This front office seems to have the utmost confidence in their ability to draft. My guess is they will trade Dame to give themselves the greatest opportunities to shape this team via that vehicle.
Dame's request makes this signing look even more dumb. Maybe the front office will surprise me and be able to get value at some point (like it did for the dumb Payton signing), but giving him so much when there (probably) wasn't another team willing to go that high makes it more difficult. We'll see...
Grant signing is not an issue. We do not want a team where Scoot has to score or pass to Sharpe only - you want him to grow trusting the passes. That's still a good signing and if they decide at some point, I am sure they will be able to move Grant.
I haven't seen one person outside of this board call Grant's deal a "good" one. The closest anyone has said that's positive about it is that the team had to do it to keep Dame happy. He is overpaid. He's going to be old and overpaid in a few years. In a free agency period where no one is getting five years, and comparable players (Kuzma, Green) got much less money, Grant sticks out like a sore thumb as an overspend and it's just a question of whether it'll hurt us or not. On the court: having Grant as a primary scorer when we have Ant, Sharpe, and Simons all age 24 or younger makes no sense. And it's not like he has a history of leading young teams to success... Detroit dumped him as soon as they could get some value for him, and I cross my fingers the Blazers can, too.
I say fuck it and just back out of the Grant deal, so some of the agents won't like it, it's not like FA's will come here anyway and we will hopefully have new ownership within 5 years.
I linked a video of Tim Legler calling it market correct earlier in this thread. Kuzma got $102/4, so it comes down to 25.5/year vs 32/year - and Grant is a much better defender than Kuzma. Gut feeling, the Blazers are going to flip Ant sooner or later. They might start the season with Scoot / Ant / Sharpe - but the FO talked long about balancing the roster, they will probably want to move Sharpe to the #2 spot.
Yep, I have a feeling Dame and Jerami knows Dame wants to be traded and Jerami wants to get paid before today. Last night: Dame: Is the ink dry? Jerami: Yup, thanks dude Dame: You got it bra
I would bet that the contract has been submitted to the office, so it's all signed and official. Assuming that's the case, you can't back out. It has the force of law, in addition to the force of NBA rules, etc.
Well if that was the case, screw Dame's "preferred" destination then. We'll trade him to whoever offers us the best deal.
Yeah, that was BS, but to be honest I am not as upset about it as I was 30 minutes ago. He does become a trade asset, one that we would not have had otherwise. Its not like we are going to attract free agents with cap space
No, the dumb move would be to let him walk for nothing. $32 million a year in the new CBA era is not outrageous for a 3-4th option. Grant, unlike Nurk, plays a premium position in the league. We will be able to get positive value from it, and until then, he will be good for the development of Scoot and Sharpe. You don’t want to be the Rockets and have your development impeded because it’s a trash heap 1-5.
Other than rumblings that Detroit MAY have been interested, there was no indication that any team was interested in him at that level. Portland bid against itself as it did for Ant and Nurk the year before. Portland gave up a future first rounder for Grant when he was two years younger and significantly cheaper... what's he going to be worth when he's 32 or 33 and getting paid so much under a CBA that is absolutely brutal with moving big contracts? It's not going to be much, if anything, positive and in the meantime we've got a veteran shooter who doesn't rebound but MAY help us win a few games that we shouldn't be trying to win as we rebuild. And, yes, that is WAY TOO MUCH for a fourth option, or a third option that's the level of Grant, under the new CBA. The salary cap will go up, but the overall aim of the new CBA is to spread salaries out to more folks, rather than a few massive contracts, and we saw that yesterday in every signing (either in length or average per year or both) other than Grant's deal.
I don't suspect he's long for Portland. In this landscape, the contract looks more tradeable than it did initially. He's not a building block. He's a trade chip. I expect one that will be used by the trade deadline at the very latest.
I don’t disagree that he is overpaid. The question is, will teams that desperately need a 3/4 halfway through the season give up positive value for him? I think the answer is yes. Good wings are just so, so hard to find, and the parity in the league now means that I suspect there are a lot of teams that will be thinking they are one good piece away from contention halfway through the season.
