Barnes is garbage. Inneficient volume scorer who doesn't pass, and can't defend either. His defense is extremely overrated, and he's overpaid. I'd rather have Harkless than Barnes.
Read the stats below Scalma. Harrison Barnes being considered a good player is more of an ideology than reality. His defense is extremely overrated, and he's actually poor on that end. What's funny is Harkless is taller, and an even more versatile defender than Barnes, and actually defends well. What does Barnes do that Harkless can't? Barnes isn't efficient, and is not an ideal secondary scorer at all. Harkless' BPM is 3.9 points better! Barnes is extremely overrated on both sides of the ball.
I'm not saying Olshey would do it, but it would be a decent trade and likely make the team much better in a year or two. But, we have to admit that what comes out of Olshey's mouth has very little to do with what he believes or what he is planning--as it should be.
Do you believe the lack of good ball movement is Stotts or the players? I really can't tell because the Batum-era teams moved the ball beautifully under Stotts. Maybe it's just that Stotts is prioritizing the PnR over finding the open man.
I can only imagine how potent an offense would be if we had the ball movement we had with Matthews and Batum, combined with multiple PnR screens and motion. But, maybe that is just too much movement and complication for the roster we have right now. Maybe that is part of the issue is that the players just can't handle that much.
Over the past couple seasons, POR's offense has devolved to the point where it's now almost 100% reliant on the pick and role and iso plays for the guards. I'm surprised and disappointed Stotts has let it come to this and wasn't able to make any adjustments in the NOP series. Especially when ball movement has been the hallmark of his most successful teams in the past. As mentioned, ball movement was much better during the RoLo, Aldridge, Batum, Matthews, Lillard era. Also, running the offense through Plumlee in the high post in the LAC series completely turned that series around. I know @HCP likes to talk about the Clippers injuries as the only reason POR won that series, but even without the injuries, the series would have been tied at 2-2, and the reason for that turnaround was letting Lillard play off the ball more so that the Clippers couldn't constantly trap him with the double team at the point of attack. We saw that same type of high post distribution from Nurk during his first 20 games with POR, when he had several games with 4, or more assists, including 6 twice and a career high 8 assists. Because the trade came late in the season, it was like Stotts didn't change the playbook to suit Nurk, he just plugged Nurk into the Plumlee role in the offense - and it worked brilliantly. Then with a full off season to adjust the playbook for Nurk, he completely took him out of the high post and camped him down on the low block for post ups, which only works well when Nurk is guarded by a much smaller player. When guarded by a large, physical center, Nurk tends to rush his low post moves and flip up all kind of soft, out of control shots. I'd really like to see a return to more of Nurk in the high post hitting Moe, C.J. and Dame as they cut to the basket. It draws the opposing big out from under the basket, which makes it much easier for our guards and wings to finish at the rim, and Nurk has proven to be a more than capable passer in that situation: More of this, please. And, that's just one way to create more ball and player movement. One that has been proven to work with the personnel we have. I like Motivated Moe, but he's not a great passer, and for all of Turner's so-called passing ability, Terry just seemed to finally settle on using Turner for post ups and isos. With Dame and C.J. already running too many isos, the last thing this teams needs is a third player who also depends on iso plays for the majority of his offense. Either put Turner in more of a distributor role, like he was in BOS or use the TPE to get a wing that can pass the damn ball. BNM
It really makes me wonder why Stotts completely abandoned something that worked so well (Nurk passing out of the high post). I can see trying to fine tune things as Nurk, his teammates and the rest of the league adjusts, but to completely abandon something that worked so well, with the exact same personnel, seems crazy to me. The endless isos and pick and rolls have become too predictable and way too easy to defend. Alvin Gentry had one game plan going into the NOP v. POR series and Stotts never forced him to deviate one tiny bit from that plan. Series over! This reminds me so much of Gentry completely outcoaching McMillan in the PHO v. POR series back in 2010. Gentry put Grant Hill on Andre Miller and hid Steve Nash on Batum. Nate did NOTHING to counteract that move. Series over! Ironically, the "old" Stotts offense with plenty of player and ball movement was such a breath of fresh air compare to Nate's All-iso-all-the-time offense. Now, I fear Terry is becoming Sarge 2.0. Like Nate, Terry's offense has become too stagnant, too predictable and too easy to plan for. Also ironic that this team used to be all offense, no defense, and the forum was constantly on Stotts about the team's poor defense. The Dame and C.J. can't co-exist camp was claiming POR could never have a top 10 defense with our undersized backcourt. So, now we have a top 10 defense and our offense has gone to shit. Hopefully, 2018-19 will be the year Terry finally puts both together. He's proven he can coach both a top 10 offense and a top 10 defense, but has never proven he can do both at the same time. If he can't do it in 2018-19, I'll be firmly on the fire Stotts bandwagon (assuming there's enough room, it seems to have gotten rather crowded after the NOP series). BNM
Isn’t there a big difference between being a guy the other team knows is the#1-2-3 option and the guy who’s like the 5th option?
When I was watching Golden State the other night (and also LeBron James), I started thinking that some people just make correct decisions quickly (which is basically how we measure IQ.) It seems to me that a lot of Blazers don't have that.
Well I’m not claiming he’s a good defender, just that offensively his stats will be different as a 1st or 2nd option than Moe’s who is like the 4th or 5th?
Unfortunately, this is true. It's like CJ and Dame prefer taking bad shots to make highlight reels - rather than taking good shots and making highlight reels after. In contrast, Steph Curry has excellent shot selection but can also make impossible shots.
I said "It's like". Obviously they want to win but their shot selection is terrible. I do think if they had better shot selection, their efficiency would begin to resemble the Splash Brothers. And the thing is that it's not like they can't create their own shots. For example, when I look at Steph, he reminds me of B-Roy when he was juking, side stepping, turning around to create space before shooting - rather than simply dribbling in front of a defender/crowd and shooting it. If there was no space, he would pass it. Then, if he had no choice, he could hit the impossible shot from time to time, which psyched the defenders out. The result was it busted teams up and allowed him to control the tempo over time. Curry does this a lot, which makes his shooting even more deadly. CP3 excels at this and so does Lebron (of course, Lebron uses his freakish athleticism to do so rather than shooting).
