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Mailbag: Meyers Leonard, Pat Connaughton, and more

By David MacKay

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The mailbag is now run through Twitter. If you would like to have your Trail Blazers questions discussed, follow @ripcityproject and send them our way.

There are a handful of mailbag questions I’d like to address today, so I am going to give somewhat shorter answers than usual for each, going through them one by one.

Starting Meyers Leonard at power forward is an interesting idea. He certainly has the offensive skill set to be an oversized stretch-4. The Trail Blazers are going to need 3-point shooting wherever they can get it this year, having signed mostly defensive non-shooters to replace the production of LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews, and Nicolas Batum. Terry Stotts could pretty easily insert him into the starting lineup on occasion, depending on strategic necessity.

That being said, Leonard is still too foul-prone to consistently play starter minutes. Although his defense has gotten much better over the course of the past year, he’d be sitting with four fouls by halftime most nights unless something changes. Ed Davis is likely to get the starting spot, as the Trail Blazers are paying him starter money (nearly $7M in 2015-16) and he has expressed a desire to be used as an enforcer.

I don’t see the Trail Blazers trading a young big man if they can help it. That doesn’t quite fit their current M.O. of putting talent over positional need. Some of the guys (Noah Vonleh and Mason Plumlee) were targeted via trade already, so they are unlikely to shipped off before the Trail Blazers really know what kind of products they bought.

I do, however, see trading Chris Kaman as a distinct possibility. The frontcourt is overcrowded, and the backcourt is thin. Positional need cannot be overlooked entirely. The Trail Blazers may be able to get a guard for Kaman from a contender that needs another center and likes the idea of a $5M expiring contract. E.g.: Kaman to Chicago for package involving Aaron Brooks.

Oh man. I’m not sure that I can fairly give a projected ceiling based on summer league performance. If I could, Josh Selby would be an All-Star, not a wash out. The nice thing about shooters like Connaughton, though, is that they tend to have higher NBA floors. As for whether or not this places him above Allen Crabbe, we will have to wait to find out in the long-run. In the present day, Crabbe is a better player overall.

I can see Connaughton being a Courtney Lee type of player, perhaps. Someone that complements those around him without ever taking center stage; a guy that can bury threes from the corner, but still finish at the rim or score in transition. It is too early to tell, but nothing about Connaughton’s game has stood out to me as distinctly problematic yet. He should be able to carve out a role at the NBA level. Maybe not this year, but at some point early on.

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