Fair warning, this would cost this team a whole lot of wins in the short term. If I were Cho and Paul Allen (Vulcan?) 1. I'd fire Nate and name Bernie the interim coach for the rest of the season. This is purely a "change for change's sake" move, just to get a slightly different voice in there. 2. I'd trade Miller, Camby, Oden and/or Joel and get whatever assets I could for them (preferably a decent big or two or a decent youngish point guard). 2a. Nobody is untouchable. Move Nic, Matthews, Armon and/or Babbitt if the right deal comes across your desk ... if you can move Roy or Aldridge for shorter term contracts do it. 3. Shut Roy down if he can't move on defense or severely limit his minutes with the supposition that rest might help in the longterm, or even if it doesn't maybe we'll get something out of him over the life of his contract. 4. Play Matthews, Nic, Luke, Patty and Dante as many minutes as you can give them (aside from the automatic 35 LMA is going to get and whatever other player(s) you might trade for.) Find out what you have with some of these young guys and figure out if they are worth developing, cutting or trading. and finally ... 5. Ride your 25 or 30 win season into the lottery and take the best player available even if he's a wing ... and view this player as a trade chip. That's it, that's all I've got -- the nuclear option that assumes that whatever championship aspirations this team had are dead and buried -- if some of the youngsters show enough promise to warrant being kept around then awesome, but that shouldn't rule out a complete overhaul of the roster in order to attain cap flexibility. Because in my opinion there's no worse situation to be in than a mediocre team paying the luxury tax, with longterm (and high dollar) salary commitments with no better than low seed playoff aspirations (see: Pacers, NBA basketball team, 2003-2009). I admit that this is premature and maybe a bit over the top, but this team just has the feeling of a group that needs a major shakeup and I don't think an on-the-fly retooling is going to cut it; our trade assets feel a little too flimsy or old and the team's top talent is either too risky from a health perspective or locked into too many years to be easily moved in the short term.
IMO, the franchise will not survive a total blow up like this. You're looking a 4-5 year window to getting into the playoffs with a blowup...perhaps even more. Might as well ride in mediocrity until contracts lapse...take the gamble on Oden and this squad is better than we can do "retooling" or building through the draft.
If you do blow up the squad, you have to give up this "good citizens" bullshit. How do you feel now about the good guys now that they can't win a game?
I don't recall ever being one of the people advocating for nothing but choir boys ... you just can't have a team of nothing but knuckleheads, or your veteran "leadership" being the ringleader of the knuckleheads.
Bingo! That was always my beef with the Jailblazer era team. I've always been an advocate of somehow getting Stephen Jackson. Everybody around here thinks he's a knucklehead. Finding a happy medium has always been ideal. Jackson won a ring in SA as a starter.
I was speaking in general. I think the Blazers have to target offensive stud type players...guys like Danny Granger. Nic is a great defender but he's not an elite scorer, which we kind of need.
Sure why not. He actually got a bunch of rookies and summer league scrubs to set picks, move off the ball and run. I'm all for it.
I'm pretty sure they'll wait until the deadline before giving up on the season. Joel will probably help quite a bit, even if he is gimpy, because we sorely lack a physical presence and rebounding. And if we just had a shooter or two...like if Rudy returned to his rookie form...I really think it'd make a world of difference. Like 45 win team vs .500. If that's satisfactory. Then ride it out selling the public that all will be different next season when Oden "returns". I just don't have faith they blow it up and fully committ to starting over. I think they fear the half empty arena and loss of revenue. It's ironic, but Allen's goldmine is supposed to be unique advantage for this franchise, but I sense he, or those that represent him, put making money on equal ground with winning.
If the new CBA is anywhere near as draconian as Stern wants, at least half the teams in the league will be in "blow it up" mode. Is it really such a huge risk to start now, rather than waiting until 2012? Even in the best case scenario, Miller and Camby will be done (or on their last legs) by 2012, so some degree of change is inevitable.
