OFFICIAL AROUND THE NBA THREAD- March 2021

Thankfully we didn't need size or have an open roster spot ....

 

Those 6'1" & 6'0" guards of Utah are doing it again. I sure Dame and CJ would benefit from having a 7"9" rim protector.

 

Dame & CJ would benefit if they could play defense like Conley and Mitchell

 

It's almost like as his roster got worse, he became a worse coach.

 

Portland is smelling like a 7th or 8th seed to me. Dallas is likely to overtake them, SA could too but less likely, especially if they unload talent tomorrow. But the 8th has to deal with the play-in stuff IIRC.

 

7th, 8th, 9th, & 10th are in play in. Only top 6 clinch playoffs. Why are Dallas likely to over take us? We are up 2 games on them despite all our injuries and now Nurk is coming back. And we have the tiebreaker over Dallas.

 

Because our defense was bad with Nurk. We aren’t a good team. We have been propped up by beating bad teams.

 

Yeah, almost. Funny how that works.

 

No point of explaining it to homers. They’ll know soon enough

 

If we stay on the very same pace (v.bad against good teams and better against -.500 we still go for 41:31, so I say 6 or even 5 (when Lakers go down).

 

I don't see Dallas as such a good team that I'd put money on that. Dallas has a lot of really mediocre, streaky players who, when they get hot with Luka, can beat about anyone but aren't good enough to remain hot consistently so they also can lose to just about anyone. Is there anyone on that roster or in that rotation aside from Doncic that fans or GMs look at and say "We really neeeeeeed that guy"?

 

Sounds like you just described another team i watch quite a bit.

 

Probably, but I look at the Blazers and I think there's really more interest across the league in a player like McCollum than anyone on the Mavs other than Luka. Our fans tend to see CJ's flaws where I know a lot of fans of other teams see his assets.

Same with Nurk. The injuries are a question, obviously. However, when he's been playing the last couple of years vs., say, Porzingis, I think most hardcore fans and NBA people would rather have Nurk than the unicorn.

Or looking for a developing player with a really high ceiling, is there anyone on the Mavs that compares to Nas? Nas might be a lottery ticket at this point, but the Mavs don't even have a stub.

Sure, the Mavs have guys that we or other teams might not mind having, but they don't have a lot of guys we or other NBA teams wish they had.

 

Id still take Dame & CJ over Conley and Mitchell. If neither can play defense, that means we have an all world guard that cant play defense? Sort of like Melo in his Prime all world but no D?
Conley has always been a scrapper on D for sure. Also, Dame and CJ would benefit if they had wings that could shoot consistently like Utah.

 

The big thing is they have Clarkson coming off the bench. He's always been a scorer, but he looks like the second coming of Lou Williams this year.

And Conley's a nice player. Very much underappreciated. Anyone thinking if you put him on the Blazers in place of either Dame or CJ makes Portland better really needs to step back and re-evaluate. As you said, he's a better player because he has teammates around him that can amplify his strengths, and their length also covers up his shortcomings. Put him next to Dame in the Blazers lineup and everyone here would be clamoring to trade him within a couple of weeks; his numbers would be way down over what they are now, and he just wouldn't look anywhere near the same player.

 

sure, on a simple scale of talent vs talent, Dame/CJ are better. But that's all because of Dame. Mitchell is better than CJ, but it's fairly close. Dame is a lot better than Conley. BUT, there is a much better mesh between Conley/Mitchell than Dame and CJ have ever developed. They complement each other very well. They are more than the sum of their parts. Dame and CJ are less than the sum of their parts....a lot less compared to what they produce on their own

it's a team game, and as a 2-man team the Utah pair is a lot closer to the Portland pair than they should be, and part of that is they play good defense. There is too much redundancy and overlap in the Dame/CJ pairing

but BB is a 5 man game and the Utah GM has done a much better job of building a roster, maintaining flexibility, and managing the cap

 

It's fucking crazy that we're even having to compare Conley and Mitchell to Dame and CJ when they make 20M less and Gobert is the best player on that team (I do realize they have the advantage of this year being the last on Mitchell's rookie deal).

 

That’s what happens when your the best team in the NBA. Utah already lapped us after rebuilding when Hayward left. When we already had head start by then

 

Bulls makin moves. Like it. Levine and vuc