Some GREAT info from Quick (What Billups investigation took place, where Dame stands with the Team)

What if Powell signs with another team in the first minutes of free agency?

 

Dame to Neil: Improve team, show urgency.

Dame could be an S2 member.

 

One more thing is that this is not 100% true. If we flame out, we will trade, Dame, CJ and whoever else is on the roster in a complete teardown. So maybe we don't have control of our draft picks, but we will have picks, and probably lots of them (from the Dame trade).

Oh, and it won't be Olshey tearing down the roster and making the picks, so there's that to look forward to at least.

 

i dont see how is having dame, cj mccollum, powell & nurk doable

dame & cj mccollum already signed huge contracts, powell will opt out for sure as he will be looking for a big, long term contract and then nurks contract expires next season and he will ask for a big contract too

if you keep them all, you will be giving a lot of money to just 4 guys and wheres the rest of the team

this guy think nurk will get traded and to be fair, he made good points

 

sure....if Olshey quits fucking around while overvaluing CJ and uses a collection of picks to leverage CJ into a better player than CJ that would be great. But that's not CJ for a better player, that's CJ and lots of assets for a better player

I think Olshey, at least publicly is in a corner. He needs to swing big, and CJ's salary is about the only big swing he has to add to draft picks. But I think we all know that about the last thing Olshey wants to do is trade CJ....unless he has no other choice. I'd bet he is still banking on the Dame/CJ back court to look a lot different with a new coach. It's a terrible gamble IMO, but Olshey's history sure suggests that possibility. The other thing boxing him into the corner is Powell's free agency. I have a hard time seeing Portland, with CJ as the starting SG, as an attractive option for Powell. If the Blazers lose Powell to free agency, they immediately become a worse team than last season; I'd also bet that Seattle would have some immediate questions for Olshey

granted, I have little faith in Olshey and I don't pay any attention to his talk. I know others, with almost as little faith as me, are encouraged by Olshey's words recently. We'll see. But I'm convinced that Portland can not get significantly better without breaking up the Dame/CJ pairing and I'm unconvinced Olshey sees that pairing any differently than he has for 6 years

 

I'm just going to throw this out there: Does the forum think CJ is a defensive liability because he can't play defense or is he a defensive liability because the Stotts staff never made his playing defense enough of a priority?

Because it you think it's the latter, and CJ can be turned into a passable defender and a more efficient offensive player under the tutelage of a guy who was a pretty efficient, team-0riented point guard, the need to move CJ might have diminished considerably.

 

especially if billups gets CJ off the ball and uses him more as a spot up guy ala Klay/Reddick, which I’ve been begging for for years. He is an elite spot up shooter, yet Stotts never really even thought to commit to it.

 

If it's me, I try to make two trades happen.

CJ to NY, young pieces to Toronto, Siakam to PDX.

And then I try to make a move that sends Nurk/Simons/picks to Washington, Beal to Philly, and Simmons to Portland.

Dame
Norm
RoCo
Siakam
Simmons

To me, that's a championship team. I thought about trying to get Beal for us, but isn't he just another CJ for all intents and purposes?

 

Chauncey pretty much said he sees CJ, Dame and Nurk as our big 3 and he loves Nurk...wants to give Nurk a bigger role.....didn't mention Norm at all though...from Olshey I've heard he wants to see our young guys play...that means we're going to see what Nas, Ant and Elleby can add to the rotation instead of waiving towels.....looks like Melo is in New York now and doubt Enes will return ..Giles might take his spot...Dame wants to play with Draymond Green....I'm sure that could be pulled off with some sort of trade....Kerr has had issues with Draymond for years now

 

I'm not encouraged. I don't see anywhere where people are encouraged by what he says. I'm just laying out the situation. Push your chips in to improve the roster, or lose Dame and your job with it. If Olshey continues doing what he's done for the last few years he will lose Dame and his job. I'm sure the latter will make people happy. The former will make people cry.

He has to know CJ is on the table. Whether CJ is actually traded or not depends on a lot of factors, but if Dame doesn't have confidence in the roster he is gone. And you're crazy if you think Olshey doesn't know that.

 

I say you trade CJ for what you think is good value, even if it doesn't necessarily impress Dame. Even if he's unhappy, Dame won't sandbag. He's not that guy. Hope we win and he comes around.

 

this site is terrific

 

Yup. Massive improvement on the clunky ESPN trade machine.

 

Move a first from Toronto to Philly. 3 for Siakam seems like a lot. Maybe give them Simons or Nas.

 

CJ's on-ball defense is not good. That won't change with another defensive scheme

another thing that won't change is that CJ is being paid all-star money and uses an all-star amount of the team's possessions and doesn't have all-star talent. That's been the unsolvable riddle for 6 years

 

Oh... yeah I did actually include him, I just forgot to mention him. Here was the trade machine