 What's the word y'all? We gotta talk about the Portland Trailblazer because there's a lot of drama going on within the organization and I'm not even a Trailblazer fan and I'm frustrated so I can't even imagine being a fan of this organization. Be sure to leave a like, subscribe if you're new. These are all my personal NBA opinions. If you disagree, that's completely okay. Let's go ahead and talk about the Blazers. So it starts off with Neil O'Shea getting investigated for misconduct. He gets canned on Friday, good, he's bad at his job and every report that's coming out about this misconduct he has no place to be in an NBA organization. He's gone. And then I wake up to multiple reports, one of them saying that Damien Lillard wouldn't mind playing with Ben Simmons in Portland. We'll talk about that. But the one that's more important has to do with the tension between Damien Lillard slash the roster and new head coach, Chauncey Billips. In the recent weeks sources say Lillard has gone frustrated with the team's play and tension appears to be on the rise between the players and Billips. Lillard made it clear during the coaching search that he preferred the head coach who had done the job before. And if I'm not mistaken Chauncey Billips had been an assistant coach for like a year, maybe two, and he immediately gets the head coaching job with the Blazers. Now Damien did go onto Twitter and basically called Cap. But there are a lot of crumbs in the past couple weeks that might indicate that this is true. I'm going to read you some more quotes and you can interpret it as you may and I'll give you my interpretation. So they lost the bad game a few nights ago and Chauncey Billips went to his post game podium and said two different things that stand out to me. I've never seen a team that needs his bench to inspire our starters. This stuff is crazy to me. It's supposed to be the other way around. That's quote number one. Now this is quote number two. Lack of pride of course that bothers me. If it doesn't bother you, there's something going on. Sometimes it's just not your night. Cool. It happens. And there's a way I'm not willing to lose. It was embarrassing. Now you can interpret that as Chauncey Billips as a head coach trying to hold his players accountable by talking to the media or you can interpret as, hey, he's lost the locker room. So he's going to talk to the media about what he's thinking because the players aren't listening. And all of this is just so very wild to me. Look back on all the videos we've made about the Portland Trailblazers in just the last calendar year because I think most majority of NBA fans kind of see what the heck is happening with the Blazers and kind of saw the Damien Lillo might have been on his path out. And even he kind of entertained the idea where he was basically saying that he don't know what his future looks like in Portland. He's having meetings with Anthony Davis and LeBron James and the offseason somehow. That's not tampering. But they have in these meetings and he comes out and said, hey, I want to pull off what Yanis did, which is admirable. But majority of us fans saw this and was like, hey, Dame should probably move on to his next team because he's, he's crying for help and nobody is listening. Now every time I talk about the Portland Trailblazers on this channel, there's a bulk of Trailblazer fans that come at me, can you wrong? Can you wrong? And look at everything I've said about this that led us to this point and tell me I've been wrong about everything. Neal Loshe, I mentioned plenty of times before he was not good at his job. Damien Lillard went into the podium this offseason and was like, hey, I talked about it with my family and everything and I want to stay in Portland. Everybody's like, phew, all the Blazers fans sigh of relief. But this is what he said. I do want to see change within the organization. And what did Neal Loshe do? Hey, you know Larry, Larry Dance Jr., a good role player, that's the change. Let's go roll out the same roster. We're going to fire Terry Stott to put this inexperienced guy there. What senses that make? You have this superstar player who is crying out for help and he wants to stay loyal to the city and you have done nothing, nothing to improve his odds on winning a championship. And the one change that you did do, the Chauncey Billups thing, we're quarter to the season, there's already reports about the locker room not liking him or not liking his scheme. And I've watched a ton of Trailblazer games this season. You hire Chauncey Billups because he had this defensive scheme. This isn't that to improve the defense, you're still dead last. When I watched these games, there's a specific clip that I saw somebody tweet, somebody tweeted a clip where they were double doubling Don of a Davion Mitchell at the three point line. Davion Mitchell shooting like 20% from three. And what happened on that possession? Davion Mitchell found an open man. The schemes are not working early on and nothing indicates that things will be better. And the one thing that had been the pillar of consistency for you which is Damian Lillard, he's having a down season and because of that, you aren't the team that you normally are. Look at that team. I've preached it for years, a team of Damian CJ as your point of attack guys is not going to ever defend. Especially when you don't have another dude that might take the pressure off. Roco's a okay defender. He'd always been a dude that was known for his defense. This season, he ain't been doing nothing. Yousef Nerkus might be an average defender at the center position. Norman Powell's running a small four position. Of course