Ok let me sum up the reasons to keep CJ according to that wonderful piece. - Great scorer - Good in community - No need for a panic trade Really convinced me.
It makes more sense to trade Lillard IMO. He has a lot more trade value and CJ is a lot more efficient. I'm not for trading either though.
Their on court value MIGHT be debatable, but their value to the team and the city cannot. There is no way to get equal value in return for Dame. CJ is a different story imo
Dame is our Curry, CJ is our Ellis... it's clear that if either of the two are traded, it needs to be CJ. I'm okay with trading CJ IF we get a huge need met.
I mean...if someone made a gigantic offer for Lillard, at least on paper it makes a lot of sense. We should make clear, though, that McCollum simply isn't as good. He's actually a bit less efficient than Lillard, though both are hyper-efficient (Lillard has a .607 TS%--which accounts for threes and free throws--while McCollum has a .592 TS%), they have similar Turnover Rate (despite Lillard having a larger Usage Rate) and McCollum isn't in Lillard's neighborhood for Assist Rate. Beyond all of that, Lillard is the closest thing to Steph Curry in terms of having unlimited, scheme-busting range. McCollum is a great shooter, Lillard can hit shots that can't be credibly defended. That said, there's reason to believe that McCollum could grow into more if given the lead role. He'll never be Lillard as a shooter, most likely, but he can probably up his play-making for others if he was the main initiator. He could probably provide 80-90% of Lillard, which is really good. But since Lillard provides the type of unguardable long-range scoring that only Curry and perhaps Durant can offer, a team might be willing to pay a premium for Lillard that McCollum would never generate. Portland can better absorb the loss of Lillard with McCollum there as a replacement and if you get a Godfather return... The problem is what that might do in the locker room unless you're getting back a top-five superstar, which you wouldn't be. Maybe you deal with that blowback. It would certainly create shockwaves in Portland. I don't know what kind of offer makes sense, but I am pretty sure that--at least on paper--there could be a circumstance where you keep McCollum and trade Lillard. Keep the almost-Lillard and get a Lillard-premium return.
I just don't see how you can trade either right now. First, Stotts needs to change his scheme and hire a defensive expert as assistant coach. If that doesn't work, you fire the head coach and hire a defensive minded guy. If that doesn't work, you do everything to get a premier rim-protector. If that's not enough, you get rid of more of the other guys and find better defensive players to surround them.
Teams would die for an elite scorer like CJ, we wouldn't even need to entertain the idea of dealing dame. For example, if we actually put McCollum on the block, teams like Orlando would pretty much hand Olshey their roster sheet and say here, choose whoever you want.
There's nothing inherently wrong with the scheme, it's a fairly conservative approach that values taking away high value shots and tries to limit opponents to long two-pointers (the least valuable shot in basketball). The same personnel (more or less) executed this very same scheme a year ago to "average" results. The bottom line is that even if they adopted your approach, how are they supposed to get these supposedly superior defensive players (who can also shoot) without giving up anything of value? The Blazers roster isn't exactly inspiring other GMs to sell the farm to get ahold of our underachieving, one-trick pony players like Crabbe, Leonard, etc. If the goal is a more balanced roster then CJ and Damian are probably always going to be a problem that no amount of coaching, scheming, or ancillary trades are ever going to remedy -- A team's two best players can't be this shit at defense and ever expect to do a damn thing.
This. I can't see the Blazers trading CJ anytime soon in that the team is very young and he just signed a large contract. But at some point they are going to get desperate and drastically alter the makeup on the team. There are only five guys on the floor at any given time. Two of them can't be such huge defensive liabilities.
I do, but it would require an anchor down low and above average defenders on the wing. We have the second part of that. As for the scheme, I actually like it when Aminu is out there, and I would LOVE it if we also had Noel. Noel is so tailor made for the current scheme that it would be irresponsible of Neil to not aggressively pursue him. That said, Stotts has had success with different schemes before (rolo) so I don't think this is a coaching issue.
CJ is way better than Ellis was and is. Send CJ to Orlando or Brooklyn and he's an All Star. Ellis has been a journeyman since GS traded him.
Also, Curry/Ellis never worked. They didn't even make playoffs. Dame/CJ has been to the second round.
which is why the return for CJ would be big. We're having the same defensive problems with dame and CJ as golden state did with Ellis and curry. It's debatable whether the offense CJ provides makes up for what he gives up defensively. If we're going to keep both, which I'd be ok with, we need an elite defensive big. What we have right now isn't going to take us anywhere.
Their situation is entirely different. They also had Klay Thompson. We do not. And we've been to playoffs. They had not.
Still not what I'm talking about, my man. I'm just looking at how the situation looks. Not playoffs/no playoffs... just the situation.
