What about Noah Vonleh as back up 4/5? What are your thoughts on him? Could he be our first big off of the bench or nurk injury insurance on a cheap contract?
Josh Hart could become our Jordan Clarkson. He has 6th Man of the Year potential. I think his defense, attitude, and toughness are a must get.
How do you get him though? He'll be a RFA, so Pels can match any offer. Most likely, Portland will only be able to offer the tax-MLE for ~$6M/yr. Any S&T routes will hard-cap Portland at a maximum payroll of ~$141M. If there is any hope of re-signing Norm, Portland will most likely be over that hard-cap number - meaning the S&T is not an option.
I don't agree that Portland should value defense more than offense. They just need to value defense more than they have which points the finger at Melo, Kanter, and Simons, not to mention the Dame/CJ pairing Portland's best defensive team was the 2017-18 team and it got swept by the Pels because the Blazer offense stalled. That team needed to value offense more. Yeah, it's a damn game of bop-a-mole
If we are bringing in guys like Hartenstein (WABC) and Hart (average at best defender) what are we even doing? Aim the fuck higher
The Dame / CJ pairing has to be the first fix. if you want value for CJ - package Nurkic with CJ and a #1 pick and go shopping for a star; KAT being my first choice A new GM would be move #2; better ability to round out the roster than Olshey has been able to provide!
Agreed... although it make take doing #2 first to accomplish #1. I've yet to see Neil do anything that has had a significant positive impact on this franchise in his entire time here. There are some small positives, but they are vastly outweighed by a lot of negatives. Probably his best thing has been his ability to get talent in the 2nd round. But those have been marginal players at best.
Dude fit in well, and played great. Not having him against the Lakers was devastating. He would add great depth behind RoCo.
Ariza is a major head case who plays defense like it’s the NFL….and who will always be a Laker in his own mind. Trot out all the advanced stats you want. He didn’t do much if anything to push Portland closer to the top. And he bailed when he could have helped us the most. Maybe if he wasn’t such a fucking tool, his family situation wouldn’t have been an issue. Lastly, he’s on his last legs. Hard pass……
Man I wonder how many free agents were gonna sign this year. I doubt we’ll jump into the draft. Let’s assume we bring back Powell and DJJ picks up his option. That’s still only 9 players under contract. That means Olshey will have to bring in at least five players.
