2019 Offseason: Part 2

[DusterBuster]

the State Farm commercials showed CP3 and Harden as bestest buddies. Did an insurance company lie? say it ain't so

I'd say it's about 7 in 10 chances this pairing will fail Houston. But I can imagine a few ways it will make them dangerous. They'll live at the foul line. They sure as hell didn't get more likeable though
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I love Dame, but I think he's wrong: I don't think Portland got better. I think they are weaker now than they were last season. Hope I'm wrong

in other news, Marcus Morris went full boozer, reneged on his agreement with San Antonio and signed for one year in NY

the Spurs responded by signing Trey Lyles to a 2 year deal

man, this off-season has been something

I'm not even remotely prepared to register an opinion on if the Blazers got better or not. I have literally no idea what to expect from the NBA next year. The NBA we saw last season and the one that we will see next year aren't even remotely close to the same thing. The Blazers could be the #1 seed or the #10 seed and neither would shock me all that much.

The only thing I'm really sure of is that the Blazers season will hinge on the development of Collins and Simons. Those two guys need to be really productive NBA players for the Blazers to be "better" next season than they were last season. If Simons is everything people are hyping him to be next year and he's a legit 6th man / Lou Williams type - the Blazers are going to be really strong. If he's inconsistent, the Blazers will need to figure something else out.

The only other thing I'm 100% sure on is that this upcoming season will rely entirely on what teams stay healthy. The West will be the same meat grinder conference he has been where a bad week can drop you 4-5 seeds in the standings.

But yeah, I'm withholding all judgement on the quality of this team until I see them play. There's just too many unknowns and x-factors right now for anyone to truly say if the team got better or worse.

you might be right but I'm just looking at the current roster thru the prism of last season

* starting with Nurkic likely to miss half of the season and when he does come back he won't be as good as he was, maybe till the following season. Kanter/Meyers to Whiteside....might be a bit better, but there's no C depth at all behind Whiteside/Zach

* Dame-CJ-Curry goes to Dame-CJ-Simons. Simons easily could be an upgrade over Curry, but that's not certain

* last year's PF rotation was Aminu-Zach-Harkless-Layman. This season, so far, it's Zach-Hezonja-Tolliver-Skal. Sorry, but there's extremely thin ice underneath this year's group

* Portland's versatile SF-like forwards were Aminu-Harkless-Turner-Hood-Layman. That's turned into Hood-Bazemore-Hezonja-Little. Big step down in defense that I don't think is offset enough offensively

the roster isn't complete, but the pickings have got slim as hell in the free agent market. I think the biggest issue is, as you mentioned, is that a whole lot is riding on Zach and Simons and if either struggles or fails, there's nothing backing them up, no option B's.

All fair points. I mean, I think Whiteside is better than Kanter/Meyers. Certainly on the defensive end of the floor and rebounding wise, that I don't think is much of a question. Offensively - the jury is out. But as for Nurk being out, Portland was able to get by alright in his absence with a high quality C in Kanter... I don't see why they can't do the same with a better C in Whiteside.

Of course - as of this posting - you're correct that they're depth is really a problem at that spot. If Hassan goes down, the Blazers will be in a world of hurt. But I also think it's too soon to talk about this roster like it's a finished product for this upcoming season.

At the end of the day, the Blazers got as far as they could with the Aminu/Harkless forward pairing. I was done seeing other teams just ignore them defensively each and every postseason. It was time to try something new and I believe they'll figure out how to fill out the rest of the roster. I also believe in the Blazers development staff. Year after year they've gotten cast off guys who they've been able to get more out of than other places do, so there's reason to be hopeful that trend continues.

There's also reason to believe that some of these signings may be better than we assume, as it has been in previous summers. For instance with Tolliver, many fans here poo-poo that as a whatever signing (myself included) and a guy who probably won't see many minutes... I think he's going to be a more integral part of the rotation that people assume. Fans of the teams he's been on in recent years rave about him. I think he's gonna be posting close to 20mpg for Portland and when he averaged that many minutes with Detroit in 17-18, he averaged 9pts on .436 shooting from 3pt range.

There are reasons to look at things glass half full with this roster, but at the end of the day, there's still a lot to prove.

[Sinobas]

We got Rodney Hood back.

[zzaj]

IMO, one thing that people are tending to forget is that the Blazers were in for a world of hurt anyway (perhaps not the best way of putting that, now that I think about it) with Nurkic being out for likely half of next season. They lost a starter, the second best player on the team, and an important cog on both ends of the floor. There is no easy way to replace that.

