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In Summer League, Reath looked like a dude to have on the team. A big who actually used his frame in the paint and didn’t hesitate to take shots from straight-on — 15’ and out. Just a guy whose time has come.

Timelord is a guy I really like for what he does on the court, BUT he cannot stay on the court — health. And he’s a youngish vet. It’s a shame.

Badji has time to improve.

Ayton should be better. His numbers are just fine year over year, but the same issue remains. He’s an excellent athlete and a very good mid-range shooter who gets rebounds. But he DOES NOT take enough shots at the hoop — where he is money — AND doesn’t get to the line … even though he does get O-rebounds. This is on Ayton BUT ALSO his coaches have to scheme that roll/role for him if that’s what they want!

JRoy wrote:

KdoubleDees23 wrote:

Wizenheimer wrote:
Nurkic is definitely better at screen-setting and defense than Ayton. Other than health, the only real advantage Ayton has over Nurk is shooting efficiency. Trouble is with Simons and Grant chucking up a storm, Ayton doesn't get a lot of shots

obviously though, Blazer management thought they were getting something good when they traded for Ayton. That really erodes my confidence in the Cronin/Schmits partnership; every time I heard the Blazers were really really interested in Ayton I hated it. I think Ayton was seriously overrated and I'm convinced the Suns are lauging about selling Portland a rusty musket with Ayton. 34M/year for Ayton is just dumb

TBH Ayton is better than Nurkic on Defense. Ill defend him on that.

He’s more mobile than Nurkic. Wouldn’t say he’s better.

Agreed.

Ayton & Nurk are in the same tier of players. Both will leave you banging your heads at their play. Sometimes they can be dominant... but usually they leave a lot to be desired.

It was worth the gamble for the trade, but we lost that one (moreso that we missed out in the contributions of Allen than anything else).

I'm counting Camara as the saving grace of that trade. We didn't lose a ton but we did take on a worse contract just to get a bit younger at center.

Ultimately it’s an irrelevant conversation. We won’t be good for A WHILE. It’s either A: Ayton somehow turns it around an becomes a legit player for our future. Or B: he is who he is and we eat the contract, take Ls, and do what we should be doing.

Either way it’s a W for the franchise

Too promising to quit on him...too disappointing and frustrating to watch

Wizenheimer wrote:

zzaj wrote:
I'm no Blazer brass aplogist, but I won't go as far as to say that the Blazers "obviously" thought they were getting something good when they traded for Ayton. Maybe they did, I don't know.

I'm basing the 'Blazer management wanted Ayton' thing on about 2 years of hearing rumors about management coveting Ayton.

personally, I think the NBA has evolved to the point that C's are the least important position, generically. Obviously, if you have a generational talent at C like Jokic or Embiid, that's a different matter. But if you don't have that kind of talent I think paying about 25% of the cap for a marginal C like Ayton is foolish and counter-productive. It's a waste of cap IMO, and I'll double-down on the idea that Portland trading Nurkic for Ayton was a poor choice

Portland is spending 44M this year on Ayton and Timelord. At the same time they are spending about 5M (or less) on Reath, Badji, and Brown. Looking at winshares and BPM leaves little doubt where the most effective spending is among that quintet

No real pushback from me, Wiz...admittedly, I haven't kept my ear to the Blazers' railroad track of rumors for a long time. I believe in Mike Schmitz though--I traded a bunch of emails with him about prospects way back in his DXpress days--he's a very savvy dude. I'm not sure how much of the Ayton love was coming from him. It'd surprise me if it was...

RE: Portland's Centers...I think it goes without saying that it's been like a sad clown car since (and including) Walton, basically. Literally, every C has had an * for one thing or another; be it "what they could have been if not injured", or "tail end of career", or simply "grasping at empty stat straws". My personal favorites were probably Arvydas for his passing and the novelty for the way he played at the time and Pryz for his non-fear of putting opponents on their a$$. It seems like Portland has been trying to fill some kind of cosmic Center void for so long that it was hugely comical to me that the Blazers were statistically so close to drafting Wemby.

Which leads me to agreeing with your generational Center point. The best of them DO hold a ton of value when in the correct situation. Embiid, Jokic, and even Gobert has revitalized himself defensively. And the next wave of Sengun, Chet, and Wemby look like they will have that same type of impact for years to come, barring injuries. Based on how preternaturally good he already is, and the fact that he's already a media darling, I expect Wembanyama will be the face of the NBA for the next decade at least.

Getting back on the topic of Ayton, speaking of faces of franchises...the Blazers are stuck with his. I've said it before but until teams start viewing his money as expiring, he's not going anywhere. He'll be another * in the long line of *s feeding the team's cosmic void.

