Wait, are you saying if we compare our 3rd string options its worse than other teams starters???? Oh NO!
that’s gonna be a good competition. First name Billups mentioned yesterday was DSJ, but he also said Chriss and Pat looked good. My money is on Chriss just because you can never have enough bigs.
Not a fan of Stotts, but there is something to keeping it simple, which is what I think he tried to do. Turnovers really hurt, and I think we will have more this year. Hopefully by the playoffs they will have tapered down and we will have an offense that works better in the playoffs than some of our past teams did.
Hoping we get an immediate improvement like the Warriors got when they moved from Marc Jackson to Steve Kerr. Not to the best record in the league, but a clear HCA team. The Blazers have been a 3rd seed in 2019 and 2018 and now have a superior 5th starter/6th man so it doesn't seem ludicrous. Now if we don't get an immediate improvement... yes I hope the team continues to work on the variety of offense and defensive options Billups talks about. It seems like that could be a huge benefit in the playoffs.
This is a new one from Nance. Says Billups is emphasizing defense and knows "how to get the most out of us." Billups has been having them watch tape of previous practices and pointing out mistakes. Nance has been guarding 3,4 and 5 in practice.
I am not going to go through the whole list but the very first one is not a good example. The Jazz were a pretty good team, but did they really have long wing defenders? Royce is 6'4" with a 6'9" wingspan. Joes is Ingles is 6.7.5 with a 6'10 wing Both played SF-PF at times for the Jazz and not that long. But were both good defenders Norman Powell has a 6'11" wingspan, Snell has a 7'0" wing, Nas has a 7'1" wing, Nance with a 7'1" wing, Roco has a 7'2" wing. In comparison that is not bad. Maybe Brown can also help by the time the playoffs come along.
O'Neale was probably the best perimeter defender in our division last year. Lu Dort is maybe the only other guy who has a shot at that title.
Exactly. And he is not that "long". So although length helps a lot on the perimeter, it is not the deciding factor.
sure, but we have no one close to his being able to play his caliber of defense (regardless of length/size).
That we know of. Royce kind of came out of nowhere a couple of years ago. (another undrafted Jazz player) Time for the new Blazer staff to develop some wing defenders. Nas, RoCo, Norm, Nance all have the potential to do so. It's not like Royce is some athletic freak with his 25" vertical leap.
To me it's not that we have no one because if Norm or RoCo or both took big leaps forward they could do special things defensively. It's just that over their careers Dame and CJ have been big negatives on that end of the floor. So unless Chauncey gets ridiculous gains out of everyone we're still going to be an undersized and under skilled defense. When CJ or Dame are out and Nance is in then we only have one liability and much better size... so that's a good thing. The fun thing is that we have no idea right now. Maybe Chauncey does make a huge, huge difference on our defense making CJ and Dame plus defenders, with Norm (out of position), RoCo, Nurk and Nance playing all nba level D. Then we'd be a top level defense. We just get to wait and see. I do think that Nance will get around 30 minutes a game giving us what amounts to 6 starters, which will be nice.
No, I was wondering why it is that a list of starting bigs was brought up, as if the Blazers don't have a big starting.
As of right now, I am leaning towards the following: I would start RoCo, Nance, Nurk, Dame, and CJ. I would bring in Norm for CJ and keep him in to play with Simons in the backcourt to start the 2nd and 4th. (as opposed to playing CJ and Ant together) I would bring in Nas early for Nance (slide Roco over) so Larry can be back to start the 2nd quarter along with Zeller, Ant, Norm, and either Nas or Snell. Those are my 9 for now until someone gets hurt.
I would love to see the link that shows that 6’7” Nance has “locked down” at least half of that list. Bro, that’s just flat out NOT correct. That is blind allegiance to the pinwheel clouding your common sense. Flat out not correct.
