I like the guy. I guess I kinda maybe understand why he was acquired. But is it too early to say he's the square peg we've trying to fit into the round hole on this team? He's averse to shooting layups. He hasn't gotten comfortable with his 3-pt. shot in this offense. He seems to get in the way of our offense more than facilitating it. Defensively, he's been decent in flashes, but certainly not what I would envision to be worth giving up two draft picks in the teens. After watching us get beat by the immovable force that is Jakob Poetl, I think it's obvious you can't play this small the way the Blazers usually play -- you either need to be committed to up-tempo and quick ball movement or not, you can't play this weird in-between. It doesn't play to any of Covington's strengths and plays to all his weaknesses. I think we needed someone with more size than him, and, if not that, someone who was a more efficient scorer. I'm not saying he's horrible, just a really, really bad fit for this team who probably would be a lot better for at least two-thirds of the teams in the league. This also isn't to blame him for the team underperforming. There are a lot of reasons for that. He might be the most easily movable part to make some improvement, though.
Has his defense really been that good? I know he has a reputation for it, but I haven't seen anything that special yet with the Blazers.
No, but the Ariza post is funny. Ariza averaged 11 points and shot 49% FG% and 40% from 3, his first 20 games were much better than Covingtons first 15 games with the Blazers. Ariza is definitely the better shooter
RoCo hasn't been great, but... We suck, and pointing at RoCo is the wrong direction. For argument sake, let's say we make a trade TODAY: RoCo for 2 1st rounders. Are we better? No.
I would rather we play him at small forward, but since we are short on bigs now, that ain't gonna happen. We still don't have a legit starting power forward and a true backup point guard.
Fair enough. But, to your first point, I addressed that in the OP. For the second, I don't know. Are we going to win anything this year with Covington in the lineup? Are we going to be better down the road without two first-round draft picks? I'd be thinking more along the lines of can Covington be dealt for someone else, though, not draft picks.
I'd be OK with trading Covington, but if we're gonna dream, why not a Melo and/or Kanter trade, and/or getting a new coach?
Covington is help defender he not that good as straight up defender. But the team defense is not good at all so I really blame the coach because his schemes are terrible. You figure majority of the players would understand it but it's seem some do or others don't. I am complain no more about the defense because what you see is what you get.
I don't think you'd get much of anything back for Melo, and I think, defensive shortcomings aside, the last thing we need to be doing is trading off size and bulk right now ... so it's hard to move Kanter unless you are getting back a legit big or two as part of the deal.
He's not in the league, so that would be an option. Plus, Olshey loves to take guys who aren't wanted by 29 teams and seeing if we can throw them into the starting lineup and find a way to win.
I have had the impression that he shoots threes from some areas better than others so I looked it up. Appears he should only shoot corner threes from the right hand side (as we face the basket) and never from the top of the circle, but a few feet either way is great.
This was talked about by some on Day 1 of the trade. RoCo is a very good team defender but not nearly as good of an on-ball defender. In fact, Ariza was very likely the better one-on-one defender even though he is 5 years older. Since RoCo is good as a team defender operating within a scheme and, well, not sure you could even call what we have a 'scheme' unless it's just a bad one. So what RoCo excells in, we don't really do. Same with DJJ. He was the top slasher in the NBA last year and quite a good defender in the zone that Miami played. But we don't play zone, don't have an offense with much slashing, and although our pace is up, you wouldn't really call us a fast break team. So the things both new players do well, we don't really do here in Portland. So are they all of a sudden not the players they were before they came here? Or is it the 'scheme' or lack thereof?
