Game Thread Blazers at Raptors Game Thread 7/26/20 3pm PST NBCSNW & NBATV

Agreed with you guys. Neil has not made a bold move for another superstar that can play alongside Dame. And Stotts has no discipline that’s expected out of championship team. If Neil want to keep his job he need to fire Stotts at least. And if he does that who would be a great coach for this team?

 

Becky Hammon?

 

You remind me of last year when we were down 2-3 to Denver and you thought it was all over. Then we made the WCF and you were on cloud 9! All with the same team and the same coach. Not sure why people are overreacting to a scrimmage. We haven't even tried to do win yet. If we blow it against Memphis and Boston, THEN come in here and bitch about the team. For now, give them a chance.

 

you mean Evan Turner?

 

So, this was just another scrimmage... the league isn't even calling them exhibition games. They are glorified practices. I want to see more from our perimeter D. That's our weak spot, but we knew that already. What a lot of you are forgetting is that we aren't playing with our real rotation. Dame sat back and let some other guys get run in the first game and sat out the second game. I also think that Nas has a great chance to be a contributor. This scrimmage was the first time Nurk and Hassan were in the same practice against another team but neither of them had Dame to draw defenses away from them. A lot of you are making judgments about this team's possibilities with close to no information. Your conjecture is so wild but also in your minds is so certain. You don't know what Stotts will do with this roster in a real game. You don't know what our team is working on. You can't be sure that he's not holding them accountable. There is no way Stotts coached our roster last year as far as they went with zero accountability. You can't tell me if this team is better or worse than the team that made it to the Western Conference Finals last year. We have the same two starting guards (Dame has been even better this year), we have a deeper more talented front court and we have a huge question mark at small forward. We don't necessarily have the depth on the wing that we did last year but I think Melo brings something entirely different than anyone we had on that roster, I think Gary and Nas can really contribute and I think a rotation of Dame, CJ, Melo, Zach, Nurk, Hassan, Gary, Nas and Rio is better than the rotation we had last postseason. So I think we will get to the play in tourney, win it and face that Lakers in the first round.

When we are playing all of our healthy guys and Dame is putting his foot on the accelerator and we still aren't finding success... then you are aloud to panic. Until then just chill the fuck out with all of this dooms day bullshit, please.

 

All and all I don't really see a big difference between the totality of ET and what Rio brings to the table. Not that the scrimmage today counts for anything but like ET, Rio didn't fill up the box score but was a +13. We obviously don't need a Scottie Pippen type because Dame does a great job of running an offense by both scoring and distributing. If it was just CJ in the back court, like today, then we would need a Scottie Pippen.

 

I don't know guys? Hope they can pull this together a bit better.
There is a lot to like but there are some things that are obviously not working well yet.
Hoping free throws start to fall.
Hoping the three starts to fall.
Hoping we see better perimeter defense and a willingness to take advantage of obvious mismatches.
With no Lillard this has a built in excuse for out of sync play. Oh Well.

Go Blazers!

 

The defensive trend/scheme/lack of effectiveness/specifically choosing to leave Steph Curry wide open in a Playoff game, is not exactly limited to one scrimmage.....fair?

 

From Yahoo sports, after the game:

• Can the Trail Blazers close out well enough against three-point shooters to limit their ability to break games open?
  
  
• Can the Trail Blazers -- a better-than-average three-point shooting team in the NBA before the hiatus -- find their touch from long range?
  
  
• If the Trail Blazers can't hit a high-enough volume of threes, can they get enough high-percentage shots from two-point range to offset their three-point imbalance?
  
  
• Stotts was asked how he thought the Nurkic-Whiteside tandem did in its first game action.
  
  "I thought they played well," he said. "I thought the team played well when they were together. I think it's obviously something we'll continue to look at.
  
  "If you look at the first half, we were leading at the half. We played well in the first half and they were shooting threes."
  
  True. But they were getting several open ones and those are eventually going to go in.
  
  "There is room to improve," Stotts said. "We are who we are… I'm not going to downplay it, the three-point shot is a big concern in the league right now."
• Portland's defensive rotations often looked more like scrambles than set rotations. And at the offensive end, the Blazers didn't get as many open looks from long range as the Raptors did.
  "There is room to improve," Stotts said. "We are who we are… I'm not going to downplay it, the three-point shot is a big concern in the league right now.
  
  "We didn't shoot the three well. We're going to shoot it well eventually.
  
  "I want to get good shots. Dame is going to take his seven to ten threes. He's going to give us more threes. We will get the ball inside. I'm surprised we haven't offensive rebounded as well as I thought we would, to begin with.
  
  "My biggest thing is that we get good shots -- play to our strengths. Some nights it's going to be threes, some nights it's going to be inside.
  
  "I don't think you're going to see a steady diet of anything from us. We've got inside and outside. We've got penetrators, we've got three-point shooters. We're not strictly a three-point shooting team. We've got to score the points where we can get them."

My question is; was our success in first half just because they were missing shots? In the second half we had our starters back in, but Lowry and Gasol didn't play, yet we struggled. Do Stotts and the team have a sense of urgency, they have three practices left before games for real.
https://sports.yahoo.com/trail-blazers-outscored-30-3-014135587.html

 

Well the way I look at it yes they got a lot to work on especially stop the ball against when there running the brake against us. What I see everyone running in the paint and forgetting the most important person on the court the person with the ball. But this is not new for this team under Stotts neither. I am not worry because there are scrimmages and but they was ahead at half on both scrimmages but got lit up in the third with our starters.

 

Well, I'm worried. Is there enough time left to fix these issues?

 

I miss @hoopsjock and @BonesJones on these game threads and other threads. It seems kind of boring now and not so insightful.

 

Totally agree with this. Some may not like Ariza but he would help this team right now.

 

This seems like an inexcusable excuse to me.

 

Turns out this guy has been a thorn in our flesh before - specifically, in the final of SL.

 

You mean sports fans experience mood swings? I'll have to look into that - I'm suspicious.

But it is not the same team. An analogy is when Boston went on that playoff run a couple of years ago with several players out and Terry Rozier playing point. Then they got players back (and signed Kyrie) the next season and were a big disappointment. I don't think you can draw huge lessons from our success in the playoffs last year (without Nurk) because we caught lightning in a bottle. We haven't been a good team with Whiteside all this year, with the exception of when Dame went nuclear for a few games. If he can do that again in the 8 games, we've got a solid shot.

 

Nurkic is so freaking good. Just refreshing watching him run around disrupting this on defense so actively after watching 6 months of Whiteside be lazy. I want Zach as full time PF. He opens up space on offense and is far more engaged defensively and on the boards than Hassan.

But all these games are highlighting our lack of shooting. Ant didn't step into Seth's role as we had hoped, and losing Hood/Ariza will hurt us. This should be our #1 goal for the offseason, whenever that is. Add shooting at every position and get a decent backup PG.

 

do you think Trent could be that quality back up PG? I'm torn. I want him defending the other teams' shooting guards, but I also think he might be able to run the offence.

 

When was the last time you saw Trent pass the ball? Of course he's not a PG. He's been good this year in his role, but he's more of a chucker than CJ.

 

Saw him do it right out of the gate yesterday, though he was technically the 2 guard and CJ was running point, but Trent brought it down and went right to Whiteside with it. You could be right though. An anomaly.