Can Dame and CJ contend for a title together?

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Can Dame and CJ contend for a title

  • Yes - They can contend for a title on the same team

    Votes: 24 52.2%
  • No - The Dame CJ duo must be broken up to have a chance to win a title

    Votes: 22 47.8%

  • Total voters
    46
  • Poll closed .
If Nurk comes in this season and dunks everything he should, if he uses his great footwork to get them set before he goes up inside, if he has developed a jumper he can knock down when open and ventures out to make those shots, if he can stay out of foul trouble and above all else stay healthy then he will be our clear second best player and we could be playing for home court in the first round. If that happens plus Dame and CJ become a competent defensive back court and Norm's size doesn't limit him defensively then we can be competitive against any team. If Ant and Nas make a big leap forward, our bench will be elite and we won't have to play catch up with our starters. With all of that, if coach Billups is a genius at in game adjustments we'll win a ton in both the regular and post season.

All of those things have to happen and including Nurk the rest of the team has to be healthy for us to contend. I don't know if it's likely that even one of those things happens let alone all of them.
Did anyone else count 7 "IF's" in all that?
 
Here is some stuff from Zach Lowe; he is kind of like a lot of us; not sure what to think about this team:
“And you think, well, they lost in six games to a Denver team that did not have any of its starting guards really.”

“Denver won that six-game series by eight points so Portland was minus eight for the series. Portland’s starting five was plus 47 for the series, that means every other lineup took a big old dump on the court and they were minus 55 in all other lineup minutes.”

He added that while the addition of Larry Nance Jr. was a clear improvement for the bench, there were still questions about the Blazers and their place in the Western Conference.

The thing that made me swing back to where well maybe I’m pessimistic is the rest of the team is like all unproven guys, now maybe this is finally the year Anfernee Simons makes a leap, he’s shown flashes here and there, he’s shot it well here, he didn’t shoot it well there.

Snell hasn’t missed a shot in three years and yet still doesn’t really get a lot of playing time, think about that, think about he doesn’t miss threes or free throws and he still doesn’t play very much, Ben McLemore, fine.

Nassir Little, Cody Zeller as a backup five, I actually think I’d rather use Nance Jr. as a back up five if I could, I’m not sure I can, than Cody Zeller.

Once I get by guy number six, I’m counting on too many unproven guys for my taste or guys that have proven to be not playoff rotation-worthy guys. That worries me.


If I don’t get enough out of Simons, Snell and McLemore as my back up wings, maybe I will, they’re such good shooters playing with CJ and Dame, maybe they’ll just knock down a million shots and this will look foolish.

Then I might have to play RoCo (Robert Covington) more as a three and go Covington, Nance Jr., Nurkic because again this team was the worst defensive teams among teams that were trying to win at the end of the season. And RoCo at the three gets a little creaky, a little slow, a little creaky, a little big, maybe it works defensively and not offensively. I’m not sure ultimately what I think of this team.

It’s the bench to me that is the wildcard, and if the bench doesn’t bring enough, man the west is no joke. I don’t know what I think about Portland.

God damn, that reads as super, super spot on. Olshey is out of his god damned mind. How is he able to ignore educated fans, and the best of the pundits out there and just go with ego and hubris? Further, how the hell is ownership ok with his repeating the same thing and hoping for a different outcome bullshit?
 
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