Simons: This year is going to be big

Discussion in 'Portland Trail Blazers' started by KSF-ERIC, Oct 15, 2020.

  1. AldoTrapani

    AldoTrapani Well-Known Member

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    Man Simons should always be loyal to this franchise. They have given him so much trust and confidence. Literally hyped him to us, fed him forced minutes, all under 21 years old.
     
  2. Strenuus

    Strenuus Global Moderator Staff Member Global Moderator

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    Our coach is Terry stotts.

    If defense mattered to be in the rotation... let's just say there wouldn't be a rotation.
     
  3. lawai'a

    lawai'a Well-Known Member

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    https://theathletic.com/2141622/202...-jones-jr-blazers-mailbag/?source=weeklyemail
    a question and some of the response from J. Quick's Blazer mail bag today.

    What’s your take on Anfernee Simons? Do you see him taking the next step next year or is ceiling what we saw this year? — Shane K.


    I’m high on Simons, for three reasons: One, veteran players such as Evan Turner and Harkless, spoke highly of him when he was a rookie. It was midseason, like in January, and I remember Turner telling me the kid was doing things in practice that rookies don’t normally do. He went as far as to say he would be starting for some teams. Players are always the first to know who can and who can not play, and in Portland, the vets knew early that Simons could play.

    Second, Simons works. He puts time in the gym after hours. He studies film at home. And nobody has to tell him to do it or push him to do it. Last season, he hired a personal basketball trainer. This all shows he has the drive and desire to be great. He’s not content just making it to the league.

    Third, he has a great support system. His parents, Tameka and Charles, fly from Orlando and spend a lot of time in Portland during the season. His dad doesn’t sugar coat things, which keeps the perspective on reality. A lot of times, young players hear voices that enable bad habits or plant divisive seeds (you should get more playing time, more shots, etc.), but everything I’ve heard, his father gives it to him straight and backs the staff. His mother is the more nurturing type, making sure he doesn’t get too down on himself. I guess this is a long-winded way to say I feel like Anfernee’s head is going to be in the right place.

    Plus, we all need to remember: Simons is 21. He didn’t play college basketball. Anybody who has watched him practice can see the talent is there. Some players just take time. Whether he admits it or not, I do think his confidence is damaged right now. But for the past two weeks, he’s been working out at the renowned Peak Performance Project campus in Santa Barbara, Calif. (again, the dedication and work ethic) and I think with shooters, all it takes sometimes is an adjustment or simply watching the ball go in and suddenly the confidence is back.

    in another article/feature the magazine has the blazers ranked 14th in their preseason power rankings.
     
  4. Labinot41

    Labinot41 Well-Known Member

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    Except that CJ is hundred times better than Ant
     
  5. e_blazer

    e_blazer Rip City Fan

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    Now, sure he's much better than Ant. But his second year in the league (and remember that CJ, with a 4 year college career, was a far more polished young player than Ant) CJ was better, but not tons better:

    CJ Ant
    G: 62 70
    Min: 15.7 20.7
    FG% .436 .395
    3P% .396 .332
    EFG .511 .469
    FT% .699 .826
    TRB 1.5 2.2
    Asst 1.0 1.4
    Pts 6.8 8.3

    CJ was a much better shooter his second year than Ant. That's Ant's biggest problem: he still gets deer in the headlights syndrome too much and misses open shots. He definitely needs to improve on that this season. CJ made a big leap his third season. Given Ant's youth and the fact that he reportedly shoots lights out in practice, I'd say that there's a good chance he makes a leap this next season.
     
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  6. Hoopguru

    Hoopguru Well-Known Member

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    I think CJ plays the passing lanes as well as Dame. He's always outsized so he gets posted up a lot.
     
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  7. blazerkor

    blazerkor Well-Known Member

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    His biggest weakness in my opinion is getting lost all of the time. He finds himself so far out of position he just looks like a deer in headlights out there. He needs a lot more experience but as we've seen with Meyers even a lot of experience doesn't solve this problem sometimes. What isn't encouraging me to think that he will solve the problems he has with defensive awareness/BBIQ is that he didn't list defense as one of the things about his game that he needs to change to be better next season.

