NBA/Blazers 2025-26 Thread

[pezsez1]

Blazers don't have enough talent on this team to create a logjam

We'll absolutely have a logjam next year. Dame is coming back and will almost certainly be #1. If Scoot is back, he'll need minutes. (Can't develop without minutes.) And if Jru's still here then it will be hard to sit him (a proven veteran) simply so Scoot Henderson can learn how to not turn the ball over.

It may not be the kind of logjam you want, but it's a logjam, nonetheless. We'll have three guys who need major rotation minutes at a single position, and that just doesn't math out. We're seeing right now (and we've been seeing it for a while) why we can't simply play Jru out of position at the 2.

[pezsez1]

Go Blazers! Big game by Scoot. Love to see it!

[Phalanx]

What a great game. The Blazers came out with energy and it felt like they had a plan tonight. I was sorry to see Wemby go down, but I thought Jrue did such a great job defending him on that play, taking away that blind spinning move he likes to do and leaving him completely flat-footed so that he fell. It should have been called a charge. Love to see RWIII looking like he used to with the Celtics, taking oops and cleaning up in the post. That's the guy the Blazers traded for and he finally shows up right before contract time. Scoot earning money tonight too, suddenly looking like the #3 pick he was supposed to be. I doubt he can bring that kind of shooting on a nightly basis, but he sure picked a great time to wake up.

The minutes distribution was interesting tonight. RWIII and Clingan split the time evenly at center, and Scoot and Jrue took the lion's share of the minutes at the guard spots - Sharpe barely got in, splitting the clean-up minutes with Thybulle. When Shaedon was in, he was getting roasted on defense. I can't imagine they will do every game like that - Jrue can't play 39 every night, but it doesn't seem like Tiago has a lot of confidence in Shaedon's game right now.

[Phalanx]

It may not be the kind of logjam you want, but it's a logjam, nonetheless. We'll have three guys who need major rotation minutes at a single position, and that just doesn't math out. We're seeing right now (and we've been seeing it for a while) why we can't simply play Jru out of position at the 2.

I don't know what the heck you are seeing in your Dame-colored glasses, but that line-up with Jrue and Scoot starting is how they won all those games down the stretch and jumped two spots in the standings to get into the playoffs, where they have won two of three games so far. Even with Shaedon back, they are still doing it. It's safe to say Coach Tiago disagrees with you. Jrue is older now, but as Wemby found out tonight, still a smart defender even of taller opponents. If Sharpe's bad defense and subsequent benching is any indicator, it seems doubtful that Lillard will be starting if Jrue and Scoot are healthy as long as Splitter is the coach. Dame's matador defense doesn't fit the scheme or the ethos this team has going now.

Do me a favor and watch the last eight minutes of this game again. Jrue is the main reason they turned the game around and got out of that 13-point hole. He was the Jruth: still getting it done on both ends. He might get traded because of his salary, but not because of Lillard.

By the way, I have been hard on Cronin this year because of that awful offseason, but his decisions look a little better tonight. Drafting Scoot looks better, trading for RWIII looks better, getting Toumani thrown into that Nurk deal, trading picks for Avdija and his unbelievable contract. Finding Clingan in a weak draft. Even trading Simons for Jrue looks better tonight (Drafting Hansen and waiving Ayton were still stupid). Say what you want about him, but he built this out of the ruins of the Olshey/Lillard years. Tonight they looked like an honest-to-goodness playoff team, and Cronin has been promoted from 'Sad Excuse for a GM who Should be Escorted from the Premises' to 'Mixed Bag GM who Follows up Good Trades with Lapses into Total Insanity'. Letting Splitter take over and the way the playoff run worked out with everyone getting healthy at the right time have vindicated him to some degree. We'll see if that's enough to keep his job.

[OregonFan4Life]

Good win Blazers fans, sucks to see Wemby go down and hope he’s ok. Blazers took advantage of his absence and were a much better coached team. Granted I don’t think Tiago is the most amazing coach out there but I’d take him over Mitch Johnson any day.

Spurs are very immature and resort to bad 1v1 basketball with 0 ball movement towards the end of close games, and the Blazers were smart enough to recognize that and take advantage of that and steal the win in SA. Denver did the same thing late in the regular season. Very impressed with how the Blazers came back.

I have to say though, Scoot was behaving like a punk running his mouth like that. He played great but it’s much easier to have a good game offensively when the opposing team’s best player and the first ever unanimous DPOY is out with an injury. If he does that with Wemby on the court, fine, but to me I thought he looked like a punk.

We’ll see what happens Friday, I said from the beginning this series goes 6-7 games and no doubt that’s the case now.


