Game Thread GAME# 71: BLAZERS @ MAVERICKS - MARCH 20, 2016 - SUNDAY, 1:00 PM (PST), CSNNW

Quite right....look at this road trip. Blazer guards can score but you have to play defense too.

Westbrook - triple/double in the 1st half.
Parker - season high 16 assists.
Holiday - 30 points
Williams - 31 points

That is brutal!! It is also why I've been a proponent of CJ coming off the bench so someone like Crabbe or Henderson can play D on the other teams best backcourt scorer. With Dame/CJ, they give up as much as they score against better backcourts.

 

Al-Foruq-off! Why did we pay this guy? We need an upgrade, and Aminu should come off the bench. Most guys get up to play against their former team, but Aminu sucked, missing so many wide open 3s.

 

Especially if what they did was they play they called Time Out for.....yuck.

 

He may not be good but he's still better than Dame or CJ....sadly.

 

Well i guess you found someone somewhere that feels that was a good shot. Heck you even called it nice looking.
He was off balance with a defender in his face. Not one pass was made to anyone anywhere.

 

Mavs fans were singing Cuban's praises every time he missed. Go read their thread. They are so glad he is gone.

 

Great point. If you listen to Rice before the second miss he actually asked that question. Should have pushed the ball and pounded it inside at the very least drew a foul.

 

IMO it s because he did not want to take the chance of not getting the last shot. Same reason why he had Dame take a long 3.

 

Yes that was probably it but they had plenty of time to talk this over and even did substitutions.
I really like Stotts as a coach but on this one i think he simply made a mistake. Live and learn.

 

Probably because Mavericks strategy was to leave him wide open.

 

And boy was he wide open a lot of times.

 

I'm really impressed with what Plums did. He has games where he looks like a top-5 center.

We're playing with three legitimate starters.

A SF is needed.

A veteran PF is needed.

 

Yes that is what I posted during the time out as well as right after it happened. I knew it was coming and was not in favor of it.

 

Crabbe is arguably a worse defender than CJ. He commits more fouls than our foul prone bigs and gives up easy layups. I could see a legit argument for Henderson starting defensively though.

If you look at our team defense the one common denominator to all the terrible lineups is Lillard. We've had excellent defense with just CJ in the game.

With Dame on court our opponents get 109.7; off court 104.2
CJ on court 106.8 off court 110.4

In 2014-15 opponents scored 105.2 with Dame on the court 100.4 with him off.

Some may wonder if the team would be better by trading Lillard?

 

Missed the game... How the HELL do we score 120 and lose.....?

 

Aminu is fine. Yeah it'd be nice if we had this perfect SF who defends, creates his own shot and hits threes but theres what maybe 7 of those in the league? Aminu makes enough three's and covers up for our backcourts defense. He's making less stupid turnovers than when he started this year; I suspect he improves further after a full year with teammates and familiarity. I like Aminu along with our starters where we don't need offense. He's a productive role player and fits well with Dame, CJ and Plumlee. That trio has really good offense. Off the bench we normally want more offensive punch than Aminu has.

The problem right now is we basically have Vonleh as that same defensive player with limited offense alongside Aminu. That's a bad pair. One of them needs to be upgraded. If we had a legit PF we wouldn't notice the problems at the SF spot. We could even play Aminu at PF with the right starting SF here; so really I think we can aim for an upgrade at either starting forward spot.

 

As much as we all love Lillard; it's a good question, and one that has to be asked to fully investigate all avenues of improving the team in the long run.

We would get a much bigger return from trading Lillard, vs trading CJ, that could potentially provide a more substantial upgrade/ or upgrades at multiple positions for the team.

 

It's a couple losses against good teams and now you guys are "Trading" the best PG this team has seen in decades.....
Think about that.