According to Hoopshype the Blazers are interested in Demtris Nichols, who played in the NBDL last year. http://www.nba.com/dleague/playerfile/index.jsp?player=demetris_nichols Anybody seen him play much? Several other teams are interested as well, it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
I know he was pretty good at Syracuse, and we drafted him in the second round in 2007 ... do we still have any rights to him?
Yeah I just looked up the 2007 draft on draftexpress.com. My only question about our supposed interest is what the hell do we need another young wing for? I wonder if this means Travis or Martell should be looking for new apartment in a month or two, and he'd basically just be some emergency depth in case of injury?
We traded his rights on draft night to the Knicks, I believe, as part of the Zach Randolph trade. He was thought to be one of the best shooters in the draft.
Yea that is interesting. Hell we don't even know if Martell will even make it back to play. I hope he does, but you never know, and management definitly knows more about the medical reports than we do. I think it will actuall all depend on if they go get a backup PF banger type or not. If they do, there is no reason to keep Travis anymore. He is a tweener that ends up matched up at backup PF to try and take advantage of an offensive mismatch, but the rest of the game ends up suffering.
I view D-Leaguers a little different than unproven youth. Most of the players out of the D-League have to work pretty hard to get into the league, and the players that make it tend to have excellent work ethics. Look at guys like Eddie House. The same was when teams were calling up players from the CBA and other lesser leagues. Guys like Mario Elie. I wouldn't kick them off the team for eating crackers.
http://www.hoopsworld.com/HeadlineStories.asp?lc=NBA&c=1&TEAM_ID=&PLAYER_ID=&hd=20090514#STORY_18812 Hoopsworld, hoopshype, draftexpress. They are all your friends for basketball reading!
When it comes to rounding out roster spots 11-14? I'll absolutely take some cheap, fringe NBA players to round out the roster as long as they have a little bit of talent -- and Nicholas can shoot the rock by all accounts. Now when it comes to filling in roster spots 7-10 (or maybe even a couple of starting spots) I agree this team needs some veteran help in the worst way, but we shouldn't turn our noses up just because a player of interest is 'youngish' (24 isn't exactly a fresh faced one-and-done college prospect coming out of the draft).
I see where you're coming from, but I'd rather see us bolster our wing depth with a lock-down defender and add a banger to spell LaMarcus at the PF spot. I'm not as concerned about the PG spot as others on this board are, but I'd be okay with a change there as well. All this other stuff just seems like window-dressing and doesn't seem to address the issues this team has. -Pop
I agree, but every move the team makes doesn't need to be a Solution. Some moves are just made around the edges. Good teams are built through both big moves and little moves. Now, if something like this were the only move Pritchard made, I'd be a bit more concerned.
No shit. Please no more unproven guys. Our roster is loaded with young guys who are still unproven. Let's try and bring in somoene that is a proven winner
To further my point ... look at the remaining teams in the playoffs and their collective playoff experience. Organic growth is great and I think it has its merits, but at some point you have to bring in some vets who know what it takes to win in the playoffs. -Pop
I am not sure a lot of people believe this, but the easiest part of building a title contender is what KP just did. The hardest part is letting go of some of the fringe players for experienced role players. Fine tuning is definately the harder part. I will be interested to see if KP is as good as everyone thinks he is. Like a defensive football team that bends but doesn't break. Every offensive coordinator in the league can get from the 20 to the 20 easily, but getting from the 20 to the goal line is the hardest part, and that's truly what seperates the good coordinators from the great ones. KP has yet to show that he is willing to take a risk and trade someone "important" to the roster
You make some great points in here. This off-season will largely demonstrate if KP has the stones to make the cold-blooded choices about the roster that every really good GM has to be willing to make. I'm equal parts curious and nervous to see if he's just a collector of "nice young talent" or if he's really willing to pay the price (giving up guys that he's picked) to surround the core with the right mix of talent and proven experience that every team with championship aspirations needs.
Yea and that is what scares the living shit out of me, and why I have quit listening to his interviews. KP say's all the right things so that if a player stays on board, they won't be pissed about what he said. He is politically correct so to speak. But his lack of moves on the team besides drafting guys scares the hell out of me, especially when he passes up using the RLEC golden ticket while we had it. That enough makes me wonder if he is too loyal to the guys that are here, too close to them. Maybe there were no good deals on the table. Maybe he is too loyal to the guys who are here. Does KP have any record of making trades besides for draft picks? Nope. Does KP have a good record of picking up talent deep in the draft? Only if they are European. He has missed many good late round prospects, some as late as #57 in the draft. But then again, so did 28 other NBA teams multiple times. Who knows, maybe at that point you are just getting lucky. I guess the thing that bothers me the most is he says we will "evaluate the team after this point". Every time he says that, nothing happens even though the team has holes. The same holes it had when he evaluated it the last time.
Until now, Pritchard had only gone through the rebuilding stage. Shouldn't we at least give him some time in this new reality of gearing up for a title run before we start examining records? What is the relevance of the nationality? The point is to get talent where you draft, not to get it from American-born or European-born prospects. Every GM misses many good late-round prospects. I don't see why anyone would knock Pritchard's drafting...that's where he's pretty much blown away the field in his tenure as GM. It will definitely be interesting to see whether Pritchard has the ability to hone a talented roster into a focused, title contender. That's what Jerry West did when he traded Divac for Kobe Bryant, signed Shaq and traded Elden Campbell and Eddie Jones for Glen Rice. He dealt a lot of good players he had selected to organize the talent into more of a championship-oriented team. (Of course, it bears noting that one of those moves was trading a veteran, Divac, for a young player, Kobe. It's a matter of getting the right guys, even if they're young.)