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[pezsez1]

He was the Jruth: still getting it done on both ends. He might get traded because of his salary, but not because of Lillard.

The Jruth! Love it.

As much as you accuse me of having "Dame-colored glasses," I'm going to beg you to stop chugging the Dame Hatorade. I've seriously never talked to anyone who hates a professional athlete like you hate Damian Lillard. I can almost feel the venom seething from every word you write! It's quite the talent.

Yes, if Jru gets traded, it will be in large part because of Damian Lillard. Your guy Cronin brought him back and gave him a no-trade clause because he knows Dame is the superior player. Jru Holiday is great. Right now he's still better than Scoot, and if we didn't have Scoot, then I'd be salivating over a Dame/Jru backcourt. But we do have Scoot, and he's CLEARLY the future, which means in a perfect world Jru is gone before next season. He needs to be running the point for a playoff team, and we need Scoot to get plenty of minutes behind Lillard. That's just how it is.

[Phalanx]

The Jruth! Love it.

As much as you accuse me of having "Dame-colored glasses," I'm going to beg you to stop chugging the Dame Hatorade. I've seriously never talked to anyone who hates a professional athlete like you hate Damian Lillard. I can almost feel the venom seething from every word you write! It's quite the talent.

Yes, if Jru gets traded, it will be in large part because of Damian Lillard. Your guy Cronin brought him back and gave him a no-trade clause because he knows Dame is the superior player. Jru Holiday is great. Right now he's still better than Scoot, and if we didn't have Scoot, then I'd be salivating over a Dame/Jru backcourt. But we do have Scoot, and he's CLEARLY the future, which means in a perfect world Jru is gone before next season. He needs to be running the point for a playoff team, and we need Scoot to get plenty of minutes behind Lillard. That's just how it is.

I know you just posted this silliness for a reaction. There is no way Lillard is the superior player to Jrue. They actually settled that on the court and Jrue beat the ever-living snot out of both Dame and McCollum on the way to a first-round playoff sweep. Since then, Jrue has won championships on two separate teams, one of the teams is the same one Lillard completely failed with. Lillard has been an abject failure in the playoffs, never winning even one game past the second round.

You think I am a Lillard hater. That's fine. He ruined my favorite team for a decade and tried to burn them down on the way out of town. I don't have too many favorable feelings toward him. In this discussion though, I am not hating as much as laughing at your lack of objectivity when it comes to Lillard. Your take that the two-point-guard lineup isn't working is bizarre. A team that had a losing record has gone 7-3 since they put both Jrue and Scoot in the starting lineup, including two wins vs the Clippers to pass them in the standings and two playoff games. How is that not working? Your take that Lillard will be starting next year and they will have to trade Jrue or Scoot is equally ridiculous. Lillard doesn't play any defense. How is that going to work on a defense-oriented team? My only hesitation in completely calling your lunacy out is that Cronin has done a lot of stupid things before where Lillard is concerned and he might do it again. If we are going on benefit to the team, Lillard wouldn't be anywhere near the starting lineup.

[Boom]

Blazers need that kind of production from Scoot if this team is going to be competitive next year. Dame/Jrue need to be limited to 20 minutes per game. Hopefully Scoot stays healthy and has a stellar off season.

[squintsdd]

Great win, but I'd love to see sharpe and Grant stay off the floor. One is spinning in circles on the defensive end while the other might as well just hand the ball over on the offensive end.ll I how to see them both get traded before next season, but for some reason Cronin really wants to hold onto them

[pezsez1]

There is no way Lillard is the superior player to Jrue. They actually settled that on the court and Jrue beat the ever-living snot out of both Dame and McCollum on the way to a first-round playoff sweep.

You're saying Jru is better because he played great defense on Dame eight years ago BEFORE Dame developed his deep shooting skills that made him such a dynamic threat? And with a roster on which Dame was the only reliable scorer?

Anyway.

I have faith we'll see more of Scoot Henderson showing why he deserves to be part of Portland's long-term plan at point guard. I've never pegged him as the kind of generational talent we've had with Damian Lillard, but I also haven't thought it fair to call him a bust. His early years have been plagued by injury, but he always seems to improve as he's able to stay on the court.

Also, compare him to Anfernee Simons. Some people really liked Ant, but Scoot is far better at this point of his career. It took Ant like five seasons to gain Scoot's confidence, and even then he was never great at running the point. Scoot seems to have an instinctive knowledge of the PG role and is only getting better at scoring. My big criticism of Scoot early on was his mediocre shot percentage, but he's put in the work and now he's actually a pretty decent shooter. I'm always happy to admit when I'm actually wrong about something, and this is one of those times.

