FWIW... https://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/...oves-neil-olshey-has-made-this-offseason.html Rate all the Portland Trail Blazers’ trades, signings and departures: Do you like the moves Neil Olshey has made this offseason?
Well, I wish he'd had the cap space to sign both AD and Kawhi, and then work a trade for Paul George. But, given that he had zero cap space to work with, I'm pretty happy with the changes he made. I think getting Bazemore for ET without throwing in a pick was pretty impressive. Same with getting Whiteside for Moe and Meyers. Pretty much everyone around here had them pegged as untradeable at one time or another.
I think he's getting a bump not because his moves were so great, but because in the minds of most Blazer fans, several of moves were in the 'long time past due' realm last summer, he went from Connaughton and Napier to Curry and Stauskas. That wasn't any kind of an upgrade overall, but just about everybody had seen enough of the former pair to know there was no upside in bringing them back for another year. Sometimes, change for the sake of change is a good thing We've seen 4 years of the Harkless/Aminu starting forward experiment; that was at least 2 years too long. We saw three years of Turner which was 3 years too long. We saw 3 years of Layman; and we saw 7 years of Meyers. And we know that Curry isn't going to be a big loss. all in all, going from Kanter-Aminu-Harkless-Curry-Turner-Meyers Layman to Whiteside-Bazemore-Hezonja-Pau-Little may not be an upgrade of the roster at all, especially with Nurkic out. But just seeing new guys in new roles will be welcome, even if many of them struggle at times
I find it interesting to compare the roster from the start of the season last year to the start of this year. Last Year Lillard McCollum Harkless Aminu Nurkic Turner Curry Stauskas Baldwin Layman Swanigan Leonard Collins Simons Trent This Year Lillard McCollum Hood Collins Whiteside Simons Bazemore Trent Little Hezonja Tolliver Labisierre Gasol Nurkic To me there are only two negative things you can say about this year's lineup when compared to the start of last year. 1) The Nurk injury obviously is a big issue. If Whiteside plays well this will not be as big of a deal as it potentially could've been though. 2) We lost our most counted on wing defenders. Can Hood and Bazemore cover that loss? I believe they can with guards and small forwards but may not be as effective with bigger forwards. If Collins is able to stay out of foul trouble this won't be that noticeable, in my opinion.
Aminu and Harkless were solid “regular season” players. The jury will be out the first two months of the year. Very happy about the Hood re-signing and picking up Whiteside may prove out to be a move that gets Neil exec of the year considerations! Very exciting time.
Not replacing wing defenders will be an issue in against good teams and in the Playoffs. The offense should be better though and Dame may finally get some breathing room. Then again, it just might be how they play and are coached. They had the best 3-pt shooter in the league on their team at times along with an added Hood and that didn't seem to make much difference for how teams treated Dame.
I think it's more that people were pleasantly surprised by Hood staying and the Dame contract was expected.
I don’t get this obsession with “wing defenders” Harkless and Aminu both got abused by all the “bigger SFs” that people are referring too. Not like they were stopping — or even slowing them down — before. The difference is, now their counterpart actually has to guard Hood and, hopefully, Bazemore. From what I recall, ET was actually the best at guarding the elite, bigger forwards... And yeah... I’ll pass on that option.
