I don't think we should trade CJ either. Doesn't mean he should be calling people idiots and shit simply because they have different opinions.
Travis Outlaw LaMarcus Aldridge Darius Miles Bonzi Wells Zach Randolph Rasheed Wallace Greg Oden Brandon Roy What do these guys have in common? They were all, at some point in their Blazers career, if not untouchable then at least priced extremely highly by management and Blazers fans. Too young. Too promising. Why give up on them for somebody else more experienced/at a greater position of need? What if they become another Jermaine O'Neal? This is a very old argument applied to yet another young Blazer, CJ McCollum. In hindsight, a lot of these guys we probably should have dumped when their stock was higher. Instead we lost nearly all of them for peanuts or nothing at all. Not because they were bad players. Often, they didn't quite fit. Sometimes we just flat overrated them, and all that upside didn't pay off. Sometimes it was just injuries. Timing an asset to get the very most out of it when you sell it is very tricky, and is usually very unpopular at the time if you do it right. NBA management, incidentally, rarely gets criticized for holding on to a guy too long. Nobody is calling for NO's head now because we didn't trade Aldridge when we could have. But loss aversion is a powerful, unrecognized force in trade decisions. (How long ago did Jermaine O'Neal trade happen? Yet it's burned in our brains. But looking at the above examples, it's the exception and not the rule.) We fear more giving up on what we have than giving up on what we could have. It's not idiocy at all to discuss trading pieces that don't quite fit, especially when one of those pieces could fit so well on other teams (and could consequentially yield us so much in exchange). CJ's talents are extremely valuable in the modern NBA. Teams that have shoot-first point guards who can create their own shot and hit threes and have great personalities and are young are incredibly valuable. CJ ticks all those boxes. But recent history seems to show that only one of those guys are valuable per team. We need to upgrade a lot of things. CJ can help us do that.
Name some teams with dual point guards, both starting, in the Lillard mold who have made it to conference finals.
That's doing your work for you. You said recent history shows only one is valuable. I'm asking you to back up that claim.
I'm being a little clumsy here--I'm not saying that CJ has no value to us. I'm saying he's an imperfect fit. But guys like CJ and Lillard are just a gold mine right now. Especially with Curry tearing up the league--everybody wants a guy who can be even a little like him. Lillard's plantar fasciitis has been a godsend. It's demonstrated to every NBA team that CJ can run a team just as well, and perhaps even better (with some practice) than Lillard. He is a point guard, masquerading as a shooting guard because it's the only space we have when Lillard is healthy. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect that CJ, Lillard and Blazer management met, and had a discussion something like this: NO: Dame, how do you feel about you breaking up your Iron Man streak? DL: Whuh? NO: Another team really want CJ as their starting PG. But they ain't buying without seeing how he runs the show. CJ: Really? I get my own team? NO: You cool with that? DL: CJ is my man. We can't trade him. CJ: Hold on, you mean I get to run my own offense? NO: Yep. DL: You really want this? CJ: It's fun being your sidekick, but I want to cash the same shoe contracts you do. DL: Well.... NO: You want to have Demarcus Cousins to throw it down to? CJ: Done. DL: Done. NO: Done.
I don't think I was being a dick about it. It's truly idiotic to even suggest a cj for Thompson or Noel. I don't understand what a few of you want? An average big? We have two players that play similar, what's the issue? They aren't exactly the same. That's a nightmare for defenses. That's what we want. Focus on dame, hit cj, and vice versa. Then you have Allen crabbe becoming a stud this season, he's earned his keep. Look at the offensive power those three alone have, then add another max guy or whatever they decide in the coming years to bring great talent here. We aren't even half way through the season and we are talking trade cj. He hasn't even won most improved yet, has t fully shown us his capabilities and it's trade cj. Yeah okay...this dude will be an all star eventually but trade him, yeah smart move right now. Think
Somebody here can easily cite a counter-example of two Lillard-types succeeding then. It's an easily disprovable point, if not true.
Easily disprovable. Great. One example on either side doesn't make a rule. But just curious when teams did what you said recently and it failed.
Well, he is in the mix. But I left him off because I thought it'd be too controversial. Truth is that if Lillard were younger and not already locked up to a long-term deal, I'd be just as interested in trading him. But I think DL is too marketable now to the Blazers, he's the face of the franchise. And he's the incumbent. We can't trade him. I'm a fan of both players and the Blazers. I love CJ, and I'll be a fan of his no matter if he were playing for any team in the league (except Lakers. Fuck the Lakers. Oh yeah, fuck the Spurs as long as they have Aldridge as well. And fuck the Clippers and Rockets. He'd be dead to me on those teams.)
I don't understand your point. Seems pretty obvious to me that scoring point guards are doing fantastic right now. But teams like Phoenix or Golden State (Monte Ellis era) who have had multiple good point guards didn't do so hot.
20 teams with max cap room and very few quality free agents means CJ will certainly get the max. Enes Kanter, Tobias Harris and a torn achillies Wes all got the max.
