CJ, RoCo at bare min have to be gone. Nurk should too, if they can trade for a C. And imho, they should do it sooner rather than later. But I don't know if the players available would make any difference, or that the players that would make a difference are even available.
I like the facts that Cronin knows that the current roster is exactly the problem, doesn’t have the need or vanity to insist it isn’t, doesn’t have any pet players, and is a really smart guy who knows the CBA inside and out. I also like that he’s essentially auditioning for the permanent GM slot. These things say there’s a chance to start making moves sooner rather than later.
Just throwing out names? Also, will Cronin have the power to make these types of moves? Or will they be put on hold as Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde look for a permanent general manager? And will they look to a proven commodity like a Danny Ainge? Or will Allen look to be a trail blazer and hire a female, like Boston’s Allison Feaster? Or perhaps an up-and-comer like Brent Barry from San Antonio, Jeff Peterson from Brooklyn, or Michael Winger from the Clippers? Or maybe the play is to placate Lillard and his agent, Aaron Goodwin, by hiring one of his clients like Shareef Abdur-Rahim?
He was very much in the "this is a good roster" camp 2 months ago. Roster hasn't changed since so this would be a total 180.
Quick's writing has always been a ton better than his talent and roster evaluation. He spent several years thinking Meyers Leonard was all-star material. I mean, if you backtrack to when Indiana was shopping Paul George and Portland was offering their three 2017 firsts + any players other than Dame, CJ, and Nurkic, Quick actually said Portland's offer was better than OKC's. Which told me the Blazers offered something like Meyers + Harkless + the three 1st's. That Meyers was included would have been why Quick thought the offer was great...IMO in fact, IIRC, it was Quick who suggested that Olshey offered Meyers something in the 15M/year range after Leonard's 3rd season. Than the next summer when Olshey re-signed Meyers for 10M/year Quick said it was a real bargain....lol
The thing is, for Terry Stotts, or even Mike D’Antoni, this would be a good roster. High octane offense, minimal effort on defense, play fast and just try to out-score the opposition…this offense is tailored for that. For some reason, Olshey couldn’t see that a defensive-oriented coach like Billups was going to have problems with the same guys.
Does anyone have faith at this point that these two bozos could find the right person to take us into the next era of Blazers basketball?
It's funny: when it actually was the roster, they canned the coach (and 90% of y'alls rejoiced because the "useless" Stotts is gone). Suddenly under Chauncey, half our roster is much worse than under Stotts. So I'm thinking, maybe this coach doesn't know how to use the roster he has? Because he's asking them to do shit that they're not suited to, and (in RoCo's case) not using him for what he's good at. So we're keeping the coach and changing the entire roster to suit him? Hey, maybe we could've done that with the coach who has proved that he could adapt to the roster, coaching a good defensive team when we had one, and an amazing offensive team when we didn't? Long story short: must be nice to be Chauncey: team gets bounced in the first round - coach's fault. Better roster, worse record - roster's fault.