Sure, the Blazers could have payed Aminu and gone deep into luxury tax by trying to keep the status quo until Nurkic got back to playing 100%, but that would have likely been an expensive waste of a prime Lillard year.

The Blazers may have actually downgraded their depth, but they don't have the gaping hole in their roster that a year of Meyers/Collins as the C rotation would have been.

Additionally, as almost all of us have been hammering on for a couple of years now, the Blazers were stuck financially with huge contracts for below average players. That has been cleaned up somewhat, to the point that if Olshey wanted to, he could dangle something like a package of CJ/Whiteside/multiple firsts, for another legit All Star caliber talent to play with Lillard/Nurkic. Basically, their "asset" package would seem to be a lot more appealing now than it was a month ago.

[Wizenheimer]

Additionally, as almost all of us have been hammering on for a couple of years now, the Blazers were stuck financially with huge contracts for below average players. That has been cleaned up somewhat, to the point that if Olshey wanted to, he could dangle something like a package of CJ/Whiteside/multiple firsts, for another legit All Star caliber talent to play with Lillard/Nurkic. Basically, their "asset" package would seem to be a lot more appealing now than it was a month ago.

CJ and Whiteside combine for 53M in salary...that would be a huge trade if both were going out. I still don't believe Olshey would trade CJ, but who knows...he finally dumped Meyers. I sure am worried about him giving CJ a 40M/year extension though

Whiteside and Bazemore are more attractive expiring contracts then Turner/Meyers. Maybe something can come of that but I see a problem. Olshey has been talking about flexibility and fiscal restraint. This year looks like it will be the 2nd straight year as a tax team for Portland. If they leverage one or both of their expiring contracts for big longer term contracts, Portland could be over the tax in 2020-21 as well and they'd be on the edge of repeater tax in the first year of Dame's supermax and possibly the 1st year of CJ's extension. That's not practicing fiscal restraint

in other words, my take is that the 'potential' of leveraging Whiteside's and/or Bazemore's expiring contracts into a long term upgrade will probably result in the same kind of return that Crabbe's TPE yielded

besides that, looking at this team, Whiteside and Bazemore may be two of the best players on the team and would be critical to any hope of playoff success

All fair points. I mean, I think Whiteside is better than Kanter/Meyers. Certainly on the defensive end of the floor and rebounding wise, that I don't think is much of a question. Offensively - the jury is out. But as for Nurk being out, Portland was able to get by alright in his absence with a high quality C in Kanter... I don't see why they can't do the same with a better C in Whiteside.

Of course - as of this posting - you're correct that they're depth is really a problem at that spot. If Hassan goes down, the Blazers will be in a world of hurt. But I also think it's too soon to talk about this roster like it's a finished product for this upcoming season..

I actually agree with most of your points DB

it seems one overarching thing you're saying is that sometimes, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole (cliches-r-us), and there's always the possibility that a team will gel at a level much higher than the one you see on paper. That may be especially true with a leader like Dame

let me put it this way: this year's team has a much smaller margin of error than last year's team. They have one less guy (Turner) who can run the offense; so far, they only have 3 guys over 6'8, and one of them is Skal; and they've gotten significantly weaker at defending those lengthy wings that dominate the NBA now. Those are all very real concerns. They had about 10 players in last year's rotation and the season will start with 6 of those missing. They will have to adjust to a lot of new faces.

mainly a whole bunch of things need to break right for Portland next year or they'll regress a bit. And of course the sucky thing is the West just got a lot stronger. OKC will fall out, but just about everybody else got better (Houston I have no clue). It's going to be a real interesting race in the West though

[DaVoiceMaster]

Marcus Morris went full boozer, reneged on his agreement with San Antonio and signed for one year in NY

This understates what BamBoozer did. Morris backed out of a handshake deal, which is less than noble. BamBoozer cheated a blind man. Cavs had a player option to keep BamBoozer another year and Cavs would then have bird rights to pay BamBoozer a maximum contract, which was Cavs plan. BamBoozer said to Cavs owner, my family needs financial security now, please don't pickup my option and I will reward Cavs with my loyalty. IOW, he would rather sign now for less than wait a year for a bigger deal. Cavs granted BamBoozer his request and BamBoozer stabbed a blind man in the back.

Don't forget what Derick Fisher did to Utah.

