No snark. I thought maybe you forgot about him is all. I think they consider it more balanced because of the size of the guards maybe?
If you're referencing what Cronin said. He clarified in the press conference that he was trying to put us in a position to balance the roster NEXT YEAR. It appears he felt having $100m tied up in PG/SGs this summer wasn't a wise idea.
In this press conference, Cronin said something along the lines that the trade took away the leverage every team had over Portland knowing ownership was requiring them to get below the tax. As soon as the trade was done, teams no longer could hold that over their head. If Norm or Cov had so much more value, I wonder why the Clippers didn't cash in on a quick flip considering the number of wings on their roster?
So I thought that Haskins saying that they're in the middle of a GM search right now is telling. While I'm sure the Vulcans are happy with all of the savings that they made during the deadline time period, they have to be just as embarrassed as we are as fans at all of the journalists and reports that other league executives are saying we should have been able to clear the cap space and get a lot more back, specifically in draft assets. I think what that means is that when the regular season ends and we are no longer playing, during the playoffs it will be announced that Cronin is one of the candidates being interviewed for the permanent GM position and the job will go to someone else. I honestly think if we get have a high lottery pick from our pick and a mid to late lotto pick with NOLA's that would signal youth rebuild to anyone without a history with Dame and Nurk. So by the time the playoffs end we'll have a new GM looking for the best packages of young players and draft picks for Dame and maybe some compensation in a Nurk trade. I think anyone not emotionally tied to this would just finish the blowup that Cronin started but just do it with much less desperation.
One point everyone seems to overlook about Cronin - he worked for Olshey for years. To stick with Olshey that long, he either had to embrace his views on roster construction, or he is a hopeless yes man/brown-noser. Either way, why would you trust him with the future of the franchise?
Or his dream is to be in the NBA, of which there are only 30 teams, and so he just kept his nose down, offered his opinions, and was a good solider even if he didn't love every move his boss made. Without knowing what the conversations were like behind the scenes, I don't think it would be fair to judge his relationship one way or the other.
He just destroyed everything olshey did. That part makes me happy. We took a swing. Let's see what happens.
Cronin said the first trade was to take away the leverage every other team had because the Blazers were over the Luxury Tax. Fine, but there were a lot of other ways to do that without simply giving away Norm and RoCo. No problem with cleaning house. It needed to be done.
Agreed. There were about 100 trades that could've got the Blazers out of the tax. Cronin panicked and agreed to a bad deal.
Why do you think the Clippers passed up on these 100 deals to flip Roco or Norm considering they already have PG and Kawhi? Seems like it would've been smart for them to do as well. Please show me the trade that was actually on the table for those two that would've got us under the cap. I'm not asking for 100 like you claim, but 2-3 provable ones would be a great start.
It's the only saving grace and I have very low hopes. I still wouldn't be okay with it for the mere reason that they did it a week before the deadline and the rest of the package is straight garbage... And to make matters worse the reasoning is garbage too. So even if Keon becomes a fringe rotation guy (which is most likely what he will be) the trade still sucks, will always suck, and had no rational (and they tried to rationalize it) reason for it, especially given the timing of the trade. It's indefensible.
somebody needs to point out what the situation was, so I'll do it: Portland was 1.3M over the tax line, and their tax bill was going to be 2M. That's it. It would not have been hard to shed 1.3M dollars. And yes, I know, future repeater tax was a bigger concern I'm not buying the spin that teams were blackmailing the Blazers in trade discussions because Portland was 1.3M over the line. I think that's bullshit, or at least extreme exaggeration.