    Edit: I think Ant like CJ unfortunately views his biggest strength as a one on one scorer and in this statement someone who will initiate the offense. He is probably right but we don't need more of those we need more guys who like to catch and shoot and we most of all need more perimeter D.
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2020
  8. blazerkor

    blazerkor Well-Known Member

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    The weird thing is he also gets blown by a lot because he's too damn slow oh and he doesn't seem to play with energy on that end, like he's Dame or something and needs to preserve his energy because he carries the offense. Saying that either of our guards play the passing lanes well is ridiculous because we are one of the worst teams in causing turnovers and transition points. So CJ literally has no area of defense that he is even acceptable in. CJ is an excellent scorer and chooses to use that ability almost exclusively when he is initiating the offense... that would be so helpful if we didn't already have one of the top three guys in the league at initiating perimeter offense. So to recap our team has a need for perimeter defense at SG and instead of being above average to great CJ is a gaping hole in our defense in every way but CJ loves to score off the dribble and does so pretty well but we don't need him to do that unless Dame is out of the game... when Dame is in the game CJ is a ball stopper and a ball hog. I like CJ... I even really like his offensive game but I don't even like that part of his game for this team. He is honestly the exact opposite of what we need in a guard next to Dame.
     
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  9. wizenheimer

    wizenheimer Well-Known Member

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    Jason Quick thought Meyers Leonard was a starting caliber big man
     
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  10. lawai'a

    lawai'a Well-Known Member

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    Yup. Not an nba scout. Was only adding another layer that includes observations and opinions from the same magazine source. Edit #perspectivematters
     
  11. KSF-ERIC

    KSF-ERIC Well-Known Member

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    He started in the 2019 WCF and the 2020 NBA Finals. Started most of last season so... I’m not convinced we would’ve been worse if we had kept Meyers/Mo instead of Whiteside considering how bad we were last season. Does Dame/CJ/Mo/Melo/Meyers do worse than 29-37?
     
  12. wizenheimer

    wizenheimer Well-Known Member

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    I'm sorry, but you come up with just about the weirdest blazer-homer arguments I've seen. The point was that Quick is not some oracle when predicting a player's future

    and yes, Blazers would have been worse with Meyers as the starter instead of Whiteside

    PER: Meyers 10.6....Whiteside 25.0
    TS%: Meyers .627....Whiteside .644
    FT Rate: Meyers .120....Whiteside .340
    Reb Rate: Meyers 14.1%....Whiteside 23.6%
    Off Reb Rate: Meyers 3.4%....Whiteside 13.6%
    Block Rate: Meyers 1.4%....Whiteside 8.4%
    Winshares/48: Meyers .096....Whiteside .204
    BPM: Meyers -0.9....Whiteside +3.2

    I know it's become the thing around here to shit on Whiteside. He's a flawed player for sure, but his in-paint impact for Portland this year would have not been replaced by Meyers

    and there's a difference in the NBA between players who are starting caliber and players who are default starters because a team has terrible options. Meyers is the latter, but Quick believed for years he was the former
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2020
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  13. blazerkor

    blazerkor Well-Known Member

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    Hey, lets not overstate Meyers' role on the Heat. During the regular season he did start most games but he was still 8th in minutes played on the team, 8th in scoring, 3rd in rebounds, 7th in blocks and the rest of the stats are even worse unless you're @swish3 ... also these are season totals because this team had so many mid season and late season additions he's way further down on per game lists on all of these numbers. He only played in three games during their entire playoff run and only got 10 minutes per game in those games and we won't even get into his playoff stats because they were completely insignificant.

    Moe fell off big time this season too. His numbers were horrible obviously that can be attributed to playing behind the two best wings any team had but he did get a ton of starts at PF, so his numbers were just kind of again inconsequential. The shocker is that his numbers on the Knicks... a horrible team that he should have been the first or second option on, were still terrible.

