The offseason is long. Let’s stir the pot.
What are your takes😛?
My take: Anfernee Simons is absolute fire and fits this team perfectly, now and in the future.
If Scoot and Shae both pop he’s the perfect guy off the bench to fit with defense first players like Thybulle, Camara, Jabari Walker, Clingan, Deni, Rob Williams. On the other hand, if one of Scoot or Shae stalls he fills the other position.
Cronin is building the team to support undersized guards in a way that Dame / CJ never had. He’s gotten bigger at every other position. Shae is the philosophical opposite of CJ and we are stocked with defenders that can guard point of attack and out to the 3 point line at every other position. Just look at our three centers – their switchability are their calling cards.
Ant makes more sense on our team than nearly any other, and Cronin is right to at least wait for multiple picks / young assets to come back. I just don’t think the Blazers have to trade one of the best pure scorers in the league.
Credit to @hoopsdrive on X for getting me absolutely hyped this morning with his Ant 🧵. https://x.com/hoopsdrive/status/1816159562657149097?s=46&t=l4nT-KeagVh7G-SnC8TSbQ
by Mylo_Does
35 Comments
I don’t think any of our dudes are going to be as good as we need them to be to be actual contenders without us adding a superstar talent
Kris Murray will have a long NBA career.
I don’t really believe in Sharpe as an all star level player. He’s got the tools, I just don’t know if he’ll put it together. I would love to be wrong!
Chauncy Billips will be a Hall of Fame level coach.
Remember to sort by controversial folks….
I’m not opposed to giving Ayton another big contract if he continues to produce
Chauncey is far from this team’s biggest problem and although I don’t think he’s a great coach, he’s being scapegoated because people don’t want to admit that we just don’t have good players right now. This team is severely lacking talent compared to the rest of the west, what do people honestly expect him to do with this roster?
We will mostly likely not end up with Cooper Flagg and it will be on Scoot, Shaedon, and Deni to take massive leaps over the next 2 years to prevent us from becoming a bottom feeder for the foreseeable future.
Fans are miserable at evaluating coaching and by extension our fanbase has gone off the deep end on Chauncey.
eg all the whining about the offense last year and there being too many Grant iso’s or the ball not moving well enough for Scoot being in the corner early in the season.
Scoot for example. Scoot was a miserable basketball player to start the season. He was not capable of having the ball in his hands and defenders didn’t have to respect his jumper so screens(especially from Ayton) were all but useless. NBA offenses don’t work like that. Chauncey clearly wanted to get him minutes, so once he realized it wasn’t viable he reduced his role and moved him offball and then the fanbase watched Scoot stand there on offense and would whine about Chauncey misusing him. Fans give zero thought to all the limiting factors coaches have to deal with.
Camara and Walker should be long term rotational pieces while Kris should only have this season to figure it out or we should ship him to the kings to be with his much better brother
Camara projects as a + fifth starter imo, great defense and glue guy stuff. Walker was absolutely killer in two summer leagues for us, I think he can be a versatile, high character bench piece. I want to believe he can shoot it at league average from distance while providing that rebounding and finishing spark
1. Kris Murray, Rupert, Camara won’t make the leap to be good enough in the next couple of years.
2. We should’ve traded up a few spots to draft Cam Whitmore in last years draft. He’s going to be an all star. (Drafted at 20 by HOU, POR drafted Kris Murray at 23.)
3. Scoot has ADHD
> I just don’t think the Blazers have to trade one of the best pure scorers in the league.
He’s nowhere near one of the best pure scorers in the league. He’s not even top 20. He tied for 22nd in ppg last year and the vast majority of the guys ahead of him were much more efficient. He’s likely around the 25-30 range in scoring while being one of the worst defenders in the league. There’s a reason there’s no market for guys like Herro or Ant or Clarkson.
> he’s the perfect guy off the bench to fit
That will never ever happen on the Blazers
Bring back the jail blazers. At least it was interesting.
Anfernee Simons is the new Cj Mccollum, in that their skillset is fun & flashy for fans who need something to keep them engaged with the team, but their lack of balance & mediocrity in their secondary skills limit their ceiling *far* more than Blazers fans will admit.
Once again we’re holding on to a small guard who will be aged out of our rebuild & whose trade value will NOT be going back up during this contract. The urgency to move Simons for value is being muted by fans who don’t want to give up our current “best piece” even if that piece won’t help us longterm.
That was gonna be my take even before I saw yours, OP, & it won’t let me quote ya for some reason, but I gotta respond to a few things;
– Anfernee Simons is never gonna come off the bench, not in Portland at least. He’s been clear about that.
– Simons could replicate what Shaedon will bring, with more shooting & less physicality & less FTs & less rebounding & less defense… but he’s not gonna be able to fill Scoot’s shoes as a true PG. He’s a shoot-first combo guard with some passing, Scoot is a driving pass-first 2way PG. The playstyle difference will not work with the same lineups at all.
