What's your rotation with minutes in parenthesis. Like this: Lillard (36) / McCollum (12) McCollum (23) / Curry (25) Harkless (26) / Turner (19) / Curry (3) Aminu (32) / Collins (10) / Harkless (6) Nurkic (32) / Collins (16)
Stats don't measure everything a player brings to the locker room. Aldridge certainly wasn't a leader. Moe was one of the vet leaders of that locker room. Might not agree as fans.(Players have said stats don't measure everything Turner brings to the locker room) But at the end of the day the players know that stuff far better than fans. I just don't like Turner as a person. That's why I don't want him on the team/court.
I don't do specific minutes because imo that's too, 2k. It's easy to get those numbers in a video game. Not so much irl. Also(just using an example) Having Lillard/CJ listed as the only two getting minutes at the PG. Means no one else ever initiates a set. I don't believe that's the case. Mid January It'll be a 3 guard rotation. Harkless/Aminu will start at the Forwards. Backed up by Turner/Collins. WB4 will steal minutes at the forward, and guard spots. Nurk/Nards will get the bulk of the minutes at the 5. Pending health, and pending Nards does more than just flex muscles and rev his car's engine in an instagram video.
Must have been the best veteran leadership in the history of everything to make up for that much difference in production. Players can be too close to be fairly objective. Yes, veteran leadership is valueable, but on-court production is more-so.
I’ll say it, to me a big reason I believe the Blazers didn’t have the post season we thought they should have is a lack of veteran leadership. Almost every good / great team I can think of has at least one sometimes more veteran player who brings real life experience from the player view point. The Blazers seem to do keep young so they can say how young they are but having a guy in the locker room and on the side lines guys respect, that can pull players aside and tell them what they’re seeing is huge in my opinion. I don’t know how good of a leader moe was but at least back then they had that...
WB4 at SF? Yikes. We already have an undersized backcourt. Better not play there against Durant, LeBron, George, Kawhi, Porter Jr, etc. He'll get abused. "Having Lillard/CJ listed as the only two getting minutes at the PG. Means no one else ever initiates a set." Uh...... No it doesnt. Does LeBron initiate sets? You realize you can know multiple positions certain sets right? Curry+McCollum is a combo-guard backcourt. They're interchangeable.
They have veteran leadership with "real-life playoff experience"... Damian Lillard, for example. That definitely wasn't the problem. I don't see how having someone like Vince Carter sitting there on the bench was going to stop NO from blitzing, get Terry to pull his head out of his ass, or space the floor better. We lost because of basketball reasons, not silly, mental mistakes.
I disagree you don’t want the only leader on your team to be your star. You shouldn’t expect Dame to do everything for you...I don’t think they should want him too either. Also they lost because Rondo and Holliday pushed them around the 1st 3 games, Rondo knew what playoff basketball was about. The Blazers didn’t adjust to that until game 4. Yes there were basketball reasons, but they flat out got out hussled , and worked that whole series by a team that just flat out looked like they wanted it more.
Also this was the 1st year in a while the Blazers played in a series they were supposed to win. A lot of Dames playoff experience is against teams that were just better than his. So yeah I believe having more guys with experience is important and definitely played a role in what happened to them this year.
No, he's not. Curry is a 2/1 combo guard, similar to C.J. Connaughton was a 2/3, which is what Trent Jr. will be. Because Curry is better than either Connaughton or Napier, he will get minutes at both back up spots, but together those guys played over 3000 combined minutes. No way will Curry play close to that many minutes, and at 6'2", he's shorter than both Dame and C.J. Don't look for him to play any significant time at the 3. To me, it will be Trent Jr. and Baldwin IV battling for the remaining 1000 - 1500 Connaughton/Napier minutes that aren't consumed by Curry. In some situations, Terry will go with Baldwin at the 1, possibly occasionally with Curry at the 2 and Trent Jr. at the 3. That's actually a good, balanced second unit. Or, he may go with a 3 guard lineup of Baldwin, Dame and C.J. (I like that MUCH better than the sub-miniature Napier, Dame,C.J. 3-guard lineup we saw on occasion last season). I can also see a Dame, C.J., Trent Jr. lineup when we need someone bigger than Curry to spread the floor and create space for Dame and C.J. The good news is all of Curry, Baldwin and Trent Jr. have the potential to be better than Connaughton and Napier. Not only is there more talent, but also a lot more versatility in this year's bench than last year's. Terry will have lots of combinations to try to see which ones work the best. He has a history of trying a lot of different lineups during the first three months of the season before settling in on a tighter rotation during the second half. Trent Jr. will have an opportunity to earn minutes, the same as Collins did last year. Whether he earns them, or not, will depend on how well he plays and fits with to his teammates. Same for Baldwin. It's going to be interesting. I'm excited to see how it all plays out. BNM
I agree with all of this, but wouldn't completely write Stauskas out of the mix. I see Trent Jr. and Stauskas as competing for the same minutes. I kind of hope Trent Jr. wins out because I think he has more long term potential. But, if Stauskas comes out hitting threes like a pro and Trent Jr. doesn't, then . . .
I suspect we'll see both at various points during the first half of the season, as Terry tries different combinations to see what works. Stauskas has the advantage of being a known quantity. He has (somewhat) proven he can hit an open 3 from NBA distance. But, he has also proven he can't do much else. Trent Jr. has proven he can hit from college 3-point distance against college level talent. But, he has an NBA body an an aggressive, scorer's mentality. He can do more than hit open 3s. He can attack the paint and draw fouls. I'm really hoping Trent Jr. can crack the rotation by the all star break. If not, it means Stauskas is playing better than Trent Jr. I'm not sure that's a positive. BNM
I see Trent Jr. as the long term winner, but Stauskas does do one important things more than just hit the three (which our SFs don't do). He is quite good at faking the three and then driving past the close out for either a dunk or a nice assist as the big comes over to cover. That could be really useful in our offense and neither Aminu nor Harkless do that well.
Lopez? Wright? We had others. Still doesn't come close to making up that much production. The Blazers didn't adjust because of the coaching staff.
We didn’t have lopez or Wright this year... they had Dame and that was basically the only leader on the team.
I want to see Mo slash more and be super aggressive. He needs to challenge Nurk as the third option. Hell, challenge CJ as the second option.
