NBA Playoffs Thread - Play-in and 1st round edition

And if Heat want to advance, they need to finish the Bucks game 6 at home or else game 7 in Milwaukee

 

Fucking bullshit man why can’t teams gift us shit

 

Hey now,
we got Justin Minaya from the Mexico City Capitanes

 

I was kind of thinking a Kings vs Lakers series would be off the hook.

 

Congrats

 

Maybe I’m old fashioned but I was thinking it would be awesome if the lakers didn’t make it past the first round.

 

why would we want to take a chance like that? He obviously only has a few good years left anyway.

 

Then its a total fail of Cronin to acquire Hart on an expiring contract as the main player in the trade for CJ. Cronin should've gauged then if Hart was never going to resign in Portland. It was totally different than Aldridge playing 9 years in Portland.

Amazing how some posters find a way to defend Cronin when they bitch endlessly about Olshey making moves that might have even been better.

Cronin signs Nurkic and an injured GP2 for huge contracts but trades away Hart who is the perfect far superior two way player. The Blazers have desperately needed two way players around Dame for seemingly a decade, its either CJ/Ant/Melo/Kanter offensive types who have horrible D - or Aminu/Harkless/Turner/Davis defenders with no offense. The one year the Blazers had legit two way role players in Hood/Collins/Curry they make the freaking conference finals.

 

Because Hart is locking him up one on one. Then Hart provides something on offense.

But hey the Blazers have made trades shipping out talent and players while receiving massive "flexibility"

 

This might be an actual reason. Pinch pennies as the Blazers have done at every change the last few years instead of keeping flexibility to add talent.

Hart gave 100% here and the Blazers could've offered him more than any MLE Knicks or other winning East team. Of course he's going to say a bunch of reasons why he likes his new destination after the trade. He said a bunch of great things about arriving in Portland too. Nurk has said great things about having a condo in Miami and better flights to Bosnia. Players go where the money is first, especially if the enjoy some of the leading teammates. Portland has done pretty well resigning their free agents.

If Portland is going to trade away every player who's ideal city is not rainy basketball season Portland then they'll probably never keep any players on the roster. Sharpe is from Toronto, Ant from Orlando, Dame from Oakland and lived in Utah. Should they just start trading away all of them now over fear they could one day leave?

 

MJ didn't have the longevity. He entered the league older, rested a few years for baseball, and was not close to as good in Washington as old LeBron is now. I'd take MJ's peak years over any, although LeBron was pretty freaking awesome his last years in Miami and first few with his second stint in Cleveland.

Really you can build a super team with either player. MJ might be the superior player if he had great defending teammates. LeBron might be superior if he had offensive all-star teammates, he's more like Magic than Mike.

 

I remember you defending Olshey with consistency. Not surprised you have an axe to grind with Cronin since his job #1 was to begin dismantling the dysfunctional midget roster that Olshey built

it was obvious on the day that Olshey was fired that certain players would be traded soon; and they were. CJ instantaneously went from being untouchable to being a past-blazer-walking...or in his case, a past-blazer-chucking. There was not going to be an 8th reboot of Olshey's boring treadmill team.

that's why a lot of us didn't give much of a shit about what those 4 players traded fetched in a trade. I'm not a big fan of Cronin, not after last summer, but I was really happy he dumped the players he did

 

Its crazy that LeBron was drafted in 2003 and is still at an allstar level. I'm not sure we will ever see such longevity again.

Other players drafted with LeBron that had Blazers ties - Chris Kaman, Luke Ridnour, Sasha Pavlovic, Travis Outlaw, Luke Walton, Steve Blake, Mo Williams, James Jones, Nedzad Sinanovic.

Seems so long ago that we followed those players careers. Most have been out of the league over a decade.

Brandon Roy wasn't drafted until three years later in 2006.

 

He IS old by NBA standards. One of the oldest players in the NBA. That’s not a put down. It’s a fact.

 

Huh? But if they don’t make it to next round, they’ll already be out. Warriors/Lakers series would be great for NBA

 

I defend good moves and I criticize bad moves. Neil made horrible moves in the Meyers/Turner free agency summer and I said he should be fired for that. I've said Cronin did great in drafting Sharpe from the moment of the draft.

I talked much more highly of Olshey than Cronin as we had a team that had been a 3rd seed twice, reached the conference finals, and seemingly was a Paul George level SF away from contending. I wanted better basketball moves done, but I was extremely concerned if we fired Olshey we'd end up in an even worse position.

Guess where we are now 2 years after Olshey; in a worse position. I was excited of the opportunity this franchise had when firing Olshey, we could hire a great GM, we could add the right pieces or do a proper full roster turnover and build toward something great. I was fine with making a run to win now with Dame or to rebuild long term for youth, either road could be enjoyable if executed well.

I was hoping the team would just have Cronin do minor changes and do an extensive great GM search in the offseason where they could throw a large contract to the best candidate to build a contender. In the meantime Cronin would just take advantage of flipping players for assets, such as what Chad Buchanan did. Chad traded Gerald Wallace on an expiring contract for the pick that became Damian Lillard. I don't expect that, but I expect something if we are trading away players and losing the flexibility of their spot. If Cronin could trade some of those vets for good value then fine; if not then just keep them and let a great GM hire do all the final retooling/contending/rebuilding choices later on. But that's not what we got at all. It started with a horrible decision of Jody to empower and or direct Cronin.

The devastating part of the Clippers trade was it foreshadowed all of Cronin's incompetence's. He couldn't negotiate well, he couldn't plan ahead, how he/Jody/Vulcan had a mandate to cut costs instead of add talent, how he had no patience to wait for a better trade. There was no good reason to agree to an inferior Clippers trade a week ahead of the deadline, it was a rookie GM in over his head and panicking. It foreshadowed how the team would have less flexibility to improve the roster, it foreshadowed how talent (even with flaws) was being dumped with no possibility of good veterans or long term youth returning. Cronin was selling benefits (cap flexibility, expiring contracts, salary cap space, Ben Simmons additions) that any knowledgeable NBA expert would know is not a good path to build with in Portland.

So the Neil haters got their wish of change for the sake of change. I got my fear of the franchise even worse off than when Neil with all his many faults was here.