I disagree here. We need much more talent on the starting lineup too. If Portland could ever get the unicorn piece at forward - filling out the bench with quality players becomes much easier.
Dame will be 33 when CJ has an expiring contract. So that is interesting, but maybe not in a good way Portland has been "in the mix" for 7 seasons now. But we've seen that means they can sometimes post a decent regular season record, and even have 1st round HCA (if they are really healthy), but eventually fail miserably in the playoffs when they meet a real contender. Blazers are in the pretender mix, not the contender mix
Hey, we DID subtract Dame and NOT one of the Lakers' stars for the last game - it was fairly close as I recall.
Not really: it's more a comment on the lack of depth on the Lakers. They're very top-heavy and thus a lot more reliant on luck with injuries than, say, The Celtics.
I watched that game...looked to me like the Lakers were coasting a bit and could turn it on when they wanted. It was a 15 point Laker lead with a minute left, so not that close yeah, I get that. The Lakers are working on thin ice but the ice is holding so far still, it was the same result for Portland when they face a contender in the playoffs....a mismatch
Yeah I agree, our starting lineup is not as good as other top western teams. Next year there will be GS as well. We can build a great starting lineup with one slightly below average forward. The problem is we've had end of the bench quality forwards at both starting spots. As much as I enjoyed Melo this year, at best he is a contributing 10th man in a rotation; not a quality starter. When our alternatives were NBA scrubs yes he provided value... but 10th man production should not be the goal of the offseason in our starting lineup.
I don't think the Celtics are a great example, without Tatum or Brown they would be a mess. I'd say Toronto is a better example. Even Denver has tons of depth to fill in spots 3-10; although without Murry/Jokic they'd likely have major problems just as the Lakers. Its actually extremely rare to lose a top 2-3 player on a team and still have any chance of contending. The Warriors did it in prior years, but they are arguably the best team of all time.
Attempt 2 to get back on topic... There's been a few mentioned, but I generally think of bargain bin as guys to sign who have been forgotten or not given a great chance, but another way we can find a bargain is through trades, and I think there could be a few teams that already start to align their books for the 21 offseason to chase Giannis and others. Of course, Olshey set us up to potentially have cap space the year prior to a good year, similar to KP I think doing the same for us previously. So I think a good place to start is looking at who has longer salaries that they might like to get off of, and what we could get in return for helping that
Feeding to Melo is pick and roll? Step back 3 is pick and roll? Dame driving to the hoop between a double team is pick and roll?
as is my habit, I'll pollute the discussion with stats: NBA pick and roll ball-handler ranking: Blazers were best at that in the league, mainly because of Dame. The other side of that was Portland ranked 20th in the league in percentile in PnR Roll Man another play type was isolation: so about 1/3 of Portland's offense is PnR ball-handler and isolation. And the Blazers do really well in those two areas in terms of ppp. But if you look at individual numbers, you realize almost all of that is due to Dame. In the playoffs, the Blazers actually upped their ppp on PnR to 1.06 but the frequency dropped by 25% however, Portland's ppp on isolation collapsed in the playoffs dropping from 0.96 ppp to 0.66 ppp; and the frequency went up. This is the direct result of the Dame-centric defense good playoff teams employ against Portland. This supports the argument that Portland's roster is better built for the regular season, not the playoffs
I don't care who we want to talk to. 33 is still prime years for most premium athletes. Just because his contract isn't expiring next year doesn't mean someone won't see it as a good run and look to fit for a year first. Then if they don't like it he can be used as an expiring the next year. What i said was every year he gets closer.... You know as well as anyone they have not been in the mix for 7 seasons. Brandon Roy left the Blazers 8 years ago and Aldridge left in 2015. Saying they have been "In the Mix" for 7 years is just ludicrous at best and saying it over and over again doesn't make it true. We'll see about that. I happen to believe they are much closer than most think. Getting back to the topic of the thread- They are one good bargain player and a solid trade away from contending.
There arent that many very bad salaries any more with 4 year contracts. Maybe there are some players such as Harkless or Lopez that teams will give away for basically nothing. If we could get one or two rotational players that way, and someone young on the roster takes a leap to the next level maybe we could contend.
I'd insert "and avoiding major injuries to key players...while maybe a couple of the teams ahead of them suffer a year like the Blazers did this year."
demarcus cousins may be this year's Melo at the blazer's vet minimum career rehab center. still only 29 and a good 3pt shooter. edit cheaper than whiteside i would imagine.
in the Dame/CJ era, Portland has averaged 45 regular season wins and 2.6 playoff wins. That's not the record of a contender. I'm not sure why next season would suddenly alter that trajectory and put them in the mix. But maybe I just didn't understand what you meant by mix
I don't see the value of averaging wins over several years. The Blazers were at 49 last year and probably would have been about the same this year absent the injuries. Good, but not good enough to win it all unless the teams ahead of them suffer injuries.
I think we would get a huge net positive return on CJ if we got him to one of the few teams that could use him and value him. The reason being is that the Dame/CJ combo is less than the sum of their talent. CJ takes possessions away from Dame and vice versa, neither are great defenders (CJ is horrible) especially guarding bigger guards, both need the ball in their hands to be effective, they just don't compliment each other at all unless were talking about giving each other praise and then they are incredibly complimentary. This team has a lot of talent actually if we cash in what value CJ has and abandon the Dame/CJ failure. Nurk is already good but he's going to be a really effective player in this league for a while. I still think Zach has a lot to contribute as an athletic role playing big who has good form on his jumper. Nas is going to be really good. If Hood comes back he's another positive. If we can lock Gary up for a long time he is going to be the kind of contributor that helps win championships. Ariza has value both as talent now and an expiring contract. We have the MLE, all of our draft picks and supposedly Melo will sign min level contract for next season. As far as both the Stoffence and Tefence go, exchange CJ for a defensive ball hawking wing who only has to score on the break and hit wide open spot up threes. If we did that we would be able to force like 8 more turnovers a game leading to transition offense opportunities, we'd stop having constant blow buys putting our bigs in bad positions and if we did score more fast break points it would make our half court offense more potent because it wouldn't be our only scoring weapon (oh and we actually, as has been pointed out, use the p&r all of the time not iso and would iso even less without CJ).