I agree that we are a big time rookie and another good player, probably a starter away from contention and that could happen as soon as this off season. One thing that is important is that we don't have cap space and Ant, Hart and Nurk because Ant, Hart, Nurk and our pick eat up that cap space but we will still have TPEs and the TPMLE.
Dame and Ant don't work together, so one has to go. Ant and Nurk aren't even signed. The West is stacked. We're not contenders or even proto-contenders.
For sure. Of “real” players, he’s 2nd behind KPJ of Houston in catch and shoot efg% at 71.5. CJ though, while lower on the list, is still at 63.6, which is just outside the top ten of players averaging 20 plus minutes a game
I understand the comparison, and it has some weight however, Simons has not displayed the ball-hog idiocy of CJ; and Dame/CJ never developed as a pairing under Billups. Nor did they have anything in the rotation but low-tier forwards
I hope that in developing them together, Chauncey can develop in Dame a willingness to also embrace playing off the ball. Our offense could be so much more dangerous with he and Ant both doing so.
I don't know because nobody knows anything. However, if you think Steph + Poole are an encouraging parallel, I'm here to predict you're going to be disappointed.
that's entirely possible, but I do think there is some critical context needed... in 2020-21, Dame was above the 98th percentile in spot-up shots in the league; so was CJ, and Simons was in the 99th percentile. But here's the reality: for the Blazers that season, for CJ 15% of his shots were spot-up; 28% of Ant's shots were spot-up; 51% fro RoCo; 24% for Melo; 32% for Little; 23% for Powell. But only 5% of Dame's shots were spot-up. Now, I suppose you could say that was the Stotts offense at work because under his system, the Blazers almost never ran offense for Dame that he didn't initiate himself. Dame's teammates had much higher rates of spot-up opportunities and that's almost certainly because Dame stressed opposing defenses and had the court vision to find his teammates in good spot-up opportunities. His teammates didn't reciprocate but I'd also suggest a reason for this is that the Blazers simply had poor and ineffective passers other than Dame on the team. CJ was often a reluctant passer and didn't possess good court recognition. And after Batum, the best front-court initiator the Blazers have had is Plumlee. Turner sure wasn't it. in other words, I think it's easy to say "run Dame off the ball more". But in order for that to work there needs to be more than one average passer on the team. If Simons is the only one it's not going to work well running Dame off the ball. And I have no confidence Nurk is that good of a passer except on back cuts; running offense thru him isn't a good idea IMO I guess this is another reason to question why the focus on Grant, because he's not good at all at initiating offense
I wish you'd just put me on ignore, apparently I upset you. I honestly don't keep track of what other posters believe - I'm flattered you do.
if you upset me I would as far as keeping track of what you believe about Dame on the Blazers, do you really think you haven't made it clear? all I did in this case was ask you how it was you knew that Dame and Simons wouldn't work
Winslow was my second-favorite acquisition last year (after Hart, natch) but if he can stay healthy it'll be a first. Plus he can't shoot worth a damn, so he better be Draymond Fucking Green.
his career assist rate is 14.4%; and his turnover rate is 14.2%. Last season, his assist rate was 16%. None of that is very good. I like Winslow as a rotation backup. I'd not like him at all as a starter because it would be just perpetuating the ineffective string of low-tier forwards like Aminu-Harkelss-Layman-Turner-Hezonja-Hood-Tolliver-Melo-RoCo-Powell that were primary in locking the Blazers on the treadmill