We’re talking lessons learned from the Portland Trail Blazers preseason slate which ended at 0-4 against NBA teams with a loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night.
Here’s what we absolutely know: Shaedon Sharpe has to be in the rotation from first game of the season. Portland isn’t good enough to chase wins and needs to prioritize development. The rookie has to play.
9:48 – Plus, the defense is still a wreck. Which is a roster problem and a coaching problem.
19:46 – Finally, listeners share their lessons including thoughts on Jusuf Nurkic, Anfernee Simons, Nassir Little and the Blazers social media team.
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18 Comments
Nurkic renders us as a half court team with very little spacing and completely slow defensively. Jokic has 3pt and great passing especially outlets. Embiid can shoot the 3 and get to his spots midrange. Vucevic + Jonas can shoot the 3 and space the floor. Myles turner… speaks for itself… and Gobert is all nba defense, P&r lob threat and recovers quickly on his feet.
Couple that with 2 small guards and 1 proper wing in Jerami… we’re gonna leak points more than we can score them and the preseason is showing us that.
I’m thinking we get longer and faster with spacing, especially if we intend to run a dame & ant lineup… best try to call up orlando for isaac + bamba
Portland needs our own version of Jarrett allen & evan mobley… i’m calling it now we’re asking too much of Grant & GP2 🥲
3 team trade idea:
POR: Bamba/Isaac/JTA
LAL: Hart/Nurk/Ross/Harris (win now/ let’s AD play his preferred 4 position)
ORL: Westbrook/Little/picks (nassir at position of need with young core + let’s wendell / banchero/ bolbol more playtime)
Perfect pod, gotta play shaedon. Stop playing keon.
You’re not over reacting
Wow Mike, not sure I've seen you this down on the team. Your right tho we NEED to play Sharpe.
Play sharpe
I think Billups job should be on the line too. This is just unacceptable. Defense schematically looking like a bad highschool team.
Mike, ive been watching for a year, and you’re 💯 percent correct! They look worse than any team on defense. I was all for booting stots and trying something new, and they’re so terrible looking that I regret thinking that. Maybe we should have gotten becky hammond. Look what she did in her first season coaching! I just feel bad that we are doing this to dame.
You got to have heart and you got a Wanabee a championship type team. I don’t see that with the Blazers where the fuck is your heart at defense boys defense defense wins games so does offense where is your damn defense
@18:00 The important thing with losing this badly is, are they as embarrassed with their pathetic team play as their fans? Are they going to at least be competitive in the regular season? Do they have an ounce of team pride?
I don’t come here for baseless hope. Facts.
It’s no longer “Dame Time,” it’s Trade Time while he’s at a high level for a youngish talented F/C and draft picks. Slide Simons into Dame’s slot, stop playing players beyond their size and abilities, they’re being dominated on defense.
Still feel good about the Blazers? I wanted the Blazers to be good this year but I think the lack of size will be a big deal.
This off-season I've learned, Cronin wasn't messing around when hinting at more trades to come. This roster isn't finished.
The reality is that we weren't winning anything this year a while ago. Cronin even alluded to it. That being said, we need that no7 pick to help us. But he has to have the room to fail-forward like Edwards, Booker, Tatum etc all got. Minutes make the man. If he gets 25+ minutes a night, he can legit help us win in the next couple years. All he needs is to tighten up his handle quickly and get comfortable with the 3pt range and understand NBA defense. You said it right. He needs minutes and BIG minutes. We don't want to wait 5 yrs and 100mil$ like we did with Ant (who likely wasn't there yet). We need him to give us value out of his rookie contract and fast…the only way is to give him a long leash, 10shots a night and 25mins a night. The potential is too good there. You can just sit him and waste a development year.
Save Simons for the moments you need a 3 pt specialist. We might not need him in the rotation at all, except to start the games we rest Dame. Every game we start Dame plus Simons, we are likely to lose. Simons was not an upgrade to CJ. If we had Herro and Miami had Simons, we would start Herro and Dame and lose, while Miami would bring Simons off the bench. Man Miami is better than us through and through
I want sharpe to play too, but with Ant, GP2, Nas, Josh Hart, Winslow, and Keon all playing the 2/3 how do we find minutes for him?
Keeping it real