23 is a lot. In fact, it's 7 more than the 16 playoff wins the Dame/CJ team actually had. But 16 is a lot smaller number than the 30 losses they had lol..."fact"? and if Portland had drafted Giannis instead of CJ they could have won it all by now...a couple of times
Someone in this thread said 23 wins and I ran with it, my bad. What about the comment you laughed at? You think Dame/CJ have had the right team built around them? As for Giannis, lots of teams passed on him. Draft is a crapshoot. If he was obviously better than CJ, we would’ve taken him.
a few parallels here. injury ridden team gave him the ball out of necessity, same age. but ant has been given opportunities to play before and has a scouting report on him, unlike Lin, who was in and out of the league at the time. Ant's usage isn't as high as Lin's seemed during his run. But the dropoff after that one game for JL against Miami was drastic. melo feeling jealous also didn't help.
I laughed because you called it a "fact". The "right team"...what does that even mean? Sure, Dame & CJ might have won a championship if the front court was Giannis, Gobert, and Paul George. But that's not reality. Funny thing is Portland could have had Giannis out of the 2013 draft. They could have had Gobert from that same draft. Both were there for the taking. They might have been able to add Paul George or Jimmy Butler, but olshey's ridiculous man-love for CJ kept either of those additions from potentially happening the irony is the biggest believer in the Dame/CJ back court was the guy that closed off every opportunity at building a contender around them, or at least around Dame. That man-love has been the 7 year obstruction to contention
Look at the huge contracts Neil's rosters were paying in the Dame CJ era; Evan Turner $75 million, Meyers Leonard $40 million, Allen Crabbe $75 million, Hassan Whiteside $25 million per year, Kent Bazemore $25 million per year. Derrick Jones Jr $10 million per year. Looking at the season ending in 2024 multiple years from now, the Blazers will still be paying Andrew Nickolson $2.8 million on the salary cap and luxury tax! The lack of a quality starter or even great 6th man to go with Dame CJ teams was the problem with those rosters. You remove CJ and give Neil that salary cap space and do you think the team would've magically been a contender? Plug any one of those big names you list to a Dame CJ backcourt and we might have seen a contending year. There was plenty of salary space for all 3. The problem with Neil was wasting tens of millions of salary space on worthless players, and not having any above average NBA players outside of Dame CJ. CJ might not be the solution to winning a title, but he wasn't the primary problem.
teams are putting their best perimeter defenders on him and trapping him hard but he's still putting up 26/8/3 on 50/40/90 splits. we got something here. this ain't jeremy lin who fell off a cliff the moment defenses started keying in. Ant was cooking Bam last night on switches. Eye opening.
Morey is going to get the guy he's wanted all along James Harden, in the off season. Ben and James both use Richie Paul.
Marang mentioned tonight that Simons was averaging more point per possession than any other player in the ENTIRE league. Seriously?
doubtful unless it's just based upon the last 10 games. I'd be curious what he means by 'possession' he's 5th on the Blazers in TS%. points/FGA: Zeller 1.56 Nurkic 1.42 Powell 1.37 McLemore 1.25 Simons 1.24 and here are the Blazer individual points/100-possession stats: Damian Lillard 32.3 CJ McCollum 29.0 Norman Powell 27.8 Anfernee Simons 27.1 Jusuf Nurkić 26.0 Ben McLemore 25.0 Cody Zeller 19.4 Greg Brown III 18.5 Nassir Little 17.8
I'm guessing he was reffering to the last 10 games when his role dramatically changed.....only makes sense.
Simons is the future of the team, and I feel like I'm arguing with the same people who thought I was nuts for saying that LMA was holding Dame back and that Dame would surpass LMA.
I remember when some of these folks thought it was ridiculous that a team would offer Simons a bunch of money this offseason too. Looking more likely now with his play. Detroit isn't going to hold back over Killian Hayes. Simons looks substsntially better than Hayes. Simons gonna get paid this summer. We have to trade CJ or Powell at least. Maybe even both of them if we are hell bent on keeping Dame.