After watching tonight's game, it's becoming more and more apparent that this Trail Blazers team is a deep basketball team. One-through-fifteen, every player on this roster can produce and has produced this season. Thrill plays a fearless brand of basketball and his ability to get to the rim is vital amongst a squad loaded with spot-up shooters. Claver is one of the smartest players on the team. Robinson's defense and rebounding can be mind-blowing. Wright can get hot from distance in the bat of an eye. And so on ... Yet, why is bench production so inconsistent for Rip City? Simple. With so many options to turn to each game, Coach Stotts hasn't cemented his rotation (outside of Blake and Kaman) and our reserves haven't been able to get into a rhythm for much of the season when playing time comes and goes. Case and point: Meyers Leonard. Now, I don't know whom exactly should be traded or for what. But, we need to take advantage of teams that are having fire sales and move a few of our end of the rotation players plus our first round pick (if necessary) for one legitimate rotation player. It's time we have a 9-10 man rotation set in stone where guys can come to expect playing time. Jerking guys in and out of the lineup does no one any favors.
You realize we need 13 players no matter who we trade, right? And it's good that they can all play at a moment's notice when needed.
I wouldn't mind seeing some more burn for them. I'd like to rest Batum more, w/Crabbe coming in. Wes/CJ/Barton LMA/Truck/Meyers Kaman/Meyers/Truck Dame/Blake/CJ/Barton something like that. But we as fans would need to not get so depressed if they lost, because we will lose if we play those guys more... There are a lot of mental mistakes happening when our deep bench get in for long stretches.
Definitely in favor of resting Nic and playing Crabbe. Also definitely in favor or building a trade package around CJ - the problem is, due to his play his trade value is lower than it was last summer.
Boy you aren't kidding. I don't think I can stomach much more Will the Thrill. He's a good kid & I get the build chemistry from within thing. He did make a few shots attacking the basket but the mental errors he makes are just too much. Just in the last few min he did several things that could have cost us the game. He dribbles into a double team on the baseline on one play, almost gets stripped from behind nonchalantly dribbling upcourt on another. We were lucky neither of those resulted in a t/o. Probably the worst was fouling a 3 pt shooter when we were up 4. That was nearly a 4 pt play. He didn't just slap McLemore on the wrist either - he hoisted himself into his chest. Officials don't want to call a foul on a 3 pt attempt with 40 sec left, but that was so blatant. It's amazing how many bonehead plays he made in just 15 min of play, & that's basically who he is. It's not a one game outlier because he hasn't played much. He's always been like that. I'm not sure why Crabbe isn't getting any run lately if he's 100%. He's the polar opposite of Will. He almost always plays fundamentally sound/smart basketball. He won't make as many explosion plays as WB but he's steady. I'm for consolidation if the right guy is available. I'd rather keep Meyers, CJ, & Crabbe than WB, Truck, Victor, Dorell. But I'd look at moving any of those mentioned for the right guy (Chandler?). I'm still not 100% confident that if we don't show LA we're serious about winning that he's going to stay here just to break all of Clyde's records. And if he leaves, we're done. You can see that our horses are getting banged up. Wes, Dame, Nic, and now LA are all in need of some rest. I'm hoping help is coming.
