Everybody loves CJ. Everybody loves Dame. What everybody does not like is our prospects with that pair as our backcourt.
I don't want to trade either. I would like to find a strong defender at the guard position who can compliment them both. I don't know who that would be. Maybe someone in the draft?
Josh Jackson at the three with Rabb at the 4 and Nurkic at the 5. I think that would be solid enough defensively to make Dame and CJ work. It would take a year or two to become a winning team trying to integrate two 20 yr old rookies into the starting lineup though. But most great things require patience.
"I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous, everyone hasn't met me yet." - Rodney Dangerfield I love 'em both. Put me in the not-everyone crowd. We just need to be patient and find the right pieces to put around them. A third scorer. A rim protector... Not many teams have two quality players to build around. Not only are they great talents on the floor, they seem to be quality people that represent Portland well.
CJ is probably my fave Blazer (currently, since RoLo went) but that doesn't stop me wishing every time I think about it that we'd've drafted Giannis or Gobert instead of him. Great person does not equal best for our team. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't care about personality. I was miserable when we had Ruben Patterson. But you can have both - like Giannis, for example.
Drafting people ahead of him and trading him are two completely different scenarios. He's on our team.
Honestly we just need a coaching change, when Patty Mills became a competent defender for the Spurs it gives me hope for our backcourt. It's not like we are asking for all-NBA defenders out of them, just be average.
I don't wanna trade them. I want a high flying small forward and a bruiser power forward. Then I want Nurkic to get in shape and run the ball through the post over and over and over and destroy people. That isn't asking too much is it?
Being fair, Kansas style of play leads to that feeling from their players. Wiggins and Embiid were underwhelming but we all knew they were elite prospects still.
