Chauncey Billups shares his plan to improve Portland Trail Blazers

Wait until we lose a game and his 3 groupies log on.

 

I love Dame Dolla but i agree with your post. Anytime i read a post on here where it says "Dame should leave this trash organization, he deserves a Championship". It makes me cringe. Why does Dame deserve a Championship? Those whom work for it deserves one for sure. Dame is a beast, a phenomenal player but there's no question that he has been lazy defensively over his career. He has a chance to be a plus defender and you saw him playing harder defense once Powell got here. Not putting that all on Dame, Stotts didn't hold them accountable. How can you really old a player accountable that makes more money than you do?

I think Chauncey has a good approach and if everyone buys in, we could absolutely build on what we have. We aren't missing a ton of pieces. Just some buy in and one more really good player.

 

Dame CJ and Roco will never log on here...

 

Yeah he lost all of them this year anyway.

 

In the videos I've seen and the things I've read--if all the players buy in--he is going to be a great coach. That calm confidence and consistent message is key.

 

Chauncey and the Pistons made several eastern conf finals and one a championship with a 6'8 center and zero ring chasing superstars in the starting lineup....that is what I want to see translate to the Dame era Blazers....team wins..not ego driven personalities.

 

IDK?
He also said this.

So either Billups knows what he is talking about or doesn't?

 

he was being diplomatic

 

Good response.

 

The issue is that it’s so naturally ingrained in him at this point. This is why Stotts should’ve been canned years ago. Good luck changing the type of player CJ is 10 years into his career.

I agree though. CJ could be amazing in the right situation.

I really would like to see us trade something like DJJ + Picks for a SF or PF and then use CJ as the most expensive 6th man in history.

 

Immediately coming in and trashing the previous coach probably isn’t the most classy look.

So far he has stated the obvious. “We need a lot of work defensively, but hey, kudos to Terry because we are great offensively… even tho there’s changes to be made”

Diplomatic. Addresses what is already decent. What needs to be changed to made it even better. Addresses what is terrible and how to improve it. Doesn’t throw shade.

I’d say it’s a well thought out statement. Highly political and a great PR move

 

this is the needle Billups has to thread.

for the 9 years of Stolshey, and especially the 6 years of Dame/CJ, trying to fix the Blazer defense has been like a game of bop-a-mole. Plug one hole, create another; fix one leak, and another leak starts

it will do no good to improve the defense if at the same time the offense drops off by equal measure.

I head a ton of yappity-yap last season about how good the Blazer net-rating was after adding Powell, and getting CJ and Nurkic back. Yet, Portland still finished 29th at the end of the season in defense. Their offense was great. But their net rating was mediocre. And of course, as horrible as the Blazer defense was in the regular season posting a 116.0 rating, in the playoffs they gave up a rating of 123.4. And that was with Kanter averaging less than 10 minutes. That series also demonstrated the major disadvantage of going with a 6'3 SF. To such a point that the Blazers had to switch Powell off of Porter and give the assignment to Dame

The Blazers have to get out of the +/-2.0 realm of net rating. That will keep them at the 7-8 seed/lottery level. The best Portland has done in the Dame/CJ era was the +4.2 net rating in 18-19. But that team had the defense of Nurkic-Aminu-Harkless-Zach-Turner-Curry, and the current team isn't close to that

IMO, too many expectations are riding on Billups being an elite coach in his 1st year as HC and 2nd year of coaching overall

 

it's unlikely, but not unfathomable. Steve Nash turned into a completely different player when he went to D'Antoni in Phoenix in year 9.

 

If they can't pull off a trade including CJ & some for a legit front line defender/scorer then Im sure they will look at offers for Dame. Offers for Dame will come in any way and any just like Morey predicts. It may not be this year, but at some point it will be considered. Very few Super Stars stay with one organization their whole career. Very few.

 

Dame CJ Nurk Norm and Roco....18th in defensive rating
Dame Trent Hoodie Roco and Kanter....29th in rating....
perspective...and the better lineup will start this season with an actual training camp
We shed some holes in the lineup on defense from last season...I think we'll be improved

 

Haven't verified these numbers but 18th out of 30 isn't something to hang your hat on.

 

for fucksakes....Dame-CJ-Powell-RoCo-Nurkic were all there when Portland had a defensive rating of 123.4 against Denver in the playoffs. Their 29th ranked rating in the regular season was 116.0

in other words, an injured Denver team, with time allowed to focus & prepare, shredded the defense of Portland; and Kanter averaged less than 10 minutes in the series so he can't be blamed for much. Look at this:



when you have Dame-CJ-Powell as a small ball lineup, and add RoCo as the PF, you're at a disadvantage in the playoffs. Powell's defense has become pretty overrated in my view

and more than just the defensive rating in that series, focus on the net rating of each player

 

If they were 18th which I don't have the interest in confirming... that 18th was even less impressive than the number suggests because they had twenty one games of a seventy two game season together and they couldn't move the team's overall defensive rating from 29th in the league. So I'm not impressed with 18th at all but I'm less impressed with it because despite it being eleven spots higher than it was with the other lineup it wasn't enough to get us even one spot higher overall.

And still Gary Trent had the highest winning percentage as a starter of anyone that started a game for us last season. That's with the games that teams gave us at the end of the season so they could play us instead of the Lakers in the playoffs.