his wingspin is great, but he's 6-3. They don't have a dude that you can look at and say, we need you to defend the other best players in the league. And because of that, the other best players in the league would be having big old nights and then the role players have big old nights because now you go to the scheme where you double in everything and now it's an open man. I don't understand how the heck we got to this point. It seems so very simple. It seems so very simple. Give Damian Lillard some defenders. You have not done that. I guess you've tried with the Roco thing, but you haven't done anything more than that. Now I don't want this all to be about Tonsy Billips because he's 20 games into his first season as a head coach. I think that maybe some of his schemes could work if he had the right personnel. Remember, he's still starting a team or has a team with really no real great defenders. So it's hard. I think it will be hard to elevate this team to be a good defensive team based on the personnel. But you have a star player and Damian Lillard who was very open about the people that he wanted. Now, I don't think that Dame should be running the whole organization to decide. I want to trade for this player and I want this as my head coach, but I think that he should have some type of say, especially when in the off season. It was a real question. What the hell he was going to ask to do, right? So when he tells you he wants these two coaches in that point, it was Jason Key to Mike Dentoni. Would they be better in this place? I don't know. But at least they have the experience. The second report was talking about Dame wanting to play with Ben Simmons and Portland. This is hard for me to gauge because it's hard for me to decide what the heck is going to happen. Because they're Mori and Elton Brandon have made it very clear they're holding Ben Simmons for as long as they can until they get the superstar player. They're still looking at James Harden. They're still looking at Damian. They're still looking at Bradley Beal waiting for one of them to become available. And they say that they're not trying to settle for anything less unless you throw in a CJ three first round picks and three pick swaps, which is too much. I don't know in this hypothetical negotiation who has to leverage anymore. You can argue that the 76ers have the leverage because Dame has made it very obvious or made it vocalized that he wants to play with Ben Simmons. Or you can say that the Trailblaze have leverage because the 76ers aren't playing Ben Simmons and they haven't looked amazing so far. I mean they were eight or three before Joe Weil got sick. But you get what I'm saying. Who has the leverage? I don't really know. What is the perfect trade to get Ben in Portland without giving up Dame? I don't know. I don't know if that exists. And I've seen a lot of, a lot of Philadelphia 76ers fans seeing the package that is CJ, Robert Coveton and maybe a pick or whatever it may be. I'm not a guy that's in the front office. So take with a grain of salt. I don't understand. But I see a lot of people see that trade and be like, no, we don't do that deal because we want a superstar player. And this is what I believe. I don't think you're trading Ben Simmons away for a superstar player that's one piece of way to make y'all a championship team. I think you trade Ben Simmons for maybe it is a CJ McCollum who's a borderline All-Star. He's having an amazing individual season. And then you make the other moves to elevate y'all to a championship team. I don't know if that singular one for Ben Simmons plus Yada Yada for James, for Damian, for Bradley Beale is ever gonna come available. So maybe it is okay to settle for a CJ unless CJ be the focal point of the offense late in the game because that's what y'all really need with Joel out there. Somebody that can get Joel involved without Damian Lillard in those games where Damian Lillard don't play, CJ be averaging like six assists per game. He's not a true point guard. You still have Tyrese Maxey for that. But he's a dude that could get you a bucket. So again, if I was the 76ers, I would see CJ McCollum and maybe Robert Covington coming back to Philly and like that trade. But again, I'm not the guy in the front office. So what do I know? But having Damian Lillard play with Ben Simmons on that side would be, I think a really good match. You would have to convince Ben Simmons to turn into a Draymond Green type player where you might not be the guy bringing a ball up the court every single possession like you were in your previous stops. But you can find your offense in the floor of the offense, still be a playmaker in the half court and play amazing defense. I swear to you, I think Ben Simmons for his career, if he just comes in and accepts his mindset, he can be a Draymond Green type player. Cerebrally, he is up there. He's a very smart NBA player, even though you see the clip of him passing up on a layup that wasn't his brightest moment. But from the history that we have of Ben Simmons, he's a smart player, he's a great defender, he's a great passer, he could be a Draymond Green type player for our organization. I don't know, man. Trebley's the fans, you let me know. Again, there's always a horde of Trebley's the fans that tweet at me after I make a video about them disagreeing with everything I say, which is okay, we're talking about sports, we're gonna disagree, that's fine. But I legit, as a fan, is trying to get what's best for your organization. What's best right now is to try to make some things work. But with all that being said, I wanna remind y'all to enjoy basketball and I'll see y'all tomorrow. Peace.