You can try to make fun of me as much as you want. I realise the truth hurts. But if you watch even just highlights, you'll see he's always away from the action, never help defends (doesn't understand how), stays with his man like he's their top player when he's always matched on the other team's weakest opposing guard, doesn't rotate on pick and rolls making their big wide open. He's our best offensive player, but he's also the player who gets the most minutes and for 40 minutes per game, our defense sucks. Now I expect that if you reply, reply to the points I made, don't try to bait me or insult me
I'm now watching the Raptors game and Dame is doing a better job defensively, why? Because he's guarding their leading guard, VanVleet. Dame is not a bad one-on-one defender when he doesn't get stuck on screens, he isn't good but he isn't terrible. What we need to do is have Dame guard the other team's leading guard. I realise most games it'd be someone much better than VanVleet but if we want to make Dame part of the defense and he only plays man-to-man defense at least have him guarding the ball, with the rest of the team playing the team defense
If you watch Portlands guards, they all play exactly the same on defense they’re constantly behind their man and the bigs are always forced into bad positions with someone quicker than them coming down hill. Aminu and Harkless are really the perimeter guys on the team who have the length and accelaration needed to play Stotts’ system. Yes while Dame, CJ, Nik, etc are not great defenders, most of why it looks so bad belongs on Stotts’ shoulders. I know they ended up in the top 10 defensively last year but that was mostly on Nurks shoulders as losing all that weight did clearly help him fit Stotts scheme in the paint, its still kind of ugly though.
I agree that none of Dame, CJ or Stauskas are great defenders but they don't have the same faults. CJ is a decent help defender, he rotates, he comes to help, he's active, he's below average as one on one defender but I'd say he isn't better or worse than mediocre as a defender. Stauskas is weak but he isn't a liability, the 2nd unit plays very good defense. Dame as I said is simply clueless as a help/team defender and mediocre as one on one defender. This is why I think the paradigm shift should be to not hide him on their weakest guard, making him absolutely useless as he doesn't help defend, but have him on the ball like when he was matched with VanVleet. He did a decent job and his steal on VanVleet in the fastbreak actually gave us the win
Hey man its not about making fun of you. Its about you telling the majority of this forum we dont know basketball. You should backtrack on some of the things you said and then you wouldnt have this stigma over your head aNd more peolple might be willing to engage with you. but right now, mysef and many others, see your name and the only thing that comes to mind is when you went off the rails and said nobody here knows basketball like you and all that yadda yadda you spouted. Man up, make amends and move on. Until then, its hard to take anything you say seriously aNd not worth debating, because you already know everything. Remember?
Yes they all have varying degree's of competency on defense and strengths and weaknesses. However while I don't disagree with your "takes" I think the point I'd like to make is that under Stotts in portland we have had exactly one guard who did well on defense. His name was Wesley Matthews, and Wesley was a tenacious defender, the heart and soul of those teams a few years back, but he was really, really strong so he could blow up screens. Most of Portlands defensive problems come from plays involving a pick. In which the Blazers almost never change up their defense and almost always the guard ends up behind the play, with a guard or wing going down hill at our bigs. It's ok to play that "scheme" sometimes, but it's very rarely altered, and when they decide to go under it's against good shooters so it just ends up with easy shots... It is on Stotts to a.) change up the defense once in a while, and b.) find defensive schemes that the personnel are capable of playing. You can say it's all on Dame all you want, but the fact is if ALL of the Blazer guards under Stotts except for one were poor defenders than at least part of that is on Stotts. He's basically played the same schemes his entire tenure in Portland. I'm not making any sort of claim that Dame is a good defender, I think his effort last year especially was good, but he doesn't have the physical tools to be a great defender. Dame's one on one defense, is "ok", his team defense is almost non-existent. I just think there is so much wrong with the scheme and how rarely they change it that the rest of the NBA knows what's coming on both ends of the floor vs the Blazers and that can lead to needing Dame or CJ to have almost heroic performances to win.
Why do you think people make fun if you? You cant ask people not to bait or insult you when you do it to everyone else.
Bruh. You said we were losing because of Dame when the team was outscoring our opponent when Dame was on the court... if you cant see how that makes zero sense....
