Olshey traded Eric Gordon, at a point where he was a promising young talent, to get Chris Paul. I have no doubt he'd trade CJ if a deal came along that brought back a clear upgrade in talent. I also think the odds of that happening are pretty low. Trading CJ in a lateral move just to make a move would be dumb.
How often are stars (if CJ is a star) traded for equal talent/stars? If traded, CJ would probably return the Blazers bench players and maybe a starter. And while, like Mediocre Man said, the teams perimeter defense HAS to improve, I'm not sure trading away CJ will actually improve them as much as keeping him would.
Cj, yet again, showed improvement in only his second season of full minutes. He really showed some nice defense in the play-offs, and may be turning the corner - turning into a two-way player. He has one of, if not THE highest ceiling of all of our players. You do not trade one of the best shooters in the league who is showing a steep trend of growth. He could very well become our best player - and arguably may already be. . . (Plus his game is an absolute delight to watch )
CJ is not the problem, when Lillard is injured he is able to carry the whole team on his back. When CJ is hot he is keeping us close with the Warriors, even "the snake" AKA Durant gave him props.
I don't really understand the premise when it goes from trade cj because too much money tied up in our big 3, but then trade him for similar salary? How does that help our financial situation at all?
I do not see an available player we might trade CJ for. I wouldn't even trade him for Porzingis now that we got Zach Collins, would rather allow Collins time to develop. I do not want a new point guard, power forward or center because I think we are good in those positions, so I could maybe contemplate trading him for a better fit at SG (can't see any who are available) or small forward (cannot see a player I'd trade him for either). Unless you can get Antetokounmpo or Klay Thompson level of talent back for him, it makes no sense.
I think I just heard one of the guys on 620 say the Blazers should've traded Crabbe and Turner for Butler. I might have misheard him, but let's assume I didn't. If the salaries matched, sure, that's a great trade. The problem is, those two salaries don't match Butler, and if you're Chicago, why would you take on that huge amount of underperforming salary? I keep forgetting that most of what they talk about on local sports radio is just to get a reaction/call/tweet.
It MIGHT be - but we don't know yet. To trade him now because it MIGHT make us better isn't a good idea. Why don't we trade him IF it becomes apparent that a Dame/CJ back court CAN'T work. That puts us in the position to find out if what we ALREADY HAVE does/can work. CJ's value isn't going down anytime until he's in the final year of his contract, and even then it might not go down all that much. The fact of the matter is that there aren't very many good SGs in the league, and CJ's defense isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be, so he's really not a defensive liability. Bring in a good coach and we can be at least an average defensive team with this roster - being average doesn't require any particular skill set from your personnel, it just requires a coach who knows what he/she is doing.
I must morphing into a homer, because I don't think I would trade CJ and Collins for Porzingas. I used to think Porzingas was great. a lot of it based on how much NY seemed to value him. But then they wanted to trade him; what does that say? And then I looked at his stats; they are not that great.
I'm disagreeing with the idea that salaries have anything to do with why we would trade CJ. If we can get a player better then CJ, yes. You trade him. The same goes for anybody else on the team. Especially if we can bring in quality defenders with offensive game as well. But if you think Collins can play at the 4, and will be a good defender, CJs defense might not be much of a liability.
I wouldn't trade CJ for Porzingis straight up, much less including Collins. It's not like Porzingis led the Knicks to the playoffs.
The reasons Phil Jackson wants to trade Porzingis has nothing to do with his skill as a basketball player.
Salary absolutely matters, because you are hoping that the player in return is on a max contract, or about to recieve one, which would then exhaust one of the three max contract slots that an NBA team can reasonably carry at a given time.
If you think your guy is one of the top five young players in the league; I don't think you decide to trade him solely because he missed an exit interview
I am a Blazer fan for life, die hard until the end. But....let's be realistic here.....nobody besides GS and Cleveland (if LeBron stays), with maybe a sprinkling of SA, legitimately has a chance of winning a championship in this league for the next 4 or 5 years, at least. I could see maybe a couple of other teams with a chance....but really, it's going to be those three. And we fought dearly just to get above .500. We're not winning that championship anytime soon. We need at least two other star-caliber players to compliment our roster, and we can't afford them, nor does anyone want to come here in FA. Don't get me wrong....I'll still root for this team every game, and I'll have fun doing it. But I've made peace with that fact. Ultimately, I just enjoy watching them, and I'm okay with not winning a championship as long as they make it competitive and put the best effort forward. We just need to be realistic with ourselves here. Short of LeBron and Kawhi Leonard coming here in FA (or some other All-Star-caliber player), it's not gonna happen while GS is still around. That being said....here's some highlights of CJ from this past season:
I think Dame, CJ and Nurk were 13-3 in March before Nurk went down. They were really playing well. Even Vonleh looked good alongside Nurk. They were the youngest team in the league with a lot of other decent role players. By the time the playoffs rolled around Ezeli was out, Ed Davis was out, Nurk was out (except for that game 3 when he was pretty limited) and Meyers was dealing with injuries. So we basically had Vonleh and an even more ineffective than usual Meyers Leonard as our lone bigs. We drafted a couple bigs in the draft and hopefully won't have as many injuries next year up front. So I think we already have a pretty good lineup but I definitely expect more moves. If I'm Olshey I'm definitely keeping Dame/CJ/Nurk. I want to see what they can do.