He's just another incarnation of the Andre Drummond type of guy. Definitely talented but ridiculously soft, inefficient and unmotivated.

The good news is a fact he has 2,5 years left of his max deal. I think the next time he hits free agency is going to be a very rude awakening for him.

red_power wrote:He's just another incarnation of the Andre Drummond type of guy. Definitely talented but ridiculously soft, inefficient and unmotivated.

The good news is a fact he has 2,5 years left of his max deal. I think the next time he hits free agency is going to be a very rude awakening for him.

Andre at least is absurdly good at rebounding. And could block shots well back in his prime. He even had a 3 APG season in DET.

Think Drummond's DET prime is much better than anything Ayton will ever put together.

KdoubleDees23 wrote:Dudes not playing tonight because Ice on the road ……

I can’t believe I backed him up for years.

Y’all need to trade him for WCJ and anything else

Dude you only showed up on the Suns board once KD was traded lol

Let's not pretend you were a long time Suns fan or an Ayton fan for the longest time.

Anyhow what's missing with Ayton is he doesn't demand the ball and is perfectly happy deferring to someone else and your team has a lot of shot happy players like Grant, Scoot, Sharpe and Brogdon there just aren't a lot of shots to go around. What I would want for him to do is crash the boards like a maniac and focus on shoring up the defense since he's actually pretty nimble on his feet when he wants to be.

After the end of his current deal I really doubt any team will give him the max again unless he makes giant leaps in his game which is pretty unlikely at this point but for an above average center like Ayton I'm guessing his league value will be around 20 million per season which will make him a lot more attractive to teams.

garrick wrote:

KdoubleDees23 wrote:Dudes not playing tonight because Ice on the road ……

I can’t believe I backed him up for years.

Y’all need to trade him for WCJ and anything else

Dude you only showed up on the Suns board once KD was traded lol

Let's not pretend you were a long time Suns fan or an Ayton fan for the longest time.

Anyhow what's missing with Ayton is he doesn't demand the ball and is perfectly happy deferring to someone else and your team has a lot of shot happy players like Grant, Scoot, Sharpe and Brogdon there just aren't a lot of shots to go around. What I would want for him to do is crash the boards like a maniac and focus on shoring up the defense since he's actually pretty nimble on his feet when he wants to be.

After the end of his current deal I really doubt any team will give him the max again unless he makes giant leaps in his game which is pretty unlikely at this point but for an above average center like Ayton I'm guessing his league value will be around 20 million per season which will make him a lot more attractive to teams.

I’ve been on the suns board since 2005 ! Different names because of cupcakes like you crying and reporting for having conversations. So go away with that nonsense

I've been encouraged by the strong performances he's had since coming off his injury.

Billups seems to be making a concerted effort to get him more involved and it's nice to see him finally getting lob dunks although as is the norm for him his freethrow rate is pretty low to non existent.

Interesting take from the 23:40 mark from the All NBA Podcast youtube channel.

I believe Ayton needs a coach that could get him 15+ shots a game either with a post-up like a Olajuwon and allow him to work in the paint or mid-range. Also try to work on P&R with Scoot like a Nash/Amare combo since both can finish in the paint. I wouldn’t mind getting Nash to work with Scoot and maybe hire D’Antoni to coach Portland and try to work with Ayton and develop him like he did with Amare. Also Ayton may want to start working out with Olajuwon in the off-season to help fine tune his game.

Blazers20 wrote:I believe Ayton needs a coach that could get him 15+ shots a game either with a post-up like a Olajuwon and allow him to work in the paint or mid-range. Also try to work on P&R with Scoot like a Nash/Amare combo since both can finish in the paint. I wouldn’t mind getting Nash to work with Scoot and maybe hire D’Antoni to coach Portland and try to work with Ayton and develop him like he did with Amare. Also Ayton may want to start working out with Olajuwon in the off-season to help fine tune his game.

Ten years ago I would have love bringing in D'Antoni but he is 72 now so unless you only want him to get the team off of the ground during the rebuild and expect someone else to take over in 3-4 years kind of iffy to bring him in.

Blazers20 wrote:I believe Ayton needs a coach that could get him 15+ shots a game either with a post-up like a Olajuwon and allow him to work in the paint or mid-range. Also try to work on P&R with Scoot like a Nash/Amare combo since both can finish in the paint. I wouldn’t mind getting Nash to work with Scoot and maybe hire D’Antoni to coach Portland and try to work with Ayton and develop him like he did with Amare. Also Ayton may want to start working out with Olajuwon in the off-season to help fine tune his game.

His fadeaway and mid game is pretty good most of the time but he sometimes just needs to just take it to the rim with force which he seems to be doing more of since coming off his injury.

If he ever gets consistent with this he's easily going to be averaging 20 a game easily.