Deni Avdija in his official playoff debut: 30/10/5 on 12⁄21 FG, 2⁄5 3PT and 4⁄6 FT
https://www.nba.com/game/por-vs-sas-0042500151/box-score
Good game from him but the Blazers just don’t have enough offense
He played well, the rest of the Blazers did not.
scoot also had a very good game
True.
Had a stretch of bad turnovers, but made up for it by being the only other reliable option on offense tonight
I never thought of Scoot as a knockdown shooter but he was on fire for a stretch there.
The best
Eh.
This could be any number of post game threads from our season this year lol
New ownership wants all our post game threads templated to save costs
It’s unfair to hang this all on one dude, but if I’m being ruthless here, the Blazers need to take a long look at Sharpe and consider upgrading that 2 guard spot. They are a different team with a player like Harden, Murphy, or Durant in that spot. Even Lavine would be an upgrade since he hits threes at a good clip (just crazy overpaid).
Beyond that, they need more from Jrue and Grant. Those are two of their best shooters. A team that already lacks shooting can’t afford to have two of their best shooters go missing in the biggest games.
No. Sharpe is on Deni’s timeline. They are a developing team, not a team that should be trading youth for win-now plays
I don’t see a parallel there. Deni is a versatile player who contributes in playmaking and rebounding. Sharpe is more like a Mathurin or De’Andre Hunter. Streaky SGs who sometimes score aren’t coveted in the NBA. It might be Simons all over again where they hold him too long because he’s their guy, expecting too much from a guy who ultimately occupies a very disposable role. Look at how long Portland held Simons vs. how long Boston held him. The standards are different if you are really pushing to win stuff. Being good sometimes isn’t enough.
Granted, Sharpe has a much higher defensive ceiling than Simons. He’s still basically a one tool player (has some good scoring games, doesn’t do much else).
Unfortunately, Sharpe might have the physical tools for good defense, I just don’t see him developing the IQ necessary to be good at it. Offense I’m starting to lose hope he can develop into that guy, but it’s still very possible. He just really needs to work more on fundamentals. Getting to his spot, keeping his handles, learning to layup around defense, all things that hurt his ability to create for himself.
Means nothing if he’s not going to become a great player
And who says he won’t? He’s already improved a bunch and he’s 22.
Dumb comment
Sharpe is under contract for 4 more years at 22.5 per year. You’re saying guys making double what he is would be an immediate upgrade. Duh?
It’s approximately the right price for a Hunter or LeVert, but having that type of player locked in shouldn’t dissuade you from seeking an upgrade. That caliber of player is not a foundational piece, so either he improves or they should be eyeballing alternatives. Portland has plenty of assets to upgrade that spot. They can get better production. The cap math is tricky, but I think you either go bigger there for a true star or cheap out and rock with a bargain option. That may have been part of the rationale for pursuing Krejci, who may provide better value relative to his cheap contract.
Not everyone operates like the present day warriors lmao. Some teams actually like to develop their guys. Lavine is not a winning basketball player either lmao
The Warriors didn’t develop Steph, Klay, and Dray? Strange comment.
Lavine is much better than Sharpe. He is just overpaid. Even “washed” and on a terrible Kings team, Lavine had .614 TS% this season and shot 39% on threes. You would be thrilled to get that from Sharpe.
Sharpe for his career has hovered around .540 TS% without clear signs of improvement. His 3P% has been pretty consistently between 31-33%. There is no clear upward trend. I would say those are De’Andre Hunter numbers, but actually they are below Hunter’s career averages. Four years in, Sharpe is producing at journeyman level efficiency. Mathurin and Hunter are more productive.
That was my whole point. At some point you have to call game on the “upside” and demand more from that position. A player like Murphy or Murray would take this roster to a higher level. Even a Lavine, Keyonte George, or Vassell would be a notable upgrade.
Wizards traded this guy away for a can of beans.
And tried to justify on timeline. 1 year later they trade for Trae young and ad
Thankfully for the blazers, the wizards preferred the timeline of now retired Malcolm Brogdon over the 24 year old star on $14M/yr 4 year contract.
wrong. assess the trade after 2-3 years. not trae or disney.
sarr, tre johnson, their top 5 pick this year
sarr
They drafted sarr with deni on the team how tf is he a part of this
so you’re an osmium.
you get more touches for sarr with deni off the team. again, this is not the top reason.
their top 5 pick this year. and tre johnson (youd probably get it more if wizards got lucky that draft and stayed in the top 3)
Do you even watch deni and or sarr? Not only would sarr not have had less touches, I’d argue he’d have had more. Having a distributor like deni would have benefited him greatly. The other 2 reasons are cool and all, but you can’t tank forever.
lol first time I heard of keep losing for top picks is justification for trading away the best contract in the league. He is making less than top 3 picks in home is probably better than sarr and Tre combined
Spurs did same thing trading Derrick White on a cost controlled contract who blossomed in his own right.
Difference being lottery luck for Spurs was much better but fact remains if they kept White they would have won more games in that period.
They traded him after 4.5 disappointing years as a 3&d wing with no 3, and 3 month of dhining on high usage followed by his first serious injury.
