Portland Trail Blazers Roundtable: Midseason Review

Who Needs to Play Less?

Ashlin: CJ McCollum’s three-point shooting has fallen off of a cliff. He is only shooting 32.9% from deep this season compared to 39.7% last season. McCollum has still taken over the occasional game, but he has often struggled to make wide open shots. It would smart to give some of McCollum’s workload to the efficient Seth Curry.

Patrick: In a sense, CJ McCollum. Or, if he’s not playing fewer minutes, I’d like to see what he could do coming off the bench as a super sub. So, maybe this is a cop-out answer, but hear me out: McCollum has struggled this season, and while he always has the chance to turn it around, I’m curious if maybe he needs a role-change or a shift in scenery, so to speak.

Going to the bench to start games would not be a punishment to McCollum (he’d still close games), but a way to see if he could be more effective in this sixth man type role. The Blazers could then target Jusuf Nurkic more regularly at the outset, use Seth Curry as a spot-up shooter with the starters, and make CJ McCollum the go-to guy for the second-unit when Damian Lillard sits.

Gutbrod: I’ll take this one step further and say who needs to not play at all: Maurice Harkless. The Blazers are 13-13 when Harkless plays at all in a game and 11-4 without him this season. One of those 13 wins came against the Knicks on Monday, and not coincidentally, the Blazers pulled away from New York in the second half once Harkless left the game with knee soreness. Turner has played great defense as of late and is a much stronger facilitator than Harkless, while Layman is a stronger scorer. Between the mediocre production and growing injury concerns, it seems a more fitting time than ever for Harkless’s minutes in Portland to be given to the others.

Moore: I was going to say, CJ McCollum, who’s struggling to find his shot this season, especially from three. But McCollum is already playing his fewest minutes per game since he became a starter in 2015-2016. Instead, play Evan Turner-less. He’s turning the ball over more than he ever has as a Blazer, and he only scores 7.7 points a game. Let’s get his minutes down from 24.7 per game to about 20.

Piper: There’s not a clear candidate for who should play less to me, but to keep my responses consistent, if Collins and Nurkic need more minutes than that’s going to have to cut into Al-Farouq Aminu or Meyers Leonard’s minutes. Aminu is our best defender and I really think Meyers Leonard is quietly having a really good season so it’s tough to say that they need fewer minutes, but Nurkic has definitely earned more minutes and with Collins’s potential he needs more minutes as well. So as tough as it is to throw their names into this category and to no fault of their own I have to go with Aminu and Leonard. Again this is just to give Nurkic and Collins more minutes not that I think Aminu and Leonard are doing anything themselves to deserve a drop in minutes.