But he also had a TON of scoring around him. Dame hasn't played with even close to that kind of talent.
The most annoying thing about this is Billups saying at beginning of the year that "good defensive teams play this way" or something to that effect. It just wasn't true and clearly still isn't. Yes, Minnesota is having success with a similar philosophy, but Kat has never been good as a drop defender / primary rim protector and they have more+better athletes and size at other positions. Most good defensive teams are still heavy switch 1-4 (if center is not involved) and drop with the 5 with differences coming more through help concepts off the ball and drive help (which is where you see more of the scramble situations with teams like Miami & Toronto). Playing at the level (either in a hedge or a drop), blitzing (mostly on empty side ball screens if still getting middle or have a 5 that can shoot and beat ICE) is still largely a matchup-based thing or in-game adjustment rather than a base.
And some more from this tweet thread. Interesting. So it's both scheme and roster issue they argue. Scheme is not good for this roster, but also nothing is good for this roster
Absolutely true. The Blazers DO have a scheming issue. The defense should not be blitz everything or drop everything, it should depend on personnel. Under Stotts we dropped everything. Under Chauncey we blitz everything. That just makes us super predictable and teams can attack that.
We should lean conservative ie Phoenix though imo. We aren't as switchable which makes that tougher, but Nurk is more versatile than Ayton in pnr who they rarely blitz or even hedge with. The furthest they'll go is play him closer to the level in drop or late switch like we saw in their game vs Golden State.
Hopefully that is just the pendulum swinging and we will end up the end of the season somewhere in the middle of the pack. That doesn't seem to be what Chauncy is going for though so who knows.
If we drop, our guards need to get through screens better. If we blitz our rotations need to be more clean. When we drop we give up wide open pull up threes, when we blitz we give up wide open catch and shot corner/wing threes (for teams that can pass well). I think the former is more preferable to the latter in general, but again it depends on team and personnel and I think mixing up our coverages in general makes for a more unpredictable defense. But I do understand it's harder for the players to execute. I mean, we have trouble executing a single scheme all the time, so it's still more of a roster issue than scheming issue, although both contribute to us being awful on that end.
This is the part that's bewildering. I guess the fans really are the 12th man. And it's Prime Dennis fucking Rodman.
Can't believe no one said this, but in that KOC video he dropped this nugget: "League sources say in the past whenever the front office would approach Dame with trade opportunities, he'd often want to stick with his teammates, whether it was anything involving CJ, or even a younger players for Kevin Love, or Aaron Gordon or a bunch of other stuff that came up over the past couple of years. But people around the league tell me that's not the case now, anyone can go, if it means improving his chances of leading the Blazers to a championship." I mean, we KNEW this to some extent before, but this level of explicit confirmation makes me wonder if that is why Dame is still okay with the current situation. He knows a huge part of this (roster imbalance) is his own doing, and he wants to remain loyal to the cause and see if it can be fixed.
Nurk is in a tough middle ground. Good defensive big who's both mobile for his size and good around the rim but not elite in either category. I think that makes it tough for him to super impactful vs the elite teams in this league. He really epitomizes the weirdness of our defensive personnel. Small and not very swtichable. Some good on ball defenders that aren't good off the ball and vice versa and not an outlier group in terms of athleticism or IQ. Brings issues into any scheme you choose to play. You can make that up with effort, communication and discipline but only so much.
I'm fairly certain we could have had Aaron Gordon for a similar package than we gave for RoCo, if we had included Ant/Nassir in the deal. I mean, Orlando ended up taking a worse prospect + 1st at the deadline (RJ Hampton), and we know even at that point the Blazers were still in conversations for Gordon (and we had RoCo at that time). Gordon doesn't fix everything, but he's a good point of attack defender and he's not completely useless like Covington is now. Maybe they will be justified in that decision though because both Ant and Nassir have shown themselves to be at least rotation players.
Yes...one additional year. And Dame will eventually catch him. It's just very impressive what Clyde did from the SG spot. Dame has had WAY more high draft picks around him. Clyde made his teammates better and it translated to results. Dame will have more numbers, but Clyde will have way more Playoff wins....which is part of the equation for me.
Yeah, failed high draft picks. Picks who went other places, failed, then we picked them up off of the trash heap. They don't qualify as "high draft picks" IMO. Dame has never had a teammate as good as any of Drexler starting 5 outside of Aldridge. Drexler had bench players better than most of Dame's teammates. You can argue Aldridge. But I'm not sure I wouldn't take Buck, Porter, or Kersey over Aldridge, all things considered.
Because Dame didn't want to trade any of his teammate, yet he doesn't have one teammate from his rookie year still with him? Or because Dame is ok trading anyone on the roster this year and Olshey's biggest move was for Larry Nance?
It didn’t say he didn’t want to trade “any” of his teammates. let’s read the quote again: "League sources say in the past whenever the front office would approach Dame with trade opportunities, he'd often want to stick with his teammates, whether it was anything involving CJ, or even a younger players for Kevin Love, or Aaron Gordon or a bunch of other stuff that came up over the past couple of years. “Often want to stick with his teammates … anything involving CJ or Younger players.” where does it say “he didn’t want to trade anyone!” ???? I’ll be waiting! Great reading comprehension, sir.