He could either boom enough to ruin their rebuild or regress back to lose value.
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ur comment doubled
Like serious question, do you people genuinely believe this? You really think we would have been better off keeping Deni and be mid for the last 2 seasons like you guys?
We traded for Trae and AD this year because we’re now ready to compete next year, its really not that difficult to understand.
Him and Scoot balled out
Great game from him, sucks we don’t have a true 2nd option or even someone who can hit an open 3 consistently right now
Next year he could really use a dynamic PG who’s also one of the greatest shooters of all time. No idea where the Blazers could find that guy though..
Y’all should really stop putting your hopes into 36 years old Dame Lillard coming back from an Achilles.
He’s gonna have some explosive games, but there’s also going to be many stinkers where he gets ruthlessly targeted on defense.
Damn, you’re right. My fault for being hyped about seeing the best Blazers player in my lifetime playing for my team again.
dam bruh top 1% commenter on r/nba
get a life
is he wrong
Lmao dude you’ve been browsing r/nba for likely 10 years at this point, considering your oldest post is 9 years old. Pot, kettle?
And to the other guy posting about being hyped - absolutely. Be fucking hyped, it’s cool as fuck for y’all to get your dude back. But let’s not get delusional and act like like he’s gonna be some saving grace for the blazers. As said, he will likely be targeted when he sees the floor. Will he be strong enough offensively to counteract that? I strongly doubt it.
Damn you got pressed lol
wow u got me bro i have indeed been an nba fan for a few years. i hope scrolling through my entire post history was worth that epic burn 🔥
Fox? Though he’s not the best 3%
Yall aren’t even gonna get Bucks version of Dame
To be fair, bucks Dame was just Dame
Giannis just makes every guard look like trash. He put up his identical numbers every game Giannis sat
This team doesn’t even need Bucks Dame. He is coming back to be a deep threat and make good reads and develop a good PnR game with Clingan. Avdija takes the bulk of the usage. It is an ideal role for Lillard at this point.
Tbf, that’s fine. We don’t desperately need everything healthy Dame could do. As long as he can stand in the corner he can give us extremely valuable spacing without needing to be able to drive or be a pg threat. The big if, is as long as his defense isn’t such a massive negative that the others can’t cover for him, because it wasn’t good to begin with so we’ll have to see how big of a traffic come he is now.
You guys have something cooking with him scoot clingan just need either sharpe to get more consistent and shoot better or pray that dame is still amazing next season
Even if Dame just stands and shoots on offense it is a plus. Blazers take the most 3s in the league and shoot the second worst percentage.
Even if he just corner sat his gravity would immediately make denis drives much scarier
So much this. Our best 3 point shooter this year is Camara and with him being run into the ground as our defensive anchor, he’s averaging 2.7 made 3’s a game. A paraplegic Dame would probably improve our 3s at this point and give Deni someone to actually kick out to.
I know it’s anecdotal but every time I watch the blazers Sharpe is taking a bunch of terrible shots. He doesn’t seem to have a feel for how to take shots in the flow of the offense. I just don’t see it with him. Avdija, Scoot, Jrue, and Dame for next year should be fine but they need to add some shooters.
His injury luck has been shit, too. Gets a few good games, then has to take a month off from injury, then string of bad games, repeat. He just came back in that last regular season clippers game after being gone since early February.
The man is playing in a phone booth.
It pains to see, he need 4 shooters around him asap.
People forget this guy is paid on 13 mln/year.
Insane steal, and it gets cheaper the next two years. He’s only owed 12 in 27⁄28.
I think we’re going to renegotiate his contract soon though otherwise we can’t offer him as much money when the time comes and we’ll lose in a bidding war
2nd player ever to have 30/10/5 in his playoff debut, only LeBron did it before him
That’s really cool but surprising to me that it hadn’t happened more
LeOnEveryList
It’s just him and the local YMCA crew out there for the Blazers
That’s the fact. Without a second guy, we are going nowhere. The levels between him and others are tremendous. Hopefully dame is back
Hey, let’s not insult the local YMCA crew, they can at least hit open threes.
Him and Scoot played great. Rest of the team really needs to lock in if they want to steal a game or two
Blazers are always due for an insane shooting performance every 3 to 4 games all season so that’ll likely be the one they take.
I think you guys will get Game 3 based on tonight
I’m down for that since I’ll be there. Get to see whatever “better than a shirt” thing our cheap ass owner got for everyone.
Blazers in desperate need of other offense/shooting besides him
Someone is coming back next season
Man I would not count on 36yo Dame post Achilles tear to fill that role. Portland needs to get another guy or bank on Sharpe or Scoot to make the leap.
Honestly Deni looked like a true #1. Good for the blazers, they got something good cooking up there.
Feel bad for him honestly great player that actually has no help like so many people claim other superstars don’t
he’s a very good player
Hopefully the leg thing isn’t serious. He’s the blazers whole offense
He has been great but there isnt enough support.
If the Blazers hit some open looks they’d have been right there tonight. Even with Wemby going off the 3pt line was the difference in the game.