[Wizenheimer]

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[DaVoiceMaster]

Additionally, as almost all of us have been hammering on for a couple of years now, the Blazers were stuck financially with huge contracts for below average players. That has been cleaned up somewhat, to the point that if Olshey wanted to, he could dangle something like a package of CJ/Whiteside/multiple firsts, for another legit All Star caliber talent to play with Lillard/Nurkic. Basically, their "asset" package would seem to be a lot more appealing now than it was a month ago.

CJ and Whiteside combine for 53M in salary...that would be a huge trade if both were going out. I still don't believe Olshey would trade CJ, but who knows...he finally dumped Meyers. I sure am worried about him giving CJ a 40M/year extension though

Whiteside and Bazemore are more attractive expiring contracts then Turner/Meyers. Maybe something can come of that but I see a problem. Olshey has been talking about flexibility and fiscal restraint. This year looks like it will be the 2nd straight year as a tax team for Portland. If they leverage one or both of their expiring contracts for big longer term contracts, Portland could be over the tax in 2020-21 as well and they'd be on the edge of repeater tax in the first year of Dame's supermax and possibly the 1st year of CJ's extension. That's not practicing fiscal restraint

in other words, my take is that the 'potential' of leveraging Whiteside's and/or Bazemore's expiring contracts into a long term upgrade will probably result in the same kind of return that Crabbe's TPE yielded

besides that, looking at this team, Whiteside and Bazemore may be two of the best players on the team and would be critical to any hope of playoff success

All fair points. I mean, I think Whiteside is better than Kanter/Meyers. Certainly on the defensive end of the floor and rebounding wise, that I don't think is much of a question. Offensively - the jury is out. But as for Nurk being out, Portland was able to get by alright in his absence with a high quality C in Kanter... I don't see why they can't do the same with a better C in Whiteside.

Of course - as of this posting - you're correct that they're depth is really a problem at that spot. If Hassan goes down, the Blazers will be in a world of hurt. But I also think it's too soon to talk about this roster like it's a finished product for this upcoming season..

I actually agree with most of your points DB

it seems one overarching thing you're saying is that sometimes, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole (cliches-r-us), and there's always the possibility that a team will gel at a level much higher than the one you see on paper. That may be especially true with a leader like Dame

let me put it this way: this year's team has a much smaller margin of error than last year's team. They have one less guy (Turner) who can run the offense; so far, they only have 3 guys over 6'8, and one of them is Skal; and they've gotten significantly weaker at defending those lengthy wings that dominate the NBA now. Those are all very real concerns. They had about 10 players in last year's rotation and the season will start with 6 of those missing. They will have to adjust to a lot of new faces.

mainly a whole bunch of things need to break right for Portland next year or they'll regress a bit. And of course the sucky thing is the West just got a lot stronger. OKC will fall out, but just about everybody else got better (Houston I have no clue). It's going to be a real interesting race in the West though

I agree that the team is not as good as last year... yet. This is a contract year for a number of players... Whiteside, Bazemore, Hood, and Hezonjia (sp?). Hopefully that means they will step up their games and then Nurkic comes back to put the team over the top. They are a big man short right now, which I assume they will add somebody as insurance ( Chandler or Bogut?). I dont know who all is left.

[Norm2953]

It's going to be an interesting year with the two LA teams, Houston adding signicant pieces,
Denver and Utah tough and one cannot count out the GSW, SA and perhaps the Kings.

Portland's turned over half their roster and I suspect will really miss in the regular seasonli
a real pro in Aminu. So much of their season rests in young players Collins and Simons and
how Whiteside fits in with Dame/CJ. I'm in agreement with the consensus that this roster
without Nurk has a smaller margin of error in a rugged western conference for its certainly
possible we could have a decent season (over .500) and still be in the lottery.

I'm looking forward to next summer for we look to be major players with Whiteside, Baxemore,
Hood all likely free agents with a very desireable expiring contract in CJ.

[Showdown]

Best 6-7 players on the team are better now and when Nurk returns bigs depth will be good, shooting and scoring is also better but Blazers lost depth and defense on the sf and didn't get good forward player or star so now don't have depth nor starpower and forward positions are both most important in this game and our conference rivals best players are sf's so we need someone to slow them down which means that this team can be good in rs but is more vulnerable if someone from these best players get injured in rs or PO, players will be much more tired when PO start and we wont be able to defend their stars in PO unless our younger guys improve significantly.

Maybe NO had an idea that since rotation in PO is shortened anyways he decided to trade depth for better player but problem with that is that Whiteside isn't that good even if we get his best version since there are lot of teams that have same or better top 7 guys. Right now we don't have any advantage over our competition in PO, don't have best player or best stars, don't have depth, don't have best starters or best PO rotation and don't have starpower so we can't expect to be bailed out by the refs. This team can be good but need more improvements by trade at trade deadline and by signing buyout players to fil weak spots and we will play enough games by then to see which things we need to fix.

