Seriously consider. Start Dante Cunningham.

Cunningham isn't even a SF though. He was a PF in college. Not only start a 2nd-rounder, but one that is playing out of position?

 

I am confident he can play SF. He is very in shape, strong, quick, has an outside shot and I think can guard other 3's in the league as good or better than Webster or Outlaw.

Besides. He is only replacing Nic, who only gets 15-20 minutes a game anyways. If that.

 

I agree.

If nothing else it will through off the opposing team's game plan. They will never be expecting him to start.

 

Rather than pushing for him to start, why don't you push for him to play about 15 minutes as a backup? That's a lot more realistic.

 

As a Webster homer I think this is the worst idea ever. But I would like to see Dante play some since Batum is out. Like he could play in the forth quarter of our first game.

 

Start a rookie PF at SF on a team that thinks it can contend for a title? Batum started last year because camp proved that he was much better than even the team expected him to be. I remember Roy raving about him. I've yet to hear reports of Cunningham blowing everybody away at SF.

This board is like bizarro land at times.

 

Batum was still a 19 year old from France who was terrible at summer league against scrubs.

Cunningham is a 22 year old with 4 years of defense-oriented basketball at Villanova who performed extremely well at summer league and good during preseason.

I know he is not Nicolas Batum, but can you really not see the argument or any similarities?

 

I see zero similarities, mainly because Cunningham is a PF, and because I've not heard reports of Cunningham surprising everybody at camp as I heard about Batum last season.

 

You can't use Batum as an example for why Cunningham starting would be a good idea. There's no comparison between Cunningham and Batum. For starters Batum is mostly a defensive player while Cunningham is mostly an offensive player. Batum is a guy that does well off the ball while Cunningham does most of his damage with the ball in his hands. Batum is a natural three and Cunningham is a tweener 3/4. It's just not a good argument.

 

Plus, this is a totally different situation. Webster went down, and with no experienced small forward to take his place, Nate went with Batum (outlaw was playing the 4). In this case, Batum goes down, but we have a perfectly good replacement in Martell Webster waiting in the wings. At the very most, I could see Cunningham getting some time at the backup. That's it. Nate would be an idiot to start Cunningham over Webster.

 

I heard Greg Oden dominated camp last year...and we know how that turned out.

I don't know why you're basing your opinion off reports coming out of camp.

 

I'm basing my opinion on Dante Cunningham not being a SF and Webster being available (and a better player), but whatever.

If people think he should start, so be it. I disagree. I'll just point out that this thread was created by a poster named "Dante_Cunningham".

 

I disagree too, but I disagree with your reasons for disagreeing.

 

Batum played meaningful minutes last year in the preseason. Cunningham did not.

Frankly, it's such a silly idea to me, I haven't gone into depth on why I disagree other than to throw out a few reasons why.

 

I'm no big fan of Webster, but let's give him a few starts to see how he does.

 

You could throw out playoff experience.... You love that one.

Or maybe you could throw out chemistry.... I haven't heard of DC and Roy having long talks outside of the PF.

How good would it be if our star shooting guard and our starting small forward had no relationship away from the court?

 

I'm not a big fan of Webster. Way too inconsistent and he seems to lack bball IQ. I guess the same could be said of Outlaw too though. So I guess I'd go with the lesser of two worlds.

I'd like to see a lot of Roy and Rudy together.

 

Well my name used to be Batum_Kaboom...

 

Nic didn't need the ball to be effective. That worked, because he wasn't going to get the ball much, as we have consistent efficient scorers.

I don't see DC offsetting Nic's defense by playing better on offense, because with the big 3, he's not going to be getting enough touches.

 

This is petty, Nate. You really posted this?

Wait, of course you did, since you apparently don't care if the Blazers implode this year just so you can say that Nate isn't the reason for their success.

Weirdo.