This guy is annoying but mostly because he’s relentless lol.
He played really well, but outside of Scoot Henderson the rest weren’t playing well offensively.
Donovan Clingan got humiliated times and times again :\
He played very well. Crossing my fingers his injury isn’t too bad.
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bad karma
Blazers didn’t look particularly good but honestly i am, maybe naively, quite encouraged. Jrue and grant were horrible, but they are very on/off offensively so this isn’t going to be a thing the whole series, i was afraid deni wouldn’t utilize the midrange well considering the spurs were obviously going to force him out of the paint, but he was making very very good decisions. And even though the spurs shot very well, the game was close for a lot of it. Blazers can definitely steal a game or 2
Washington still tanking in the hopes they can get a player like Deni.
That’s pretty good actually
Only 6 FTA???? Washed.
Dude’s a beast and looked like he could do it all out there. If he had some more help, this game might’ve been a different story
He’s like a more efficient, worse defending Jaylen Brown
Better playmaker than brown
jalen johnson of hawks basically? he is who pods thought sengun was.
Jalen Johnson is a worse defender
I feel like Johnson relies on his size/athleticism on offense more than Avdija who is craftier. I think Johnson might be a slightly better passer too
with his offensive load and defensive disasterclass of a hc, he is bound to be. bro had prime rudy gobert and made it seem like just a slight advantage
If Jalen Johnson had even half of Deni’s scoring ability he’d be first team material
deni averages 2 more pts lol
That doesn’t really mean anything. Westbrook in his prime averaged more than Kyrie in pure PPG but there was never a question on who was the better scorer. They score in different ways because their skillsets aren’t comparable.
the pts still count the same
Being able to score points in the halfcourt is a lot different than scoring a lot through transition and pure athleticism. The latter gets taken away in the playoffs whereas reliably scoring in isolation in the halfcourt is more valuable.
y’all just sound israeli saying wild things
They play nothing alike. I was trying to be nice about it. Outside being number 1 forwards for their teams, they share no similarities. Jalen Johson is a mediocre halfcourt scorer and that’s where Deni does his damage going downhill against set defenses.
Better than sounding Palestinian.
What the hell is happening in this thread lmao
EDIT: also, average Dave Rubin fan
Great game by him
dat boi cold
I think he could have done more and should have been more aggressive when Vassel and the Spurs were building that separation during the third quarter. He was too passive. Still, I agree that he had a very solid playoff debut.
Honestly this was a great showing from him. Dude was doing everything for his team and hit one of the few “shoulder into Wemby for the floater” moves I’ve seen in a while. Good on him
I took him for first basket and he couldn’t make that mf. Damn running finger roll u gotta make that bro
If we get a legit power forward in the offseason, league fucked
Frustrating to watch him play at times but can’t argue his effectiveness and his ability to get downhill. We didn’t really have a good answer for him this game.
Damn the gazablazers got rocked
I thought israelis were better from distance
I’ll give him credit, Deni looked good tonight. His shot was better than I’ve seen before.
He still got a bonkers whistle and is allowed to commit offensive fouls without consequence.
Denicide Apolodija
Found the bigot.
What about that comment is bigoted? Did it mention a race, sex, gender, religion, or something?
It mentioned extreme double standard and part of a propaganda effort to stop the self defense of a tiny minority group against a genocidal religious-imperialistic torture/rape/mutilation holocaust, due to age old racism and bigotry.
LMAOOOOOOO
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so fucking delusional and ignorant. And that’s saying a lot since this is fucking Reddit. Absolutely go fuck yourself, you moron.
You think the genocide of innocent Palestinians is self defense? You’re insane and you’re denying a genocide just like the terrorist Deni. FUCK YOU
The amount of times this dude pushed off a Spurs players to no calls was crazy. He is legitimately worse than SGA with it.
Interesting you say that considering he only shot 6 freethrows, 2 of which were from techs, while castle got fouls for basically being breathed on. And i like castle a lot.
You realize push offs don’t lead to FTs, right? It’s crazy people act like to get a beneficial whistle you HAVE to go to the FT lines.
You realize your point was completely made up and there was like one questionable push off, right?
You can’t say it was made up and the give an example why it wasn’t lol
How is the burden of proof on me and not on him lmao??? he is the one who’s claiming there were blatant push offs, show me then tf
It’s not on you but you proved him correct anyways lol
Is your reading comprehension ok bud? If you are not trolling then tf, they implied that there were multiple blatant push offs that weren’t called, whereas in reality there was like one 50⁄50 incident. How is that the same
Again you defend your point only to immediately concede you are wrong
There were multiple times Fox got flung into the shadow realm by Deni to no call, but it’s whatever. It’s how the refs call games. They give the losing team a more favorable whistle to try and keep it close.
There were multiple times Fox got flung into the shadow realm by Deni to no call,
The smaller and weaker guard got physically beat by a 6’9 forward who’s very physical 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
If you can’t look past your rose tinted glasses, that’s on you. At least yall have the draft to look forward too
If you can’t look past your rose tinted glasses
That’s ironic lol