The issue I have with "Kerr was gifted a great roster" is that that wasn't the perception at the time. Don't get me wrong, the Warriors were seen as an up-and-coming team, so it was an attractive situation. But most people saw them as a 4-6 seed going into the season. Lillard at the time Billups was hired was much better thought-of than Curry when Kerr took over. Curry flourished into a multiple-time MVP under Kerr. Is Lillard going to flourish into an MVP under Billups? Is Little going to become an All Star under Billups, like Thompson did? Talent always matters the most. Kerr made that point recently, in the interview Tince alluded to. He told a friend that he was torn because he preferred the Warriors to the Knicks but didn't want to disappoint Phil Jackson and his friend asked him, "Which opportunity would Jackson choose?" and Kerr realized that Jackson would take the opportunity with more talent, which was Golden State. But Kerr made the most of that talent, turning a team of interesting young talent into one of the most dominant teams in history. Coaches can matter, they just usually don't matter very much. I don't think Stotts mattered much, but right now Billups is doing even worse which seems not-unexpected for a first-time coach who maybe doesn't have a ton of innate talent for the job. I don't think Billups will end up a negative-value coach (like a PJ Carlisimo) but I think he'll settle in as "goes as far as talent carries him" like Stotts and the vast majority of coaches.
Obviously Billups is doing even worse than we did with Stotts last season but Stotts didn't have a virtually nonexistent Dame for the first 26 or so games of any seasons, which overlapped with no CJ and then led into a team COVID breakout. So judging Chauncey against Terry right now is just pure stupidity but everyone is right it's not close to as dumb as judging Chauncey's situation against the one Kerr walked into. Oh and for the record Curry was 26 when Kerr started coaching him; so him flourishing into something more than he'd shown at that point makes a lot more sense than Dame becoming more at 31 under Chauncey's guidance. Dame has plateaued, so a new coach could use him more effectively but probably won't make him any better; let's just hope that plateau is a long one and not just a steep peak (for the record I think it will be a long plateau).
Sure, everyone knows that. What you aren't acknowledging is that the team hasn't looked any better with Lillard playing much more like his old self, that CJ was a net negative (I mean that literally, he has a negative plus-minus this season) and that while the Blazers have dealt with Covid issues, so has most of the league--Billups and the Blazers aren't the only ones. Meanwhile, the acquisition of Nance gave Billups a better roster than Stotts had, even if not by a huge amount. It's perfectly fair to see this as Billups doing less with the roster than Stotts did. Maybe you don't see it the same way, but circumstances are nowhere near as tilted towards Stotts as you suggest (unless you take the overall team record which, yes, is tilted by Lillard's huge underperformance for the first month and a half or so--but that's not what I'm going by). As for the Kerr stuff, those were rhetorical questions to illustrate the point that the idea that Kerr walked into a situation with a league MVP and other All-Stars is hindsight. That's not what the Warriors had at the time and no one thought that was the future of the Warriors. Of course Billups walked into a different situation and can't do precisely the same things as Kerr--but Kerr bettered the situation he walked into, whereas Billups hasn't. So there is a difference between the two, but it's not "Kerr got established superstars and Billups didn't."
It's not perfectly fair to compare what Billups has done with this roster in the limited sample size of five or six games with Dame playing like Dame to what Stotts did with this roster for seasons in which Dame was Dame the vast vast majority of the time. If Dame wouldn't have been so fucked up to start the season, right around now would be the time to start limited comparisons between Stotts and Billups... still realizing that Stotts had nine seasons to implement his philosophies so really less than half a season of a roster similar to the ones Stotts had would be a pretty sketchy comparison. As it stands Dame has just been getting right, the entire league is in upheaval with COVID and whether CJ is a net negative or not (I agree that he is) Stotts did have him and there is more to having CJ out there than bad defense and pounding the air out of the ball, he is a bigger offensive threat than anyone else on the team not named Dame and is good for taking some attention away from Dame. I'm just saying that comparing Billups to Stotts at this point with all of the different variables is really not at all fair to Billups.
