BFD. Could be wrong? Get that passive aggressive bullshit back to where you came from. Their roles are different. CJ is asked to be a scorer. I want him to expand his game and stop missing open shooters/cutters as much as the next guy, but calling him an empty stats player and just pointing out his ast% as a standalone stat without providing context is bogus. And nothing infuriates me more than when he goes one on 5 after a million dribbles, but I think it's more a function of his role and lack of help outside of Dame/Nurk than anything. We haven't ever seen him next to guys who can provide spacing or legit offensive threats to take away defensive attention.
I'm not accusing you of anything but I will say I have heard the 'Paul-Allen-Made-Olshey-Do-It' excuse before from Olshey apologists. It's true, we don't know how much influence PA had in any decision. The problem I have with it is that the same people claiming Paul Allen was responsible for all the bad decisions will turn right around and give Olshey all the credit for the good decisions. That makes no sense. If PA was micro-managing the bad decisions, he was also micro-managing the good ones also...I read that Chris Haynes article a couple of times and I really noticed his sourcing. He quoted Olshey on several things. That wasn't surprising since he had been the Blazer beat reporter for a couple of years and had a good relationship with Olshey. But he also said several un-sourced things in that article, opinions and conjecture, that implied Olshey was less culpable for those bad contracts in 2016. From just reading that article, my hunch is that Olshey told Haynes things 'on-the-record' and other things 'off-the-record'. I don't believe Haynes talked to anyone else but Olshey. He certainly didn't talk to PA
about CJ not playing with offensive threats that get defensive attention away from him. I think you're confusing CJ with Dame you are the one that tied usage rate to assist rate. And you are the one that argued that somehow, not playing backup PG for the few minutes Dame isn't on the floor is the reason why CJ's assist rate has collapsed. it isn't just that Nurkic and Stauskas have better assist rates, it that a whole bunch of NBA players who are not PG's have much better assist rates than CJ...and many, most, are better scorers to boot. And most, play better defense: Devin Booker 33.7 DeMar DeRozan 28.2 Lou Williams 27.9 Zach LaVine 24.9 Victor Oladipo 24.2 Joe Ingles 21.3 Luka Doncic 20.9 Bradley Beal 19.9 Evan Fournier 19.7 Donovan Mitchell 19.6 Paul George 19.4 Jimmy Butler 18.8 Khris Middleton 18.1 Josh Richardson 15.2 CJ McCollum 11.4 this isn't just about CJ's role. It's about his tendencies and his limitations. He can do a better job of finding options that don't require him to shoot. He's done so in the past. It was never a strong skill of his because he doesn't have good play-making vision. He misses open passing lanes all the time due to his hooplock I actually assign a good chunk of the blame here to Stotts. Stotts could reign-in some of CJ's bad habits but he hasn't so far but what is "disingenuous" is to argue like CJ has some kind of exclusive role he plays that prevents him from making passes and running offense for teammates. Many other players have similar roles to CJ, and are "asked to be scorers", and somehow still find a way to do something CJ apparently doesn't care to do
I'm not giving Olshey the blame or the credit. The fact that he still had a job until Allen's death is proof that at the very least Allen agreed with his decisions and had some influence. My original comments were to why he wasn't fired. So yeah, it makes complete sense that they were making decisions together. It's also possible that Allen told him to keep Crabbe, Harkless, and Leonard at whatever cost was necessary. At the same time I doubt it was Allen's decision to sign Evan Turner so yes it is possible to "bifurcate" (sorry I cracked myself up with that one) credit in different situations. Allen fired KP partly because allegedly he was taking too much credit for building the team. If Haynes' article was inaccurate then why wouldn't he do the same with Olshey?
TrueShooting%: Meyers Leonard .685 Zach Collins .614 Jake Layman .610 Damian Lillard .582 Al-Farouq Aminu .578 Jusuf Nurkic .576 Nik Stauskas .570 CJ McCollum .552 Many Blazers are better shooters so far this year and there are plenty of players for CJ to pass to, but most actually need a ball-handler to set them up for decent opportunities. CJ has the ball in his hands, a lot, so he has some responsibility here but he's been failing at it while busy pursuing his own offense Dame has a heavy burden on this team; he has to be the #1 scoring option and he also has to be the #1 playmaker at getting others involved. CJ could help Dame and ease the burden a little, but he's simply not doing it and Stotts isn't holding CJ accountable
Cj is a defensive liability. No one questions that. But a volume shooter who gets so few assists and whose ts% is below that of the team as a whole is not really helping the offense. You could argue he's a liability on both ends.
Not defending CJ but he is one of only 3 players to have taken more than 400 shots the last 2 years and have a TOV% less than 10% both years. The other two are Klay Thompson and Anthony Davis. There is something to be said about getting shots at the hoop without turning the ball over much.
true...however, I'd estimate that the biggest source of turnovers are passes, especially if those passes are going into tight windows and into the paint. CJ is a good ball-handler who doesn't often dribble the ball off his shoes. So him not passing much is almost certainly a big driver of that low turnover rate
Right, so what I'm wondering if in CJ's case it's better to just shoot the ball instead of pass when he doesn't seem to be good at doing that?
You can't actually watch games and believe that. He misses guy directly under the basket routinely. Also, I see him routinely lock in on a move and miss Dame who is wide open for three.
if he didn't stop the ball like he does, maybe. But he has the ball in his hands so much that not passing impacts the team. The first impact is that CJ's teammates tend to stand around more when he gets the ball and he starts his 'rocker-step-shake-n-bake-crossover-pounding' routine. They don't expect him to give the ball up. Yeah, that's a generalization but I noticed it a lot last year and it hasn't got better. Offensive motion tends to bog down when CJ gets the ball, a lot more than it does when Dame has the ball, for sure I just don't think you can 'reverse-logic' to a position where CJ's regressing assist numbers are a good thing
The Blazer offense is like a shell game, where there is a pea under one shell, and the shill moves the shells all around, but keeps his right hand on the shell with the pea the entire time. Lots of movement, but when he stops everyone knows where the pea is. Lots of movement and weaves, but when CJ gets the ball he is going to try and score, and if you are smart, you make sure Dame doesn't get the ball. Then you beat the Blazers. I swear someone injected Nate McMillan's stem cells in to Stotts brain.