[Denisaur9]

Would you guys have interest in a McCollum trade with the Raps?

Either Powell, FVV for CJ

Or

Serge and OG for CJ and Skal.

Notice you guys have alot of wing depth with Tolliver, Hood, Simons and Hezojna and Little.

Lillard
Hood
OG
Serge
Whiteside or Nurkic

Sent from my SM-G920W8 using RealGM mobile app

[BlazersBroncos]

No. CJ only goes out in a deal for a player better than CJ with PDX adding prospects / picks.

In the NBA four quarters doesnt equal a dollar. Its quality over quantity.

PDX needs to add another big but after that, they should stand pat until Nurkic is healthy. Then shop Whiteside / Little / Picks for a star. Start with Blake, move to Aldridge / Gallo, ideally stay away from Love. Those are the only guys potentially avaliable that move the needle for PDX.

I hate rooting against small market teams, but I am hopeful that Detroit sucks hard this season and decides to move away from Blake. I would offer Whiteside / Little / 2 Future Protected FRP's to DET for Blake, but Hassan would have to be rerouted to a 3rd team.

[Jsun947]

Stars that are both obtainable, and that we'd want back in a CJ trade are realistically probably limited to Bradley Beal or maybe at some point Ben Simmons (Who I don't personally like but whatever).

The other option would be to try to trade for guys that are on more affordable deals like Josh Richardson, Covington, or Aaron Gordon.

If all of this looks kinda yucky and gross its because it is and its why CJ probably won't be going anywhere.

[d-train]

Would you guys have interest in a McCollum trade with the Raps?

Either Powell, FVV for CJ

Or

Serge and OG for CJ and Skal.

Notice you guys have alot of wing depth with Tolliver, Hood, Simons and Hezojna and Little.

Lillard
Hood
OG
Serge
Whiteside or Nurkic

Sent from my SM-G920W8 using RealGM mobile app

A deal for CJ has to include Siakam.

Edit: And it would need to be a bigger deal involving 1 or more other teams. The only reason we would do the deal is to take advantage of Siakam lower salary to add other good players with big contracts. A straight trade with us only getting Siakam doesn't make any sense for us.

[Roy The Natural]

Would you guys have interest in a McCollum trade with the Raps?

Either Powell, FVV for CJ

Or

Serge and OG for CJ and Skal.

Notice you guys have alot of wing depth with Tolliver, Hood, Simons and Hezojna and Little.

Lillard
Hood
OG
Serge
Whiteside or Nurkic

Sent from my SM-G920W8 using RealGM mobile app

Yea... this isn't happening. Outside of Siakam, I don't see anything on the Raptors that piques my interest, and I completely understand that Siakam would be untouchable for Toronto. I don't think there's a deal to be made.

If Portland wants CJ's money off the books with a trade involving expirings, they can get a much better prospect back than OG Anuboby. There would need to be a fairly significant number of 1st round picks, and potential pick swaps for me to consider either of these frameworks for a trade, and I'm not even a huge CJ fan. Just think that the pieces coming back in these trades are mostly junk.

[Norm2953]

CJ is only available for the long desired upgrade to pair with Dame..

I could see CJ going out next summer when Portland has all kinds of roster flexibility

[d-train]

CJ is only available for the long desired upgrade to pair with Dame..

I could see CJ going out next summer when Portland has all kinds of roster flexibility

With Lillard's new contract, it makes more sense to trade Lillard for the long desired upgrade to pair with CJ.

[BlazersBroncos]

With Lillard's new contract, it makes more sense to trade Lillard for the long desired upgrade to pair with CJ.

A fun experiment would be to have everyone on this board start to support trading Lillard and see if you switch to wanting to trade CJ instead.

[DusterBuster]

With Lillard's new contract, it makes more sense to trade Lillard for the long desired upgrade to pair with CJ.

A fun experiment would be to have everyone on this board start to support trading Lillard and see if you switch to wanting to trade CJ instead.

"fun".

[d-train]

With Lillard's new contract, it makes more sense to trade Lillard for the long desired upgrade to pair with CJ.

A fun experiment would be to have everyone on this board start to support trading Lillard and see if you switch to wanting to trade CJ instead.

I don't support trading either player. But, it would be a fair assumption that I would support the player that is otherwise underrepresented.

[Case2012]

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