Dame & Scoot are going to be fun to watch!

[Phalanx]

You're saying Jru is better because he played great defense on Dame eight years ago BEFORE Dame developed his deep shooting skills that made him such a dynamic threat? And with a roster on which Dame was the only reliable scorer?

1. I'm not sure when your made-up timeline has Lillard developing his deep-shooting skills, but the series where he got waxed by Jrue was over halfway into his career. Of the 900 games Lillard has played in his entire career, he had already played 469 of them by then, which is over 52%. So I guess he was a really late bloomer? The funny part to me is that he has been injured for roughly half the games for the last five years. So the window that he was a 'dynamic threat' and not injured half the time was...3 years?

2. Lillard scored 18.5 ppg in that series. CJ scored 25.3 ppg. Al-Farouq Aminu scored 17.3 ppg. Their effective field goal percentages for that series was Lillard .415, McCollum .591, and Aminu .644. In what reality would Lillard be considered the only reliable scorer among those three? He got his butt kicked by Jrue, who scored 27.5 ppg in that series. There's no shame in it. Jrue is a two-time champion, and he is showing his playoff value even this late in his career. Lillard just doesn't have that kind of value. Lillard is a regular-season stat-padder. That's his legacy. That, and a career full of insane supermax contracts.

Like I said, Dame-colored glasses.

[pezsez1]

It's a credit to Jru that Dame became as good as he did. He credited Jru's defense in that series for inspiring him to become one of the greatest deep shooting threats the world has ever seen.

Dame's shot percentage in that series was low because he was being bodied and doubled whenever he caught the ball. Aminu shot 34% for that series and 29% from 3. Not sure which series you were watching or which almanac you checked, but his 3-ball was atrocious, and that's why the Blazers lost. Dame was their only real scoring threat. That series was CJ's "break out" series, he was able to hit his wide-open shots, but Aminu wasn't. Not to mention Aminu was a turnover machine whenever he tried driving to the rim. The Pels were leaving them wide open and simply not allowing Dame to score, and it worked.

I seriously don't know how you can profess to be such a Blazer fan and yet you can't remember how inept we were outside of Lillard (and eventually CJ). The fact we even got to the playoffs that year was the result of Dame dragging us there. But once there, the formula for beating us was simple: Don't let Dame shoot it.

This is ridiculous that I even need to remind you of any of this.

Seething hatred for Dame! It's clouding your memory, and your judgement.

[Phalanx]

So your excuse for why Lillard played so bad is that the other team was playing defense? Wow, why didn't anyone else in history think of that?

Here is the link:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/pl ... ual01.html

Looks like you are looking at the wrong year, Pez. Check again, and this time look at the 2017-18 year under playoffs. The tip-off is the number of games. The stats you are citing are over 16 games the next year - the year they limped into the WCF before getting swept. The year under discussion, they got swept in four games. I'll pause while you catch up...

Okay, so now that you have identified the correct stats and realized that Aminu shot better for that series than Lillard ever did in any playoff series in his whole career, and tried to formulate a new argument to justify your Lillard worship, tell me again how Lillard was the only scorer on that team.

The bit about my profession of fanhood and not being able to remember was especially funny.

[pezsez1]

You're right, I did read the wrong column. He shot 43% wide open from the 3-pt line and 50% wide open from the field while the Pels hounded Dame and refused to let him beat them. Aminu scored less than 10 PPG that year, so it was a pretty safe bet, and it worked.

Now, are you going to sit there with a straight face and try to tell me Aminu was a better shooter and offensive player than Damian Lillard? Because in one series he was able to hit some wide-open 3s?

And because you're so insistent on rewriting history, let's look at what Steph Aminu did in that series:

Game 1
Points: 6
FG: 2–7
3PT: 1–4

Game 2
Points: 14
FG: 5–9
3PT: 4–6

Game 3
Points: 7
FG: 2–7
3PT: 1–5

Game 4
Points: 8
FG: 3–9
3PT: 0–2

So he had ONE GAME where he made 66% of his 3s, and the rest of the time he shot 25%, 20%, and zero percent.

You HAAAAAAAAAAATE Damian Lillard and I'm so confused by that, but whatever. I'll never know what's going on inside that head to make you loathe him so much. You've given your reasons but your logic is nonsensical. About this series, I'm not going to sit here and let you rewrite history. You were right on the stats, but your memory of what actually happened is s***, so thank goodness I'm here to remind you.

My turn to wait while you try to come up with another easily debunked argument.