Gatorade Sax wrote:monopoman wrote:Gatorade Sax wrote:Not too long ago I had a swarm of Portland fans swear black and blue that Nurk was their 2nd best player, due to “insert niche RS stats”. Lol give me a break, CJ carried your asses out of that series.
Pretty hard for Nurkic to prove how good he is being injured. LOL, I have no clue what this is about, this is like if LBJ sat an entire playoff series and someone else on the team helped them win the series and you say "Damn I thought Laker fans swore up and down LBJ was the best player but "insert player x" carried your ass."
The threads about CJ looking like an upper echelon SG, and I referred to his most recent showings in game 6 and a road game 7 to steal the series to approve this statement. Obviously Nurk can’t prove anything while he’s injured, but CJ just proved his worth ten times over. Do Portland fans still think he is a less significant piece?
Hmmm... It's difficult. I want to believe in CJ. 2 years ago, I thought he'd make a leap. 23ppg on 48% from the field, and 42% from 3 was incredible. I thought he'd bounce around in the mid/high 40s from the field, and low 40s from 3 while getting a slight uptick in playmaking and free throw rate going forward from that time. But he's still yet to match that year statistically, and seemed to regress in all areas... and most importantly, the areas he needed to take the next step as a player... those areas, he got noticeably worse. He can be great at times, but he needs to be more consistent in impacting the game outside of just hitting shots.
I guess, as a Blazer fan, he's earning back some respect and belief with me in this playoff run. In this playoff run, when his shot isn't falling, he's been passing the ball much better, and he's also been rebounding better. He's been mostly on in the playoffs though. What's frustrating is CJs lack of playmaking and setting up of teammates when he's not hitting his shots.
I mean, we see it this playoffs... CJ is capable of getting penetration, he absolutely MUST learn to pass out of drives better to truly take his game to the level it's capable of being at. I've given up on increasing his free throw rate. I've accepted it's just not really the way he plays. But there's no reason that he can't be averaging 4-5 assists a game with how much he has the ball, and how he's able to get around defenders.
IDK with CJ. I'd say to keep him until his contract's about up because he plays well in the playoffs, but he can really drag down the Blazers during the regular season, and it feels like he'd truly be best utilized in a supersub Lou Williams role on most regular season nights.