The Official "Start Zach Collins" Thread

I think collins can do has much as Vonleh as for the team. Collins has confidence in his shot while Vonleh doesn't. I believe Collins and nurk can play together just find.

 

They need to trade Vonleh to get SOMETHING in return for Nico...

 

Vonleh is our "best" trade chip. Vonleh for Hezonja has been brought up and it's pretty fair.

 

I've been surprisingly impressed with his game, BUT it's been in garbage time a lot against other summer leaguers. Tough to use those preseason numbers on rookies. Cause we don't know what they can do against real players. I have no beef with him starting a couple games to see what he can do.

 

Yeah, I think he's our best 4/5 outside of Nurkic right now. He can defend the perimeter as well as outside, and I think he's the best shooter, even though we haven't seen a large volume of shots from him so far...he's at least no slouch in that area. I'd just work the rotation so that he's playing C when Nurkic is on the bench.

I think Aminu wins a spot in the rotation because of his defense. The 4th spot will be a fight between Swanigan, Vonleh and Davis. Leonard should be put in to take punches from Cousins so he gets ejected.

 

Noah Vonleh has started over half (97) the Blazers regular season games at power forward the last two seasons. In those 97 starts, Vonleh averaged 4.9 ppg. How much worse can Collins' numbers be?

I hate to give up on Vonleh, he's still only 22, but he's had three seasons in the NBA, two with the Blazers and hasn't really improved much. Any improvement to date has been marginal, at best.

I think Collins is already as good, possibly better than Vonleh. If you watched the NCAA tournament, you know that Collins doesn't wilt under pressure. He played so well in the tourney that he made the All Tournament team, as a freshman, coming off the bench.

On the flip side, even though Terry Stotts is fine with starting Noah Vonleh during the regular season , he doesn't trust him enough to start him in the playoffs.

If we're going to give development minutes to our young guys this season, I'd rather see those minutes go to Collins. I think he fits in better long term, and has a lot more upside than Vonleh.

BNM

 

None worse.

 

He might have an easier time playing amongst the talent of the starting lineup, where he won't feel like he's expected to score. He won't be expected to bang with the opposing team's center since Nurk would be out there.

 

That Batum trade is not looking so hot now. I was tired of Batum, and glad we got out of his contract, but I'd actually rather still have him than Evan Turner.

 

Like Vonleh, he would be the 5th option on offense with the starting unit.

Unlike Vonleh, he looks like he might actually knock down a jump shot if left completely unguarded.

BNM

 

Yeah, Vonleh's jump shot looks nice, but it didn't go in very often. Vonleh is very strong, and relatively athletic for his size, he just didn't produce much.

 

In a void, yes, but against real teams I'm not sure yet. The first two games he could do it (but Stotts won't), but after that are you really ready to feed him to Greek/Monroe and Unibrow?

 

I think Vonlehs shots pretty ugly. Send to force his elbow directly under the ball by pushing the ball out to the side, and seems to have his shooting hand on the inside part of the ball. Very weird, IMO.

 

I like the combination of Collins starting with Swanigan coming off the bench. I think Collins benefits more by playing with the starters, and as mentioned, he would not be relied upon for scoring when playing with the starting five.

After the first preseason game, I mentioned that if he got the minutes, I think Swanigan could replace most of Crabbe's scoring off the bench.

He won't space the floor like Crabbe did, but that's why we have Anthony Morrow. Even if he doesn't play as many minutes as Crabbe did (he won't), as one of the top 3-point shooters in league history, whenever Morrow is on the floor, he will spread the defense and create space for his teammates. No defense is going to leave Morrow unguarded and dare him to shoot the way they do Turner, Aminu and Harkless.

And Swanigan will benefit from the spacing Morrow creates. I mentioned during the summer league that Swanigan reminds me of the power forward version of Cedric Ceballos. He will manufacture points off of offensive rebounds, broken plays and turnovers. Like Ceballos, Swanigan will have occasional games of 16 - 20 points without having a single set play run for him.

With so few players on our bench capable of creating for themselves, we need the kind of "garbage" points Swanigan will produce much more with the second unit than we do the starters where Dame, C.J. and Nurk can create for themselves and others.

BNM

 

Regardless of his shooting form, he lacks the confidence to even take the shots, much less knock them down, when left wide open. Opposing teams know this and basically ignore Volneh when he's more than five feet from the basket.

Not only does Vonleh not create space, he is such a non-threat to score, it let's opposing defenses clog the lane and double team whoever has the ball. He really is a poor fit offensively in Stotts' system.

I think Collins, at least, has the shot and hopefully the confidence in his shot to keep opposing defenses honest. Sure, as a rookie, he'll hesitate to take the shots at times, but I think he'll quickly learn to take advantage of those open looks.

BNM

 

It never looked hot. Not once.

 

This is pretty much the first thing that popped into my mind when i read that tweet.

 

Here's a link to his preseason stats.

 

I would love to see Collins start, however Stotts likes experience unless your name is Lillard. Vonleh played much better when we had a true center to work with. His shot is better than people are giving him credit for and his defense and rebounding are what put him in the starting line up in the first place. Vonleh has had really good preseason numbers too, So let's wait until the season starts before we get to ahead of ourselves on these rooks. I've wanted Zach since watching him all last season at Gonzaga. This kid is an absolute stud. He would have went way higher in the draft if he had stayed another year in college. I do believe coach Few was quoted saying that he wanted to "hide him last season", but he was "just to good to not play." He really wanted him back for another year. A big line up of Vonleh, Swannigan , Collins and Nurkic is ridiculous! Throw in Davis where you want and we have one of the best big lineup's in the league. The future is so bright I have to wear rip city shades!