Nurk can’t come back, that fucker would be so whiny after this. I’d say there’s a less than 1% chance he plays for us again. You want Dame ur taking Nurk!
If Shams got this right, then Shams can kick rocks along with Dame. Miami can pound sand. AND no Western Conference teams, especially the Spurs with Wemby and the Lakers. Just no.
I'm sorry to see Dame go - he is one of my all time Blazers favorites. And I'm sorry that they weren't able to build a contender around him but that's water under the bridge now. I hope that they can now move forward with some talented young guys and build a fun, competitive team moving forward. Hopefully the fun starts next week in Vegas!
Youth, height, picks. If we have to take back Simmons bitch ass, cut him when it makes sense. I may be a little bitter right now but if this is the direction we're going then just go scorched earth.
If Miami wants Dame badly, they can figure a great 3 or 4-team trade to get Dame and what the Blazers want.
At this point, I don't really give a crap. I hope we can trade Grant somehow. Or else mutually terminate his contract.
Spurs might be in "win now" mode and give up some of their assets to Portland and take some from Miami?
I want to go to the nba trade machine and start working up trades for Dame but… I just can't bring myself to do it right now…..
Just a few thoughts before knowing everything that transpired: Obviously, I'm disappointed, although admittedly not as much as a lot of forum members. I've been a Blazer fan through the trades of Walton and Drexler, the buyout of Brandon Roy. It's the nature of sports things that they change. I'm disappointed that this couldn't be made to work. I'm disappointed that the Blazers couldn't have done something to make Dame feel it was worth staying here for at least a few months. I'd hope Cronin made every realistic attempt to do that and it wasn't just a PR ploy to make it less obvious they were trying to force Dame to be the one to blink and request the trade. Either way, I understand the things that played into the Blazers making some of the moves they made and not making desperation moves that they didn't, and I don't fault them for that. I also don't fault Dame for requesting the trade if that's what he wants, if that's going to make him happy. Now, I'm not going to say playing this out the way it did doesn't diminish Dame in my eyes to some degree. Without doubt, he was a special talent with a great story, and it was a pleasure to be able to watch him and to have him on the only NBA team of which I ever was a fan. That being said, this still seems to me to go against so much of the persona he's built in Portland, about not running from the grind, about just wanting a competitive foundation, about the community. It does seem to make at least some of that, to me, seem hollow now. Things could have changed in the last year about how he viewed winning a championship in relation to his legacy. Maybe he just got tired of all the questions or he bought into some of them. Maybe his ego just got the better of him. I don't know him personally, so I don't know, but the semi-demands and then the wishy-washiness of that and now he's not only demanding a trade but a trade to the reigning Eastern Conference champ, it just looks a bit like the Dame we were shown all these years was at least a bit of a PR creation, because this is the exact opposite of what that character would do ... not in asking out, but letting this whole thing play out as it did and dragging fans that had invested in him through it. I'm not going to wish Lillard well in Miami or wherever. I'm indifferent to his future except when it directly impacts the Blazers. He was a special player who played for the team I love and he was well-compensated to do so, and he'll be just as well-compensated in his next stop and the stop after that and the stop after that. His reputation, barring some extenuating circumstance that has yet to be revealed, has been somewhat tarnished in my eyes, though, and I can now view him just as a special basketball player but also as a normal, average person who doesn't always believe his own BS and switches up when it suits him. He's a great basketball player, but I am a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers. Was before Dame. Will be after Dame. We part ways with the understanding that he's just any other former Blazer to me, and will not be a focus of my attention or energy from here on out, and I hope the team gets something close to a proper return for him.
