Trade Hart/Winslow/Didi/Keon/pick or CJ/Norm/Nance/Roco?

Hey, that means we're neighbors now!

 

Of course we're not better RIGHT NOW. In fact, we're really shit. But we were just mediocre, with no path out of BEING mediocre. So I don't regret those trades, shitty as they were. (And to be honest, of all the players mentioned, I think I get most pleasure out of seeing Josh Hart in a Blazers uni.)

 

CJ for Hart, Sato, and the Lakers pick. Norm to Cleveland for their pick. Combine those deals and you still get a $20.8M TPE. Keep Nance.

 

This argument is turning into a marathon dead horse desecration, but people keep conflating 2 separate issues.

Moving those players: good idea.

Moving those players for a single "win now" player (Hart) and a bunch of players irrelevant to our future: bad idea.

No matter how low your opinion of the players we gave up, the blunt truth is that except for Hart, the players we got back back were players the Clips and Pels didn't want. From their POV, these were low-to-moderate reward/almost zero risk. "Aha" I hear you say - what about that lotto pick? Cronin made the deal with the expectation that Zion wouldn't return this season and that CJ would be a flop. The Pels were working off the opposite assumption. While they were both wrong, the Pels were a lot closer to the truth than Cronin.

What the team desperately needed was to acquire draft assets. We didn't. No excuses will change the fact that in the Darwinian world of the NBA Cronin didn't get the job done.

End of rant.

 

And we STILL have no path out of being mediocre. That's the point.

 

1. We found the path out of mediocre - it led very quickly to terrible. BUT
2. We have our first highish lottery pick of (probably) several.

 

We will soon soon enough, hopefully, who will be next years GM.

 

Cleveland would have to send out Rubio to make the deal work, like they did in the Levert deal, eliminating the TPE.
That's also to assume that Cleveland would want Powell over Levert, which, it seems they were more interested in a bigger backcourt partner for Garland.

 

You did watch pre-season, right?

 

80% of the league is mediocre every year?

 

I think we'd have gotten that for CJ in the first place if it were an option...

And who says Cleveland wants Norm or his contract?

You can't combine traded player exceptions, so then we wouldn't be able to go after Grant like Dame wants.

 

Putting a PF on a HOF PG. That there is some good coaching!

 

I don't think this is really as debatable as this forum tries to make it @THE HCP is right that if you think the assets we got back in return for the assets we sent out are even close to equal value, even close, you're making a fool of yourself. Now you guys love to spin it that we got to tank because of it and we made it so we could re-sign Ant (which nothing would have stopped us from doing before). Those aren't reasons that justify the trades. If the only real reason to justify the trades was because this organization wanted less money on the books then fuck them.

I can't say this enough, this is a very competitive business and you can not give away assets, you just can't do it. None of the contracts we sent out were bad enough to not get value back for them. So simply Norm and RoCo were leading the Clippers in bench minutes when they played... that's value far beyond Justise, Keon and a 2025 second rounder. CJ is now the Pelicans lead guard and Larry is their leading minutes getter off the bench... that's value far beyond Hart, Didi and a 2025 Bucks first rounder. Both trades were really bad and I don't think they had to be.

RoCo was rumored to be wanted by 7 different teams at the deadline... even if they gave us nothing but the 2M in cap relief we had to get in order to stay out of repeater tax that would be better than the nothing we got for him from the Clippers. There were also three different front offices that came out and said that they were never contacted about Powell and would have given up more than the Clippers did for him. CJ is an interesting situation because I haven't heard that anyone specifically wanted him more or retroactively said they would have given up more but like many have said, we can't come away from a trade where we traded two starters for Hart and no pick until 2025... Cronin had to do a better job with contingencies if the Pelicans made the playoffs and therefore got more value out of the trade than what they were giving back. Instead the Pelicans got more value than they originally portrayed that they thought they were getting and gave up less in return. What I'm saying is that Joe set it up so if CJ's new team out performed expectations after he was acquired we got far far less in return.

Anyone who doesn't see all of this as a major fail by Cronin is either kidding themselves or doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.

To answer the OP's question even though I would have been pissed about a 7th season of Dame/CJ, which actually would have been CJ/Ant and I would have been pissed about having Norm play the three all season, I would most definitely take RoCo's expiring contract with bird rights, Larry's contract that goes down in cost and is expiring next season, CJ and Norm on their contracts than Hart, Winslow, Keon, Ingles' expiring contract with bird rights considering the fact that his game was on the decline before his knee blew out and the bullshit picks we ended up with.

 

No doubt draft assets are always a good thing to have....but desperately? What did you want to do with these assets that are all high lottery-protected?
Yes, I know that they are good to have for making deals but IMO we seem to be jumping to some foregone conclusion that multiple draft picks (usually top 4 protected) are a game-changer. I guess I am just confused about who we are all talking about. I assume it is a player that is much better than Grant.

 

Cleveland was one of the three teams that reportedly weren't contacted and were interested in giving more than we got. Also this bullshit about Norm getting to go home and being so grateful to us that he could and CJ getting to go where he wanted, really is more telling about how competitive we were to get the best value back than any of the rumors or lack thereof that any of us can point to. We have CJ saying that him being there was important to him, we have Norm saying being where he is was important to him and we have Cronin talking about both of them ending up in the situations they wanted to be in being a big part of things. That's hard evidence of managerial malpractice.

 

Well, that's not a particularly engaging invitation to a rational discussion about the moves Cronin made. But, I'll ignore that and jump in with where I think you're mistaken. The Blazers need a high caliber PF if they want to compete. None of those guys, CJ included, either individually or in a package were likely to bring that type of player back in trade. Other teams are stocked with guards and short, middle-talent PFs. They aren't giving up the type of player the Blazers need for those types of assets. What they would have generated would have been similar guys to the ones we sent out. That would just be cap-clogging iterations of what we already had. Cronin wanted a top-6 or so lottery pick to use to acquire that kind of player either in the draft or, more likely, via trade in combination with the TPE. He's got that asset now, it's up to him to produce this summer or exit the stage. I agree with your position that Cronin should have gotten more protection on the NO pick, but we weren't privvy to the trade talks and don't know if that was a possibility. We do know that CJ needed to go in order to make room for Simons and Hart. Mission accomplished. All I care about is what the roster looks like in October. I don't care what route Cronin has to travel to get there.

 

2 points. First, even a late lotto pick would have been a better trade asset than any of the players we got - with the obvious exception of Hart. Second, as I said before, there are guys projected in the 7-10 range of this draft I would take over Grant in a heartbeat. (eg Davis or Mathurin) Finding a player cheaper than Grant and with more long-term value isn't that high a bar to clear.

Obvious disclaimer: I don't claim to be an expert, but I don't get why the team seems to be so hot for Grant. When you balance what he brings to the court vs his salary and the acquisition cost, I just don't see it. It seems like another questionable "win now" trade that makes no sense for a team that needs a major revamp.

 

No it's not. It's evidence of a small market team doing its best to show that they take player's interests in consideration when making deals. If we're ever going to attract top-level FAs we have to show that this is a player-friendly organization. Do you think Dame would have been thrilled to see CJ shipped off to NBA Siberia?