Great idea. Develop a player and when he improves get rid of another talented player. Talents wins in the NBA and we need as much as we can get to be competitive.
I thought it was pretty clear he was referring to CJ's contract as an obstacle to Portland taking the step from pretender to contender. I'd say talent at CJ's level can win some regular season games, but it takes talent better than CJ's to make a team a contender and win a championship. And, CJ's position as option 1b in the offense, and the salary cap, is what makes the obstacle and of course, the assumption is that CJ could be traded for better fitting talent, if not purely better talent while gaining some cap flexibility I know I've long advocated trading CJ because of his redundancy and mediocre synergy with Dame. At the same time, I've rejected a whole bunch of proposed CJ trades because I didn't think they substantially altered the current or future trajectory of the Blazers. But then, I think the hump Portland has to climb over is higher than many others do.
I’m still wondering how Trent is a proven “3 and D” player. His defense was flat-out bad in the playoffs but clearly he gives effort and can improve. Let a Klutch-connected GM overpay him.
One thing that's so important to note is that Neil seemed committed to staying out of the repeater tax and you need two years under the tax to stay away from repeater. So there's no way to keep all of this talent next season. If we win the chip or come close then maybe Jodi and by extension Neil change and are willing to go into the repeater tax with this team intact to win more but I'm not even sure that happens.
Right, completely out of positions... yeah Gary can guard a ton of SFs well but he is a potentially lock down SG first and foremost... so 1-smallish 3s would be his "defensive stopper" versatility... which is pretty great especially if he's an assassin off the ball on offense. Also Gary has so much upside still.
That’s a very loose interpretation of the word “guarding.” Getting dominated by LeBron doesn’t exactly make Trent a good defender. He was very bad in the playoffs but as I said, hopefully he can learn from it and become a consistent “3 and D” wing. You don’t trade for Robert Covington if you already have confidence in Trent playing that role over an entire season IMO. Also, Giannis was league MVP but LeBron was certainly worthy of it.
Option 1) Keep CJ and lose someone like Nurk. Option 2) Replace CJ with Trent (assuming his continued improvement) and keep Nurk. Suddenly, it's not so simple, is it? Your argument makes sense in a league like MLB that still believes in capitalism. In a league like the NBA where teams are hamstrung by all sorts of arbitrary and artificial restrictions, tough choices have to be made. Very shortly, the Blazers will have 70% of their salary cap invested in TWO players. That might work when the 2 players are Lebron and AD...it won't work when one of the 2 is a CJ caliber player.
RoCo plays forward and even small ball center. Trent is a guard/forward wing. Getting RoCo isn't any more of a reflection that Trent is a rotational player than Nurk. The team needs a minimum of 8 big minute rotational players so there's plenty of room for RoCo and Trent. If cloning were possible I'd rather have 2 RoCo and 2 Trent to put out there along with DameCJNurk and one other guy. There's certainly plenty of room for one Roco and one Trent.
Then was Hood resigned and you’re also wrong, Covington is a perimeter defender who isn’t going to be defending the 4 or 5 unless something goes horribly wrong. Dame CJ Anthony Collins Nurkic Kanter Covington Hood Simons Trent Little Derrick Jones Jr. Simons is going to get some backup PG minutes so where does Trent get big minutes? That’s a lot of guys to keep happy and if Trent wants a big contract, there is no way he’s getting it in Portland without dramatic changes to the roster. Replacing CJ with Trent makes the team worse on paper immediately and Lillard won’t put up with growing pains if he loses the 20ppg CJ delivers mostly off the ball.
Someone jog my memory... Wasn't Covington a SG early in his career? Seemed like he was a SG/SF until arriving in Houston, at which point he suddenly become a PF/C and everyone stopped thinking about him in the same role as Trent.
Lillard (35) / McCollum (13) McCollum (21) / Trent (24) / Hood (3) Jones (20) / Hood (17) / RoCo (11) RoCo (18) / Melo (20) / Giles (10) Nurkic (30) / Kanter (18) 24 minutes per game for Trent there.
huh? CJ has an assisted FG rate of 36% so nearly 2/3 of his offenses comes from his one-on-one play...'on the ball' and what exactly is Lillard going to do? Pout and throw tantrums for 5 years? He's under contract till 2025 and he sure doesn't seem like the kind of guy that will torpedo a franchise because he didn't like a roster move
So @RoseCityRebel that first sentence is actually some crazy shit. RoCo has been defending both forward positions his whole career. He has seamlessly transitioned from a wing defender to a post defender. He is an extremely versatile and effective defender. I only quoted @PtldPlatypus to highlight that what he's saying is accurate and disproves your notion. Also the talk of Simons at PG is so overblown, Neil said the same thing last season. What these guys are being pressured to answer is who the backup PG is on the depth chart and why they haven't added a vet PG... they're not going to say their starting SG because then they have to field a bunch of questions about if CJ should be playing PG elsewhere which isn't something they want to touch. Rest assured that unless Ant has made a quantum leap in every aspect of his game or we are featuring him for a trade, he's only getting garbage minutes. There will be a three man rotation at the guard position of Dame, CJ and Gary. It's also important to remember when you are listening to Olshey talk about Ant that Olshey has overestimated Ant at every turn.
He played SF his entire career prior to last season which also happened to be one of the worst of his career outside of his rookie season. He wasn’t brought in to guard PFs and Cs, Jesus Christ. Houston’s experiment failed.