– Love your point about building the roster bigger at other positions, as well as a defensive focus! I’m just not sure how it makes Simons fit better as the polar opposite? Feel like it will just make him stand out as the easy point to attack for opponents.
– Maybe pump the brakes on the expected return for Simons, since no matter how good he *might* be (at SHOOTING, not SCORING, there’s a very critical difference in these stats), he has 1 season left before he’ll be viewed as an expiring contract & Blazers will lose all leverage in negotiations, as teams who don’t feel he’s the key piece can just wait to add him at their own price the following summer in FA & give us nothing. If we want *ANY* value, he has to be moved ASAP, & that’s not a position where we can hold out for multiple FRPs. We need “value” more than we need “best value”.
– So again, the “shooting vs scoring”… Simons is *not* a top tier *Scorer*. There are too many ways to score that he avoids, & his *Shooting*, while above league average, has only ever been “elite” or top tier in small doses. He’s *never* been a top 10 *Shooter* for any season (per bball ref right down at the accolades), much less a top *Scorer*.
We need to stop overhyping our guys or using words like “Elite” when it’s only a few % points above league average & not even top 10 that season. It’s damaging the understanding of player value.
I think this was the correct course to take as Dame aged out. Many hate the rebuild and some don’t even seem to understand what a rebuild is. They should have done this when lilliard got here and maybe we would have actually had a chance to contend with him.
Ayton is the odd man out. His playstyle isn’t conducive to a championship competing squad without a pay cut.
Blazers absolutely need the number 1 pick and get Flagg. He actually has superstar possibilities which is desperately needed to pair up with the current guys. Never going to land someone at that caliber in a trade or free agency. Not really a controversial take. But the ceiling for the current roster is a low seed playoff team at best. Not one player right now stands out as a cornerstone piece.
If Lebron James did one year in Portland, we would retire his number.
I think Ace Bailey is going to be the superior choice to Flagg. Right now Flagg is the better player, but Ace’s main weaknesses (shot selection and being less upright while dribbling) are coachable. He’s got the higher ceiling as a number 1 option.
Scoot isn’t going to be an above average in the league (based off performances last year, I hope it changes).
Jerami Grant is very important for the development of Scoot Henderson. No offense to Deni, but if we trade Grant, we’ll have unreliable 3 point shooters in the front court. Defenders are going to sag, and Scoot will run into a brick walk every time he drives to the paint.
Grant could be the difference between Scoot being a fringe all star, or the blazers moving on from him after his rookie deal.
Simons is by far the biggest problem with the team. Won’t watch if he doesn’t get moved
Ant is our future at PG not Scoot. Scoot was a dud, shit happens. We suck at drafting top 3 and history repeats itself… Shae Is definitely our piece with the most future potential
Unless Sharpe takes a big leap this year, Ayton is our most talented player and we ought to build the team around his strengths and weaknesses.
There’s not a universe where anfernee Simons comes off the bench as a blazer
We finish bottom 5 in the league again
bro thought he was getting upvotes
Sharpe is overrated by our fanbase (myself included). I see him having Zach Levine’s ceiling. Incredibly talented and possibly a winning player as a 2nd or 3rd option, but not a winner as a first option.
I don’t think Shae has shown us anything that interesting so far. People act like it’s a sure thing he’s a future all star. With the limited data we do have, I don’t think he’s shown us that he’s a future all star.
My other hot take is more positive. I think Scoot has shown us he’s a future all star. I just really like the way he plays. The stats will fall into place this year I think.
I am not sold on scoot. I would love to be proven wrong. But maaaaan…some of the tape he has isn’t exactly screaming “him…” but hey, I’d LOVE to be wrong.
Shaedon Sharpe is at best the #3 on a championship contender.
I want to keep Ayton
The first round pick we owe Chicago is going to get transferred as a 2028 second round pick.
I hope I’m wrong, because that implies that we won’t make the playoffs at least until the 2028-2029 season. However, drafting is not a sure thing, development is often not linear, I’m not 100% sold on Cronin’s trading prowess, and the future of our coaching staff is a big question mark after this season. I know we would all like to hope that 4 seasons of tanking is all we need to start rising up the ranks of contenders, but just look at how long it took some other franchises to dig themselves out of lottery.
Having said that, I’m still wearing my Rose City-tinted glasses and I’ll see you all in the Finals in 2025-2026.
The Blazers will be mired in mediocrity for the better part of a decade. We are now the Kings or Magic of yore.
There’s far too much hope for new, young talent. Most will not hit and we will continue to suck, badly.
Hottest takes are:
-I think Simons still has a really good chance to be awesome and I think Scoot will have to beat him out. If you are a drafted to be a star, you should be able to beat out a non-All Star to prove your spot on the team
-I think Chauncey makes Cronin/Schmitz appear much worse at their jobs because of how poorly we are coached.