    So nope I don't think those two guys would have made us better... I know it's all subjective because they were playing in new systems and here they would have known the system but still my opinion is we would have been even worse with those guys than we were with Hassan. Just look at the numbers Hassan put up and that will give you a good idea of who was more impactful this season. I will give you this, we would have been better off in the bubble with those two because Hassan and Nurk were even more redundant and uncomplimentary to each other's games than Dame and CJ are. Then their's the fact that we were so thin at the wing. Both Meyers and Mo would have been better options than we had at PF after Zach got hurt. All of that said, given Nurk's injury, the Hassan trade was not only the right move at the time but still is in hindsight.
     
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  14. calvin natt

    calvin natt Confeve

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    If Anfernee Simons played last year at Duke he would have averaged about 16/4/4, been a household name (among basketball homes), a highlight reel like Duke hasnt seen except Zion. People would be so pumped to have a shot at this young guard with athleticism and potential. Hes the 28th youngest player in the league still, and plays on a team with two very good guards in front of him. He isn't in Orlando, Sac, or Detroit etc.
     
  15. Hoopguru

    Hoopguru Well-Known Member

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    Man, I listen to CJ, Dame and others during last years training camp talk like Anfernee was the next superstar.
     
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  16. blazerkor

    blazerkor Well-Known Member

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    I either hope Olshey trades CJ and believe me from my point of view that is my single greatest hope for our team right now in terms of optimizing the value on our roster. If and when Olshey doesn't trade CJ, I hope GMs around the league see Ant the same way you do and we can get some real value for him that isn't redundant to what we already have. Do you want to be giving starting minutes to Dame and CJ and then give significant (lets say 17) bench minutes to Ant? That would be so ridiculous. They all have different games but they all boil down to being small guards who look to score first and are not good defenders... maybe some would say Dame is good but I barely see him as a plus defender and don't think that is good, while CJ and Ant (to this point) have been serious serious defensive liabilities. Our perimeter D is already the worst in the league, we can't bare to give minutes to another guy who only contributes on offense.
     
  17. calvin natt

    calvin natt Confeve

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    If Anfernee ends up getting traded, fine, but not until we know how good he could be. He reminds me of a Monta Ellis type, but Ellis had a ton of mins in GS before he got traded to Milwaukee. He might not be a cornerstone guy, but I could see him as a ultra-quick, athletic guy off the bench or starting for some teams, who can give you instant points and runs the floor. I have no idea if he can guard anyone, but his role might not be that anyway, just put the ball in the basket. He is nowhere near a finished product, whereas Meyers has been a finished product for years. There was such a low ceiling. He didnt and still cant play basketball. Like, intellectually his IQ for hoops is low. Anfernee seems to have more instinct and once he learns how to be more complete like defending and passing the ball, he will be a very productive player.
     
  18. Rastapopoulos

    Rastapopoulos Well-Known Member

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    I agree with whomever it was said that Olshey probably really values Simons and will not trade him unless it's for a someone of real immediate value. Olshey has been shown to be patient and CJ and Dame are good mentors for him. That said, I can also see another team deciding to gamble on him and offering us someone - much like Isiah Thomas gambled on Jermaine and gave up an All-Star. (That trade is not looked back on fondly by Blazerdom, of course, but at the time it seemed like a no-brainer: O'Neal was stalled with us and Davis was seen as a step-below-elite PF/C.)
     
  19. blazerkor

    blazerkor Well-Known Member

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    OK wait, so Ant is untouchable because his upside is Monta Ellis? Am I getting that straight?

    By the way, you never know how good a guy can be and we're never going to have a really solid idea of how good or bad Ant is when he's playing in a back court with Dame and CJ who get 36 minutes per game and Gary who is going to get a lot of minutes too. If another GM sees Ant as having a similar upside to what you do, it would be managerial malpractice to not move him for that value given the makeup of this roster.
     
  20. Rastapopoulos

    Rastapopoulos Well-Known Member

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