Blow up this team, build it back up over several years to where the new guys finally get into the playoffs but lose in the first round 6 years from now? No. Horrible, horrible idea. Plus what is this "play the youngsters to see what they got"?? We HAVE been playing the "youngsters" and we DO know what they've got. Fuck, Dante has had to play stretches at C. And Wesley isn't some unknown. He started for the Jazz last year. Nic's started most of his career. I think you're overreacting, Nik. We have a good team. And Roy is still a very effective player. He's gonna have to learn to play with what he has. Extensive rest won't make a difference (he had all summer off!) and why bench a guy who can put up 22 a night and is being paid millions to do so? Finally, I like to see my team WIN so I would like my coach, players, and management committed to that. Look....the Wizards blew it up last season. They won the lotto. Wall is a stud. But do you see them legitmately competing for a championship in the next 5 to 7 years? I don't. Why would I want us to become THAT? We should be looking to re-tool, looking for ways to improve our current roster, not destroy it.
Never happen. Can't happen. First, a "youngish" point guard will be under a rookie contract. And any of those (with the possible exception of Augustine) is untouchable as we found out last summer. We'd have to trade Oden due to him being on a rookie contract and I can't see a team doing that one. Now, I could possibly see a team trading an average to less than average 'big' for one of our expiring contracts. But is that what we really want? Some slug. Not for me. I'd rather let the cap room come to us and get what we can via free agency. No disrespect intended, but this falls under the "we simply snap our fingers and the NBA falls at our knees with trades that help us win and them lose" scenario the drunken kids around here dream up during the off season. I see no reality here. I would think this makes sense. Batum is a highly prized commodity. Armon and Babbitt are token throw-ins. Roy is 110% untradable. I'd rather keep Aldridge. I agree with this. He can move well enough to find an open jump shot. Aside from that, his game is gone. Well, if we really want to blow up the team, then this should follow. Since this nuclear approach isn't going to happen, we will still take the best player available in the draft as usual. You know, this all started with trying to build a championship team rather than a long term playoff team like SA and Detroit did, and then tweak it for a title run. We took players with iffy injury histories (Roy, Oden) that we maybe should not have taken and hitched the franchise wagon to them in the hopes of a title. Now, that strategy has possibly destroyed this team for years to come. Allen and Vulcan are to blame for this epic fail.
Then again I have no confidence this team can go anywhere constructed as it is, especially with Roy's diminished play and contract serving as a huge anchor - gotta be blunt and honest about that. IMO one big thing we need to do is see if anyone might take his contract by the deadline, I'll take expirings, he's only going to get worse as time goes on and we cannot build around him. A team with a "win window now" like Dallas or Chi or Orlando could take a chance on him if he cal play like he has the last few games for 30-35 mpg - if we are lucky.
Change the coach. Its time for a new direction. Bring Brandon off the bench. He can't play D anymore and he can't carry the first unit offensively anymore. His style is better suited for 2nd unit play where the other players watch one guy light it up. Trade anyone not named Oden or Aldridge or Roy to improve the roster. (LA and Roy are probably untradeable due to their contracts, and we're not going to get much for Greg...might as well see what the future holds for him)
This is going to sound like blasphemy, but I'd trade him for Gilbert Arenas, if only because Gil has one less year on his deal.
He's got one less year and doesn't look like he's nearly in the same amount of pain as Roy either. It's so sad that BRoy might be one of the worst contracts in the NBA right now. Anyway, the only way out of the current situation is to trade the sizable expiring deals we have coming off the books this year (Andre, Joel) and next (Camby).
You think I'm overreacting, I think you're in denial. We'll call it a draw. As for the Wizards, I don't know if I see them competing for a championship, but if Wall progresses like many think he will and if Javale McGee can ever figure it out (which he seems like he's starting to) then I think they've got as decent a chance as any team if Ted Leonsis can surround Wall in particular with the right mix of veterans through trades and free agent signings. I don't know what their odds are, but I'd put their chances way ahead of this Blazers team as currently constructed.
