Players that moved to another team around the league

Did you even read my post? Those salaries will be gone next season so we can REALLY add a max player...

 

So for the low probability that some team hands us a free Hibbert next summer, we exchange the probability of long-term successful development of at least 1 of the 3 players, signed for their potential, who would have filled the Jeffries, Sasha, and Price slots.

 

Dude, you just saw that we added 5 rookies right? How many more do you need? We have youth and next year we'll have max money to add someone from this list:

http://www.hoopsworld.com/2013-nba-free-agents/

The last thing we need on this team is more youth and players who are going to take away minutes from our rookies. We need a max veteran on this team.

Who do you think we should have instead of those players who are going to give us the opportunity to offer a MAX deal? The 2012 FA class SUCKED.

Sounds like you would want more players to take away 2013 salary cap room for a really good player?

 

You're attempting to rewrite history. Go back and look at our rosters over the last several seasons. Those 13 - 15 roster spots have long been filled by big-body-with-a-pulse practice fodder - guys like Shavlik Randolph, Michael Ruffin, Ike Diogu, Anthony Tolliver, Earl Barron, Chris Johnson, etc. Given our shortage of healthy big men, it made sense to keep a few, cheap bigs around as insurance and practice dummies. Now, with our lack of experience at PG, it also makes sense to fill one of those bottom three roster spots with a cheap vet PG like Ronnie Price. This method of filling those inconsequential 13th - 15th roster spots is not unique to Olshey. So, I don't get your reference to "Clipper mentality".

So, what 13th - 15th man, dripping with untapped potential, have we had on our roster in the last 10 years that has developed into a player worth keeping long term, Taureen Green? I think not. We have enough guys to develop at the top and middle of our roster. We don't need even more young guys at the bottom three roster spots sucking up playing time and coaching resources that would be better spent developing the guys who actually have a chance to matter to the future of this team.

BNM

 

Unless you're a new Blazer fan, you are familiar with how our roster hasn't contained several no-potentials for a number of years, as it apparently will this season. I don't know why this seems like an alien concept to you. You ask who was available. Just skim through this thread to see names who are better than Jeffries, Sasha, and Price.

 

Excellent post. Well put.

Your point is reinforced by looking at our 96-97 Roster. When Jermaine O'neal was a rookie. OT: 1st of all, look how much $$$ they were making then... WOW. But compared to the rest of the team, look at what Chris Dudley is making while only playing 22+ mins per.... HUGE FAIL...

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/1997.html

But Jermaine O'neal, "dripping with untapped potential", was the 9th man on this roster. How much PT did he get? Not much.. 10+ mins per

Do you even remember the 13-15 men? Exactly....

OT: Do you remember this cat from Weber state?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/nembhru01.html

 

Those guys, except Diogu who was a lottery pick with potential I think, were picked up midseason. As of July, we've already lowered our hopes to the emergency midseason pickup level. Tolliver and Johnson were young and had potential, unlike the 3 now who have no upsides.

It's easy to list players we signed years ago for potential and say look, they didn't turn out well. But now, our bottom guys have no potential, and we already KNOW they won't turn out well when we sign them in July. That's the difference between Paul Allen spending vs thinking like a defeatist Clipper.

 

Seriously, you consider guys like Shavlik Randolph, Earl Barron and Micheal Ruffin ripe with potential. I call bullshit on this one. I've gone back and looked at our rosters over the past 10 years and don't see anyone occupying the bottom 3 roster spots that was even worth remembering , let alone keeping around long term. Who were these mythical players bursting forth with untapped potential and where are they now?

You made up a strawman argument - that we have always had players with potential occupying our bottom three roster spots, until Olshey became our GM. We haven't. Go back and look at the players in those spots again and tell me one you wish we still had.

BNM

 

C'mon man! The 13-15 men NEVER matter... Not on ANY team. Not until Linsanity. Are you hoping for that? Because it ain't happenin here.

Olshey has filled out the bottom of the roster with people who won't be here next year (great plan for most 13-15 guys) who give us excellent cap flexibility next season.

Look who we have to Develop:

Lillard, Leonard, Barton, Williams, Freeland, Claver, Smith, and Babbit. Hell Even Batum and Wesley need more development. Where are the minutes going to come from to develop the 13-15 guys?

Here's a simple sentence:

In the NBA when you have "untapped potential" you usually AREN'T the 13-15 guy.

 

I concur. jlprk you are complaining about a problem that doesn't exist.

