He wouldn't need to be the #1 option in POR like he was in SAS this year. He'd be a hell of a 2nd or 3rd option. If he was willing to call Dame and tell him he wanted to come back, it shows acknowledgement that this is Dame's team.
He was more efficient offensively under Pop (who isn't?), but he had his 2nd and 3rd best seasons under Stotts. His defense his last two years in POR was comparable to what it's been in SAS the last two.
I mean seriously, we're talking about replacing Aminu with Aldridge at the 4 and keeping Dame, C.J. and Nurk. How is that team not significantly better than the one that got bounced by NOP? No way can NOP leave Aldridge unguarded, or guard him with a smaller player, so AD can smother Dame at the point of attack. As long as Aminu has been here, the strategy in the playoffs has been to leave him unguarded to focus on trapping Dame and stopping our offense at the point of attack. And, it works.
With the addition of Aldridge as a 2nd/3rd scoring option, playing a non-scorer like Turner at the 3 becomes much more viable. The Turner + Aminu combo gave NOP two non-threats they could double off of and that killed our offense. With Aldridge, we would surround Turner with four scoring threats, in which case you let Turner bring the ball up and initiate the offense.
BNM