OFFICIAL AROUND THE NBA: OCTOBER 2023

Nobody was going to give us a #2 for those guys, either.

We weren't going to get markedly better value out of those guys on those salaries. It just wasn't going to happen, IMO. Getting rid of them was essential, though.

 

Excluding the fact that Jordan has made billions from his Nike deal.

 

We’ll see. I’ve seen predictions that Minnesota will be 2nd in the West this year. People believe Ant Edwards will be MVP level this year. If so, they’re better than the Utah team that got the #1 seed in 2021.

 

Yeah they can not afford to lose Edwards for any extended amount of time. He is so much better than any other wing player on that team. They have depth at center for sure, but the rest of the team does not look that deep to me

 

Assuming season's end. Doubt they can dump Gobert for anything

 

But we did get an asset. It just turned out not to be all that good of one. Doesn't change that he was a recent 1st round pick. And it was an asset to contribute to an eventual rebuild. And we got an asset for the pipe dream retool in Winslow. Just an oft-injured one that, you guessed it!, got injured. But was playing a decent role for us to start the season. So one rebuild asset and one retool asset. Neither worked out. But Covington and Powell weren't either. I'd say the real benefit was just getting out of their deals.

 

NIKE made bunches off Jordan also. I wonder what the numbers are really?

 

Overpaid 15-20 mpg players aren't worth assets that are guaranteed to be good for a rebuild or adding a player Grant's quality.

They are good for trading for gambles on short term contracts. That's what we got for them.

I've not seen a prospective deal for those players that would leave us in a better place than we are now (that weren't also gambles), so it doesn't make sense to waste energy being upset about it.

 

And put Minnesota in the east!

 

Memphis as well.

 

A new Expansion Draft might get a little crazy. Every Franchise gets to drop a couple names into the expansion draft pool. This player is hurting our cap space too much .... bloop... you're a star player on the brand new Vegas Mobsters team!

 

I do not think this is the correct way to look at transactions. The Blazers had a bloated roster without a future. The first step was removing some of the bloat from players that had better prospects. The Blazers at the time had 4 undersized guards on the roster, Dame, CJ, Ant, NP. NP is clearly the one with the lowest overall value for the Blazers (where value is some kind of formula that combines production, trade value and future potential). So, they had to get rid of him. This allowed them to do the next moves, that included CJ + ... for Hart (basically, a better NP) and the ability to trade for a mobile, 2 way forward (Grant), and later hart which basically became KM (a much bigger player which if he develops, probably fits better on a good roster than NP / the skeleton of RoCo).

Add the fact that RoCo did not want to be here, so had to be moved. You can argue that he was worth his contract because the Clippers extended him for the same contract, but I think that this ignores the following facts: 1. He plays better on the Clippers than he did in Portland so maybe worth his contract and 2. The Clippers, if PG and KL are healthy are title contenders, his production is worth it on that team. Portland at the time was a losing team that lost it's #1 player to an injury that no-one if he would recover from. He was clearly not worth keeping for Portland, especially how un-inspired he was playing for Portland.

My point is that I dispute the idea that the move has left the team with nothing to show for it. It had to be done so future moves could be done, that's what the team shows for it. If you have a crumbling castle and need to remove the walls to end with a livable smaller home after the rebuild that hopefully you can add to with time, it does not mean that removing the crumbling walls did not have value.

 

Both new locations would have no state income tax for players.

 

Both easy to get to from Portland.

 

You're "upset" enough to be having this conversation trying to levy blame. Or negative responsibility. Or whatever.

But one of them is overpaid (or was at the time, thanks to the additional year and his age) and the other is only a 15-20mpg player.

These guys didn't have good value. Partially because they were in such a shit situation here in Portland (also not Cronin's fault). From what I can see we weren't going to get anything better than a gamble and cap relief out of them.

Maybe a different gamble would have been better in hindsight? But they had to go.

What other deal should have been done?