 

And they wouldn't have SNIFFED minutes this season. You know we had Tolliver on the team before right? Well there's a reason why a soft 3 point shooting tweener PF/SF isn't needed on this team.

He's cheap and his name is Luke Babbit. And at least Luke is not soft. He may be cheap wasted space (won't be with the team next year IMHO) but he has a small role on the team and he is better than tolliver. Tolliver is supposed to take minutes away from people we drafted? D-Leauge tolliver? We sent him to the D-League man...

 

BTW, if you're so concerned with stocking up on young players with future potential, you should LOVE Olshey's moves.

In the Felton sign-and-trade, we got the following assets, for a guy we would have let walk for nothing:

2016 second-round pick, the rights to Georgios Printezis and Kostas Papanikolaou.

We also got two 2013 second round picks in the Pavlovic trade.

There, better now? That should help us fill out those bottom three roster spots with "potential" for years to come. Seriously, one of the Greek guys may actually crack our top 12 some day.

BNM

 

Do you ever bother to check facts? Chris Johnson is 4 days older than LaMarcus Aldridge. Anthony Tolliver a month and and a half older still. Both of those guys kicked around the D League for years before the Blazers called them up. Earl Barron was pushing 30 when we called him up. Are these REALLY the best examples you can come up with for young guys dripping with potential to fill out out bottom three roster spots?

Color me unimpressed, but I assure you I won't be losing any sleep knowing we passed on the next Earl Barron because his roster spot was taken up by Sasha Pavlovic or Jared Jeffries.

BNM

 

Not familiar with our injury history, eh? Tell you what. You find me a link to the opening rosters of each of the last few seasons (I checked first game box scores, but they list only players who played, not the bottom ones we're talking about), and I'll do the legwork and report back who the bottom 5 were. I think you'll find that all were considered to have some kind of upside, unless they were an emergency short-term fill-in like Shavlik for Oden.

What I've been posting about has been our abnormally low-expectation roster so early in the summer (July) when many better players are always still unsigned, yet Olshey is firmly committed to several crappy pickups. But since there's no link to July expectaions of each year, I'll let you off and compare opening day rosters.

 

Do your own legwork.... And if you think we are making the playoffs next season then you are SORELY mistaken.

Firmly committed??

Those players will NOT be on the roster in 13-14. They were brought in for emergency situations ONLY. AND because of their non guaranteed contracts.
Price MAY get some run. But our PGs will be Lillard and Nolan. What PG would you have gotten instead of Price? What players would you have gone after instead of Jefferies and Gadzuric?
We do have players with untapped potential:

Lillard/Smith/Price (Lillard 35+Mins per game)
Matthews/Williams/Barton/Pavlovic
Batum/Claver/Babbit (Batum 35+ Mins per game)
Lamarcus/Hixon/Jefferies (LA 35+ Mins per game)
Leonard/Freeland (not sure who will start but they will probably split time here)

Where are the minutes for the guys with untapped potential? Again, guys with potential don't sit on the end of the bench.

 

Giorgios and Kostas aren't on this year's roster. If we include them in this debate, then we should include in past years any future draft picks we owned, and we should include Freeland in every roster of the last few years, etc. I'm talking about how satisfied the GM was with nonpotential scrubs we actually had, ending all moves to improve early in the summer.

Chris Johnson and Tolliver ranked at the top of the D-League and had never played in the NBA. That means that they were widely considered to have potential to be adequate in the NBA, which is far more upside than Jeffries, Sasha, and Ronnie Price.

More important, those 2 were not on our roster at the beginning of the season, much less in July, with the GM passing up much better signings all summer to make room for Tolliver or Johnson, as he has now for Price, Jeffries, and Sasha.

By the way, I expect Jeffries, with years of experience, to initially outplay Leonard and Freeman, so don't hold that against me. But after a month, he'll fade as they improve.

 

What are you talking about? They WERE BOTH on the Blazers! We've already seen their "untapped potential"....

And where would there EVER be time to put EITHER of those players on the floor?

 

You seem to be arguing some point which is different from mine. You keep veering off and then wildly claiming, what are you talking about. I think you're talking about whether we're barely adequate, while I'm comparing how Olshey isn't using the Allen spending machine as much as his predecessors. We could be a little better and he's satisfied with Clipper quality, like you are.

 

Headline: Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen says he isn't selling the team, but his days as a big-spender are over.

http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/i...ers_owner_paul_allen_says_he_isnt_sellin.html