defensive rating: Jusuf Nurkić 105 Maurice Harkless 108 Enes Kanter 109 Al-Farouq Aminu 109 Zach Collins 110 Meyers Leonard 111 Evan Turner 111 Jake Layman 112 Damian Lillard 112 Rodney Hood 113 CJ McCollum 113 Seth Curry 114 defensive box plus/minus: Jusuf Nurkić 3.6 Maurice Harkless 2.3 Zach Collins 1.0 Al-Farouq Aminu 0.8 Evan Turner 0.7 Enes Kanter -0.3 Meyers Leonard -0.4 Jake Layman -0.6 Damian Lillard -1.1 Rodney Hood -1.2 Seth Curry -1.8 CJ McCollum -1.9 defensive real plus/minus: Hassan Whiteside +3.61 Nurkic +3.35 Harkless +1.69 Aminu +1.46 Zach +0.93 Kent Bazemore +0.15 Layman -0.39 Hood -0.46 Tolliver -0.46 Hezonja -0.61 Turner -1.01 Kanter -1.46 the first two sets are from bbref; the last is from espn defensive stats have a lot of noise and they tend to favor big men. That's something to keep in mind. They can also be real team-centric and have skew due to rotations defensive rating is much more of a team stat than an individual stat. I think the best gauge you can draw from defensive rating is to compare the team mark to individual marks. That will tend to highlight plus defenders. For instance, Portland's defensive rating was 110.5. That means Nurkic was +5.5 better than the team mark; Harkless +2.5 better; Aminu +1.5 better; Zach +0.5 better. Turner was -0.5 worse; Dame -1.5 worse; CJ and Hood were -2.5 worse. Now, CJ had the benefit of playing lots of starting minutes with Nurk, Mo, and Aminu, while Hood didn't, so maybe you could say Hood was a little better. the big takeaway from defensive rating is that 7 of the top 8 from last season will be gone when the season starts. Whiteside will go quite a ways in mitigating that deficit, but it's unclear yet if his defensive impact will be as big as Nurkic's. Zach as a starter will help, but he's a PF/C and if he spends much time trying to defend guys like Kawhi, and PG13, and Lebron, and Giannis, he's going to be sitting on the bench in foul trouble all those numbers above match the eyeball test. I disagree about Mo and Aminu getting abused by the premier big wings in the NBA. Yeah, those guys put up numbers but they did that against everybody. Anybody who thinks that Hood/Bazemore/Hezonja is not a major downgrade defensively from Harkless/Aminu/Turner has some blinders on. The question is can that first trio provide enough offense to offset their defensive weaknesses. Personally, I don't think they can, but that's what a season is about
that's a point that I've argued. there is undoubtedly a belief and a narrative that if only Portland had better "spacing" it would solve the riddle of teams selling out their defense to stop Dame and being able to beat the Blazers, rather easily, in the playoffs. That somehow, if Bazemore & Hood were hitting 40% of their three's (something neither have ever done) that it would get teams like the Warriors and Pelicans out of their defense. I tend to think it's all fallacy, especially considering the Blazers are apparently banking on Hood-Bazemore-Tolliver-Zach-Hezonja to be the sharpshooters. That isn't a lineup that will scare any team. There are no Ray Allens or Reggie Millers in that group what would stop teams from blanketing Dame is if he could pass the ball to a teammate that could consistently break the defense by scoring AND setting up teammates for good scoring opportunities. Portland has nobody close to that. If they had a Kawhi or a PG13 or a Lebron or a AD or a Giannis or a Clyde, no team would be able to double and triple Dame. The notion that Bazemore, Hood, and Zach standing behind the arc waiting for the ball is a substitute for a player like those stars is loopy...IMO
You can disagree all you want. Check the splits vs. us. We get killed. Paul George averages 38/11/6 against us... which is the most points he averaged against any team, about the 2nd most assists, and around the 4th most rebounds. So yeah, they’re getting abused because, otherwise, PG wouldn’t have his highest average against us. Kawhi averages 33 against us, which is the 3rd most points he averaged. Giannis we actually did a decent job on (somehow) and he only averaged slightly above his season average, at 28 ppg against us. Durant, LBJ also killed us but I’m getting too lazy to look this up and further reiterate my point... Our “good defenders” got crushed to the point that the “big SFs” had some of their best season splits vs us, better than they put up against “everyone else”. Probably because they didn’t have to worry at *all* about playing defense against them and got to use all their energy on offense all night long...trashing us. So once again, there isn’t much room for us to get worse guarding them as they already killed us (more than they killed most other teams)... Also, never said it wasn’t a downgrade defensively, although I’m not entirely buying the premise that Harkless and Aminu are some stellar defenders of elite players... which is what matters. No one is worried about Joe Ingles torching us in the playoffs.
