Portland Trail Blazers shooting guard CJ McCollum says continuity in the NBA “matters.”
The Blazers signed point guard Damian Lillard and McCollum to contract extensions this summer. McCollum points to how the Golden State Warriors have been able to have success for so long because of the roster cohesion they have.
“I think it matters. You look at the Warriors, you look at how they’ve been able to sustain greatness for so long, the team that swept us — consistently has swept us,” McCollum told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on the Woj Pod, via Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com. “You look at what they’ve been able to do keeping Draymond (Green), they re-sign him. Sign Klay (Thompson) this summer, sign Steph (Curry), they keep their core together.
“Obviously they’ve had some changes within the rotation and we’ve had some changes. But I think having your core together with a culture, with an understanding of what it takes to win, who has been through some tough losses, I think that helps in that changes your perspective and your mindset to where, when you get to April and you’re down 2-1, you don’t panic. You don’t start to point fingers, you don’t play the blame game because you’ve already been through a sweep to the Pelicans, you’ve been through multiple sweeps to the Warriors and you’ve also had success and had multiple 50-win seasons and been projected to not make the playoffs and won 49 games.
“So you know what it’s like to see both sides of the spectrum. I think that now that we have that — we’ve gone through a lot — we’ll be ready to go this season. We don’t need people to talk about us, we don’t need people to boost us or to talk down on us. It doesn’t matter to us, we just want to go lock in, win as many games as possible and build on what we did last season.”
The Blazers got swept by the Warriors in the 2019 Western Conference Finals. They made a few moves this summer, acquiring Hassan Whiteside from the Miami Heat and Kent Bazemore from the Atlanta Hawks.
The Blazers moved on from Meyers Leonard, Evan Turner and Maurice Harkless.
Portland did sign future Hall of Famer Pau Gasol, small forward Mario Hezonja and power forward Anthony Tolliver in free agency. As is the case every season, though, the Blazers are going to go as far as Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum can take them.
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