Jaynes: List of Blazers' mistakes in landing Hedo

Dwight Jaynes had a pretty good summary of the Blazers' mistakes this past week. And as always with him.. a sometimes brutal, but to him, honest look at things.

http://www.dwightjaynes.com/one-last-look-at-the-whole-hedo-thing-in-the-rearview-mirror

 

*Sigh*... I guess our players aren't the only ones with inexperience on the Blazers.

 

Yeah.. it may be the first time or the most significant time that KP hasn't got what he wanted. Everything up to this point had been pretty good but this may have been a harsh reality check.

 

Call me stupid I don't think this is what cost us signing Hedu. I think players like to be wanted and anything that strokes their ego's helps. How many times have we hear players talk about being respected and wanted? We lost Hedu because his wife didn't want to live here, it has nothing to do with KP/Blazers or anything we did to court him.

 

The sign at the airport was stupid. Just like all the signs at games are stupid. But in the end neither makes any difference.

Bringing up Miles' contract from 5 yeares ago? What ever. If we would have not signed him we probably would have signed someone else in the last 5 years. But lets just pretend we didn't. Who could we have signed this summer that was a free agent that we can't sign now? Or is it the same players but we would really be over paying them? (Which would hurt us more down the road)

 

Pretty hilarious. He writes this:

...after pretty widespread reports that Turkoglu and his wife preferred Toronto as a city. I can imagine his "list of mistakes" had the Blazers not flown Turkoglu in and he had picked Toronto:

 

What this should be saying to everyone is....... Hedo is all about the paycheck and not about getting a ring! You don't go to the Raps over a team like Ptown if you're a winner! It's that simple! Hedo did us a huge favor, he's not in it for the championships.

 

This is more of Dwight again railing against Portland and Oregon's small town mentality. He mentions anything that can allow him to made some sort of semi-connected rant about the topic at least three times a week. It's pretty hilarious to see someone get so riled up over being small-town. OH NO NOT SMALL TOWN.

 

This. I had a bad feeling in my gut throughout the Hedo thing. Get Battier instead!

 

As if the overly red-carpet treatment caused Hedo to not sign.

 

Didn't New York fly Jason Kidd out to chat with him about a possible offer? Typical small town naivete. If only they had the wisdom of sophisticate Dwight Jaynes.

 

Yeah, Dwight pretty much missed on this one.

Please tell me, though, that Jay Jensen wasn't really standing there looking like a limo driver.

 

Dwight James is 100% right! At least he has a clue.

 

The funny thing about Dwight's piece is that this so-called "mistake" of laying out a publicized red carpet has absolutely nothing to do with landing or losing Hedo -- only with saving face and looking cool. Yeah, we're a small town at heart. That's not going to suddenly change just because the Blazers start talking with their checkbooks, as Dwight calls it. If the biggest mistake here was that we acted too goofy and hospitable, so be it. There's no way in hell that some naive kindness at the airport is what cost us the right to sign a free agent.

 

It doesn't strike me as weird at all. It seems like I've read quite a bit about teams flying "major free agents" in for wining, dining and showing them around. More in baseball, but that's generally because there's much more free agent movement in baseball.

I, personally, don't consider Turk a "major free agent," but that seems to be the billing the media is giving him.

If the Blazers wanted him, I don't see the harm in doing it. It may not make much difference positively, but it sure isn't going to hurt their chances of signing him. I guess it gives writers like Jaynes something silly to obsess over, but it would be a mistake for a front office to make their decisions based on how reporters characterize it.

 

I know that Ed O brought up the question Thursday why Turk was brought to Portland and why it was all so public. I commented that this was probably KP's first and only opportunity to recruit a big free agent. This would be his dog and pony show. It obviously was a mistake. I can not disagree whith Dwight here. Even what he says about the small town mentallity. There was no need for the dog and pony show. KP and Co. were a bit to confident. It happens.

 

What were the circumstances regarding the pursuing of Trenton Hassell? Other than the fact that Hassell wasn't a 'B' type player, didn't the Blazers go after him, publicly think/state they had him, only to then learn that he slipped between the cracks to the T-Wolves?

 

He didn't slip between the cracks. He was a restricted free agent and Minny matched. Nash had no business doing a press conference. Luckily Minny matched though, because hassell is still on that offer we gave him and has sucked every day.