Free Agent Derrick Jones to Portland

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It will be interesting to see how he fits and performs. There will be a climate change shock that for sure!

 

With the ball going through Nurk at the high post is where a guy like DJJ can be effective, much like Walton made players around him better with his passing from the high post. Gross moved well without the ball and was always cutting and looking for back doors. Looking for the same with DJJ

 

Note: This was filmed before Olshey's presser. I'm a little more hopeful we might utilize him correctly now. For our thoughts on that presser and how it pertains to Derrick Jones Jr, we discussed it as our first topic during Blazers Uprise Live last night.

 

Good question. One of my biggest questions going into this season, after all of the roster reconstruction, is who will be proven to be most guilty of rigid thinking. The prevailing thoughts about the Blazers backcourt by a lot of folks on this board seem to be:

1. Dame and CJ can't work together because....blah, blah, blah...we've discussed it a million times.
2. Ant is not a "true playmaker point guard" and the Blazers screwed up in not signing another vet PG.
3. Stotts is too rigid in his rotations and won't make the adjustments needed to win. (A statement that, IMO, has no doubt been true in the past, but is it because of his innate unwillingness to make adjustments or the limitations of previous rosters?)

Olshey has given Stotts a Swiss Army knife of a roster. He can mix and match the post players, wings and guards so interchangeably that there's no excuse for not making adjustments on the fly as warranted during every individual game. CJ getting killed by his man? Slip in Trent. Opposing guards too big? Move Hood to the 2. Ant still playing like a wide-eyed rookie? Bench him and play Dame and CJ exclusively at the point and let Trent & Hood have the 2G minutes. If Stotts will make those kinds of moves, there's absolutely no reason that any of the complaints listed above need to be true. So, in my opinion, either Stotts is will be proven too rigid in his thinking as a coach, or a lot of folks around here are going to be proven to be to rigid in their thinking about him and the Blazers' backcourt. Frankly, I don't know which way it's going to go, but it's one of the things I'll be watching for.

 

Even if Nurk’s defender is in the key, it won’t matter.

A dunk champion with a running start vs. a stationary big man trying to cover two people... I like DJJ odds.

And dame doesn’t need to throw a terrific lob. A great part of having freak athletes is you just need to get the ball in the same atmosphere as the rim. As long as he isn’t lobbing into the 200 section they’ll be ok.

Before injury he was averaging almost 24mpg.

I don’t think DJJ is the missing piece or anything like that, but it seems like you think he’s unplayable.

 

I'm thinking he'll hang out in the slot a la Cedric "point a minute" Ceballos.

 

When we had Mo Harkless I used to get frustrated as he would not use his athletic ability to get more opportunities. He mentioned as the fourth option he would often find himself bored on the court and stop moving without the ball. He had some of the same attributes as DJJ athletically. If Dames continues to slowly bring the ball up court looking for seams or a shot or giving it the ball to CJ to do the same thing, without getting Nurk involved looking for cutters DJJ wont work well.
The ball must be moving within a motion offense for a slasher like him to capitalize. Dame & CJ with Nurk must make this happen.

 

Torey in 2 months:
"DJJ gives us dimensions our team never had. Opponents have a whole new set of things to worry about."

 

Great post, I agree with most of it. I did not think Harkless was unplayable and he was the person I compared DJJ to (yes, I know they have differences). I did think Harkless hampered our offense to a certain degree that many people here harped on endlessly saying we need a better starting forward - which led to my original question here.

I think DJJ is a fine role player, but I wanted a player with the MLE that you'd feel good about having in at the end of games; maybe that guy wasn't available to us.

 

"... but Stotts doesn't utilize him correctly."

 

I agree it's unlikely for Stotts to make changes to switch out 40% of his starting lineup in the playoffs. Frankly, very few coaches does this, and for good reason that I think people often gloss over:

Rotations are far more difficult to build than peope think, especially when you have a bunch of specialists on your roster. Switching two guys in your starting lineup might completely take away functionality of your bench, as they need some ability to score and defend as well. I would challenge anyone here to actually build a rotation with this Blazers roster that the majority of the people don't see any issue with.

I do agree with you that having guys like DJJ will put Stotts in a position where he will have to jerk around with the rotations a lot more.

 

seems like if the Blazers really want to capitalize on Jones, they need to first, ramp up their transition offense dramatically. Which means they need defensive rebounding, outlet passes, and guards who push the pace. That's a tall order considering the past

they also need to run more high post sets with Nurkic and Kanter to open baseline drives for Jones. And Dame needs to work on lobs

 

This is why I'm fine with the deal. I'm looking at other players that I wanted and were given similar money and this is what I see:

JaMychal Green - 15/2 years. Better shooter, but more of a 4-5 instead of a 3-4. Duplicates Zach's skill set somewhat, and not really a great defender. I would have been okay with this, but it's the same level player as DJJ.

Jae Crowder - 30/3. Better fit for sure, but shooting is suspect in the same way that Aminu was. Also he slots into a larger role in Phoenix and it's a larger contract, so I can see why he chose them over us.

Serge Ibaka - 19/2. Yeah, was not going to pick us over Clippers or Toronto.

Christian Wood - 41/3. Could not match that offer with what we had.

Danilo Gallinari - 60/3. Could not match that offer with what we had.

Paul Millsap - 10/1. Chose a larger deal and turned down other teams to return to Boston, probably turned us down as well.

Only thing that I think we could have done different is maybe sign two depth pieces instead of just one. Harkless and Bradley for example signed for the same total amount, but Harkless was rumored to have turned down less money, and Bradley has a bigger projected role in Miami.

 

But that's going to happen, if Stotts doesn't improve his schemes drasticly. But given the fact that he hasn't adjust or hasn't find a solution for this problem for 5 years you can assume that teams will use the same strategie over and over again

 

If you're saying we've attacked double teams in the playoffs the same way for 5 years, I strongly disagree. Having said that, there are only so many things you can do when you have 6'3" under guards being trapped by players with much greater length. When a defense is comfortable trapping and sagging off your post/forwards, dunks and layups are not going to be an option.

I think you saw us have the most success against the double when Seth and Hood were on the wings and teams either had to give them wide open threes or provide much wider lanes in an attempt to cover two people. Ideally, you would like to have a play-maker with above average height and length be your outlet, but this roster does not have that guy.

 

Hopefully!

 

Alright then, how'd we setup the floor to try to beat the trap this year? Because the whole "Can't do anything about the trap" mindset is the wrong mentality to have if your the coach/team. But beyond that, our setup against the trap was terrible as well, compounding any pre-existing issues. Those guys wouldn't have made much of a difference against the trap given how we set ourselves up against it this year.

We saw success against OKC and DEN because they had plodding centers and they didn't commit to the trap as heavily as other teams. Gonna be harder against guys like Davis, Bam, Ibaka, Wood, etc.

 

If Stotts doesn't utilize him correctly, I'll point it out.

No idea what you're trying to get at. Seems like you're implying I'll just make up critiques just to criticize Stotts, which is bullshit. Even Olshey said yesterday that we need to change up some schematic things, echoing the sentiments I had all season.

 

I think we’re all forgetting that Dame has improved a ton at breaking the trap by himself