Stotts was in Portland what, 9 seasons? That means that a third of the teams coached by Stotts started off 13-20 or 14-19. 15-16 13-20 16-17 13-20 19-20 14-19
You literally just wrote this in another thread: You can't have it both ways--CJ is not functional offensively together with Dame and a disaster defensively, but he gave Stotts an advantage that Billups doesn't have. That's simply an intellectually dishonest take. What I will agree with is that Billups hasn't had a lot of time yet, especially with star-level Lillard. But when the team looks no better than the early-season disaster even after Lillard began to return to form, it's hard to give him too much benefit of the doubt. I fully believe Billups will improve as he gets time (that's the nature of experience)--I simply don't think anything suggests that so far he's been an upgrade over Stotts. And if the idea was to get someone else in to try and salvage the last of Lillard's prime years, bringing in a rookie head coach was probably the wrong move, even if Billups becomes a very good coach a few years from now.
Dame has said he wants to build here with Chauncey so that's all I need to know.....this season is trial by fire simply because we've been a winning organization filling the Moda and making the playoffs that now attendance is down and the front office has been fired or quit.....Chauncey really never had a fair landscape for a rookie coach and he's been great with the fans and media addressing it for the most part....I see him coaching Dame for the next chapter of Blazer ball but don't expect this season to be a quick turnaround at all. We'll see but as it stands....it's hard to find any draw the way we've played so far. There are a few players that need a change of scenery on this team and I hope Joe gets it right
Good point, but since when is logical consistency a requirement around here? One thing I keep reminding myself about is that Billups has had zero games this year with a healthy Dame and CJ on the court together. Yeah, Dame insisted he was healthy at the beginning of the season, but anyone watching him knew that he wasn't. He just didn't want to be making excuses. I don't think that the two of them healthy resolves all that ails the Blazers, but IMO it certainly makes for a much better offensive punch.
I certainly hope to see a more well-oiled machine once McCollum gets back and players wind their way back from the protocols, and Billups gets some games with a fully operational Lillard and the whole roster. I think Billups ultimately will find himself constrained by the limits of this roster, much as Stotts was, but I'd love to see some creative solutions that at least improve on the past few years even if this team doesn't have "title-contender" in them.
Yeah, the fact is that CJ does make our offense better but CJ and Dame are only the sum of their individual parts and nothing more when playing together on that end... they do not play off of each other but CJ is a threat that other teams have to account for which does make the game easier for Dame. When I said they aren't functional together I just meant that I would like to see our two best offensive players have two man actions and get a lot of assists for each other, that would be functional. Instead what we have is our two best offensive players taking turns while one is the scoring threat and the other is nothing more than a decoy making sure at least one defender can't double.
Maybe you should read that again and rewrite it. I do understand but it doesn’t say what you want it to say I think?
I feel like they don't set each other up on offense at all. In fact when one of them has the ball the other almost always just stands on the opposite side of the court. They don't have plays in which they are both an equal threat to score. CJ isn't Dame's main target when Dame goes for the assist and CJ never wants an assist he just wants to score. So the only way they help each other is to hold one defender while the other guy does his thing. That's just not what I want out of a duo that is a disaster on defense and therefore need to justify there 70M+ combined salary on offense in a way that is more than just taking turns.
So we have a Billups with some coaching experience now. https://www.nba.com/blazers/rodney-billups-joins-trail-blazers-coaching-staff Oh wait... "Jeff Wulbrun, Stanford's associate head coach, has been named head coach at the University of Denver, replacing Rodney Billups, who was let go after finishing 48-94 with the Pioneers."
If Dame gets a cousin a job...Chauncey gets a brother a job damnit! These two guys are on the same page! At least he's got coaching experience in Colorado and scouted for the Bucks.....we could use another pair of coaching eyes in my view.
