Agreed! Should have stayed zone tonight and every now and then played Nurkic and Whiteside together. We actually missed Whiteside’s rebounding and shot blocking those last two-three minutes
I mean Terry needs to but I also am not sure we have the proper roster to do such a thing. CJ is just gonna be CJ for most of the game. Melo is older and really was never much of a defender in his prime anyway. Collins and Nurk are supposed to lock down the paint when our guards get blown by and they don't. Instead they give up easies or just foul. Dame is the only decent one along with Trent and Whiteside. Everyone is awful. We need Ariza horribly.
to start with...Zach's defense is significantly overrated. CJ's is non-existent..he has to be one of the biggest net-negative defenders in the league. Dame's a lot better than he used to be, and his ability to decently defend bigger players means he's about a net neutral on defense at best. Melo plays decent defense on about 3 possessions a game; the rest of the time he's poor. That's 4 of 5 starters. Nurk is good of course, but that's in the paint. Trent comes in and while he's intense and tenacious and disruptive, he also loses track defensively quite a bit and needs improved fundamentals. The price of playing young. Whiteside is good defensively off the bench. and that's basically it...a team with a couple of good defenders in the paint, but no lock-down defender on the perimeter. Ariza is a good defender, but not if he's on a beach somewhere so Stotts has a half-full/half-empty defensive toolbox. And he's not a good defensive coach. That's an irritating combo
Someone please draw up a scheme where you can hide 4 or 5 below average perimeter defenders on the floor at the same time. If you don't have guys that can defend in space (I'm not counting Trent), you're toast.
The fact that Ariza can't join the bubble is a fucking comedy, who made that stupid rule? There's people like Lou Williams who went off to a strip club and still got the possibility to re-enter the bubble. Adam Silver...........................
Stotts is playing small ball and it is working. They are outscoring teams by spreading the floor with Trent and Melo. Will it work against the Lakers? No way. Losing Ariza was huge. LaVert ate up everyone including Trent and Nurk in the paint. No depth is apparent. They always are exhausted at the end of every game. Amazing they keep pulling out these wins. But the lack of depth showed with the number of OR in the 4th by the Nets. It has been a fun ride but I was kind of hoping they would have lost. CJ playing 44 minutes with his back? Fucking Crazy
I wonder if there's any sort of "$20 trick" that the Blazers could pull to try to get Trevor Ariza to be eligible for our roster, in the event that we formally clinch the 8th seed and play the Purple & Piss in the 1st round of the playoffs? What do you think, @SlyPokerDog?