hesitant to mess with what we have going on. At this point, unless we're talking about a huge upgrade at PG with a vet (Nash, Paul, Williams, etc...), and assuming Mike Conley is not attainable, I'd rather keep what we got. Also, I know it's early, but Kirk is not showing folks that his play from last year was just a down year or explainable because of the mess-of-a-team squad they assembled around him. He has missed 13 of 17 long balls in 6 games. His other stats are respectable, especially Ast/To, but the Blazers cannot successfully run their core offense with a poor perimeter shooter. Again I know it's early, but I'm quietly collecting my things and getting ready to get off the Hinrich Train.
