Former Blazers Thread

Good for Vonleh. Maybe failing disastrously here lit a fire under his ass. But I bet his minutes will go progressively down as the season goes on.

 

Patty is the primo example of "ex-Blazers whom I'm amazed managed to carve out long-ish careers after we dumped them", but another one is Luke Babbitt. (He was Pat Connaughton before Pat Connaughton was Pat Connaughton.) Is he still with the Heat?

 

I never said a word about Evan Turner though at least in this context. I dont miss Batum because his inconsistency is frustrating. That doesnt mean I like Evan Turner. Technically we replaced Batum with Harkless and Aminu not with Evan Turner.

 

First off, Leonard was an RFA so his contract had nothing to do with whether or not Batum was on the team. Secondly, just because the execution was awful it doesn't mean that maximizing cap space was the wrong thing to do.

People complain when players leave for nothing in return. The Batum situation is kind of the opposite of the Crabbe situation. If we just let Crabbe go to Brooklyn instead of matching then we'd have people in here saying how dumb it was to let Crabbe walk because he averaged 13 points and shot 38% from 3 or whatever last year. Isn't shooting exactly what we needed? Since he played an extra year here though people are fine with him playing elsewhere.

My point is that whether it is Batum, Turner, Crabbe, or Leonard signing a mediocre player to a big contract is bad. At least by trading Batum we got a player who was cheap and could've potentially broke out. It didn't work out but I'd take that risk over either letting Batum walk for nothing or paying him that ridiculous amount.

 

But (again): Olshey turned around and offered CHANDLER PARSONS the same amount he could've paid Batum. And he turned us down! So basically, when you're a Portland, you HAVE to overpay to get FAs, or to keep your good players.
Find me another player (not still on his rookie contract) who is as versatile as Batum (point forward, possible (in Batum's case, actual) 5 x 5 threat) who ISN'T paid obscene amounts. The worst part is that Batum is EXACTLY the right player to play alongside CJ and Lillard. And I bet you big bucks that if he WAS on Portland, the three-point % that obsesses BNM would go up. The Hornets don't have the other scorers that we do so Batum has to jack up more bad shots.

 

No, we replaced Aldridge with Aminu.

 

Sure I guess because he plays PF, but he’s more of SF/ PF role than LA who was a PF/C.

Thats really kind of a side point though. The main point was that Batum is incredibly inconsistent and I found him to be very frustrating, and saying that doesnt mean I like ET either. If it was my choice, id choose option c: Someone not them.

 

Man when we think back on all the players Neil targeted and got rejected/matched by, his resume would look even shittier.

Hibbert
Spencer Hawes
Monroe
Parsons

I feel like I’m missing more but that’s just the ones I remember off the top of my head. Not gonna hold things that didn’t happen against him, but it also doesn’t give me any confidence that he knows what the fuck he’s doing (in free agency)

 

Thanks for proving my point. Add Chandler Parsons to the list of players you SHOULDN'T sign to a big contract. Whether it's Batum, Parsons, Turner, Deng, Mozgov, Noah, Crabbe, Mahinmi, Biyombo, add whoever the fuck you want to the list but you don't sign those level players to big contracts. We would've been better off with value signings (which had been an Olshey specialty) like Garrett Temple, Dewayne Dedmon, Wayne Ellington, or James Johnson. You don't "HAVE" to overpay players, especially ones that aren't worth it.

Batum was awful his final year here. There is no other way to spin it. He shot 32.4% from 3 and 40% overall. That doesn't help Dame and CJ and certainly disproves your theory that he would shoot better in a different role. Batum is the ultimate tease of a player. Watch a Hornets game and you might think for about 10 minutes that Batum is one of the best players in the NBA. Watch the next 5 games after that and you'll forget he's even on the team since he disappears most of the time.

 

Do you have a camera in my office or something?!?

 

Milovan Raković

 

We signed Aminu and Ed Davis in 2015.

 

Ed Davis, Aminu, and myself were excellent free agent signings. Yes Neil should focus on those type of players. 8 figure per year contracts should be for stars. If stars won't sigh then yes get other bargain value free agents on cheap contracts. Don't overpay mediocre starters or bench players.

With good assets we could improve the roster in trades. Unfortunately we have overpaid Turner and Meyers. If instead they were bargain players on value contracts we would be more likely to pull of a Jimmy Butler type of trade.

 

Reports in the media said when Olshey saw Parson's medical report, he told him to take the MEM offer. Not sure if it's true, but the fact is Olsehy didn't sign him to any offer, MEM did.

That's a bet I'd take. Batum's last season in POR, he shot .324 from 3-point range, on a team where he was surrounded by proven, veteran scorers (Damian Lillard, LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews - for the first 60 games of the season). Combine those three with Nic and Rolo and that was a team coming off a 54-win season and the best starting 5 we've had in decades. Nic got plenty of open looks. He just couldn't knock them down.

Just like he hasn't been knocking them down in CHO. You highly overrate his 3-point shooting. The fact is Nic is a below average 3-point shooter and has been for 4 years in a row. For his career, he's at .355 (league average last year .362), in spite of a few good years early in his career when Nate parked him in the corner and limited his attempts to mostly the, shorter, higher percentage corner 3s. Do we really need another .333 3FG% "shooter" jacking up five 3FGAs a game, because that's what Nic is these days.

Plus, you are forgetting he didn't want to be here. He wanted a larger role to go with that larger contract. After he was traded to CHO, he made some snarky comment bout being able to play the way he wanted to for the first time in his career. Evidently "his way" includes being a below average shooter on a losing team.

BNM

 

You have no idea how much I’d like to believe you’re wes Matthews lol.
On the record saying he’s one of my favorite basketball players to watch ever. When he got hurt in that Dallas game, I legit almost teared up.
If Im honest a big part of why I dislike NO is how he handled that situation. I think even wes knew he wasnt going to be back, but the least NO couldve done was called him and thanked him for all he had done for the Blazers. He was what held that team together while LMA clashed with Dame.

 

Didn't he want Enes Kanter as well?

 

So that last part is your evidence for the first part? Doesn't EVERYONE say that on their new team? Besides that, what evidence is there that he didn't want to be here?

It's certainly true that Stotts didn't make full use of his talents. He treated him basically like Trevor Ariza, which, if you ever saw him play for France, WAS misusing him.

 

Right. Here's an interview with him after that where he seems perfectly happy in Portland. (And there was also talk that that whole Minny thing was agent-driven, too.)
https://www.blazersedge.com/2014/11...lazers-nicolas-batum-interview-all-star-bench