Since this is the speculating season, I thought to introduce an alternative approach to considering Blazer needs. Already the Blazers seem to match fairly well with the Lakers, and it is a little uncertain whether the Nuggets are a long term threat given Billips age, but it does seem pretty likely that the Cavs may be a future roadblock to a championship. The Blazers probably have more trading/free agent potential this year than they will have in the next couple of years (aside from trading away core players). Should the Blazers put much weight on targeting a player who can better defend LeBron than current team members? Who does a decent job of guarding Lebron? Is Ariza such a player? Is it more important to stop him from driving, or to improve perimeter defense? [I don't follow the Cavs, so I don't have any specific answers myself. I imagine though, that forum member probably have good thoughts.]
was a possibilty.... how ever not after this season no way we get him if anything batum will do fine on him if he gains a little muscle weight, and im sure brandon or others could handle him as well i dont think we need to get anyone specific just for lebron because i think we have it with batum or at least a slower-downer hah
There isn't such a thing. James is enormous and still as quick and fast as anyone. He can pull up and shoot or explode to the hoop. Portland won't be beating Cleveland by matching up well with James. If they beat Cleveland in a series, it'll be due to having advantages at other positions and surviving James. There was never a Jordan-stopper or -slower. All you could do was try to wear him out with waves of defenders and hard fouls and hope to win despite his production.
Nobody will be a stopper. I think we have a player who'll annoy the hell out of Bron-Bron in Batum. Nic is 6'8" and still has a ways to go in developing his body. When he fills out he'll be that guy we can throw at LeBron.
One of the reasons I'd like to see us add Artest. Houston held LeBron to 40% shooting and 2.5 assists in two games this year. I imagine a lot of that was also Battier, but jesus, that's about as close to "stopping" LeBron as you get. (Dude still averaged 24ppg.) Yeah, you can say, "It was only two games!" But look at the splits: http://www.nba.com/playerfile/lebron_james/season_splits.html He did worse against Houston in those key stats than against any other team in the league. If you can turn LeBron into a volume shooter with few assists, you've done something almost nobody else can. More and more, I really hope we target Artest this offseason.
Oh, and in case anybody was wondering, LeBron put up 30 points on 46% shooting, 12 assists per game in the two games we played Cleveland. Yeah, we can definitely use a little of what Artest can bring.
Sorry, but I'm not sold on the idea of bringing on a head case like Artest just to lower LBJ's PPG by 6 and FG% by 6%-unless he can sign something to guarantee that he's not going to embarrass our franchise like he did Indiana's...
I say we sign Mike Tyson as the 15th guy. We could use him a few times a year to take opposing players out.
You know, he's played 4 pr-disaster-free seasons since then and been the best or second best player on most of those teams. In Portland he'd be the third or fourth best player on the team, and even if he reverted to old form it's not like he's the face of the franchise. He'd be the equivalent of Dennis Rodman on the Spurs or Bulls. Neither of those two franchises seemed terribly "tainted" by the influence of Rodman.
