Bogus! We are quietly doing Philly's lame "process"

Well then I guess it's exciting times for you. Good times.

We could have had Dame as well as Camara, Walker, Banton, Rupert, and Murray. As well as Thybule and Ayton. And Sharpe and Scoot.

We could have traded Ant for a better fit at another position.

Give that team a good coach and see what happens. That sounds like fun...

 

How do you get Camara and Ayton without trading Dame? We needed Grayson Allen to make the contracts work.

We tried to trade Simons at the draft. We have never heard of Simons having much trade value. He’s of the same ilk as Tyler Herro. They’re score first combo guards who don’t play good defense. Those types of players are everywhere.

 

As I understand it the Nurk/Ayton deal was pretty much agreed to. They didn't even know they were getting Allen until we actually did the Dame deal.

But even that is beside the point. You can make those kinds of deals without trading Dame. We've had countless expiring contracts that weren't traded over the years and just expired.

Ant will be traded. We got value out of CJ. We'll get something for Ant. There was too much going on at the draft with Portland. I think Dame's statements made it tougher for Portland to get things done at the draft.

Either way. These kinds of players can be dealt. You don't have to trade a player like Dame to move these kinds of players.

 

To each their own, but....

Where we are at is way better than getting a shit seed in the playoffs to see us have zero chance at contending. Yes, we are losing. Yes, it may take some time. We have assets, young players growing...

I don't get the gloomyness. I was gloomy when we ran the Dame/CJ back court multiple years knowing it couldn't work as a contender.

Excited to see what the offseason brings.

Even when we had Roy and Aldridge we sucked for awhile and people were not gloomy like this.

 

didn't suck for that long...won 32 in their rookie year then drafted Oden. Microfracture summer, which was a downer; but won 41 that season after adding Channing and James Jones. Won 54 games the next season after Oden came back (for a while) and adding Rudy and Batum. There was a lot to be excited about with that team; at least there was before it all fell apart. Blazers only had one losing season with Roy and Aldridge. And only 3 losing seasons in a row.

but there are already 3 losing seasons in a row with this team and 4 of the last 5 seasons have seen losing records. This immediately after playing in the WCF. And the horizon sure seems to look like several more losing seasons. It's going to be a long time before Portland wins 54 games like they did in the 3rd season of Roy-LMA. And unlike back then, Portland doesn't have Paul Allen as a very engaged owner

 

I guess that's true on Roy and Aldridge but man we were terrible before drafting them. Won 21 games the prior season. One draft really shot us out of that shithole. Why can't it happen again?

I don't really consider much of the WCF team because I don't think we had any shot. The last time I felt we could contend was the year Wes went down. I also don't really consider the last 3 years when I consider our future because we had Dame for two of those years. Even if we shut him down, we weren't close to competing for anything. We aren't close to competing right now either, but with plenty of young pieces and assets, there is hope to he had.

If we sucked next year too and we're able to draft Cooper Flagg, I'd run around and fist pump just like I did when we got Oden.

 

Portland wasn't close to competing with Dame because of years of idiot decisions by a stubborn ego-blind GM. The roster was a fucking mess, better suited for a 6'4 & under league than the NBA. More than that is the roster had way too much salary & usage invested in non-all-star role players: CJ-Powell-Nurkic-RoCo-Nance. Dame had about the best numbers in the 2021 playoffs: 34 & 10 on league leading efficiency, but that 5 man cadre of role-playing veterans couldn't do shit to support him

you asked why people were glooming about the Blazer future...well, one of the reasons I'm glooming is because I suspect that Cronin intends to build a bargain-bin-fence-straddling version of a big-3 in the treadmill trio of Ant-Grant-Ayton. That has play-in/late-lottery written all over it, the same as CJ-Powell-Nurkic-RoCo-Nance, only the Blazers won't have a top-10 player to bail them out

but there are other reasons why I'm glooming. The main one being I'm convinced the Blazers have a 'don't-care-much-about-winning-just-keep-the-cash-flowing' owner. That just about guarantees Murphy's Law will apply. Paul Allen had his faults (biggest was hiring and sticking with Olshey) but he was emotionally invested in the Blazers winning & competing. I don't believe Jody and the Vulcans are

I'm still hopeful about Sharpe & Scoot, but my expectations have tempered way down from a year ago. I question whether Sharpe has the needed alpha genes & durability. And Scoot has miles to go before he's even an average starting PG. Walker and Camara show plenty of signs of being decent role players, but the NBA is filled with those

Blazers have 4 draft picks in a draft that is widely panned as being terrible. That seems to be enough of a consensus that those picks likely have about as low value as a draft pick can have. Maybe the Blazers can hit a jackpot and find a hidden gem, but it probably means the best the Blazers can do is add another role-player or two, and they may be the typical '2-years-away-from-being-2-years-away' players. And, speaking of picks, the potential upside picks from the Dame trade are still 6 & 7 drafts away

you mentioned Cooper Flagg, from next year's draft. Yeah, that would be great. But again, where are the indications that Cronin intends to tank again next season? Having Blazer Broadcasting constantly extol Ant's talent and feature him as Portland's star; trading for Ayton & Timelord; signing Grant for 160M; matching the offer for Thybulle. Those are not the moves of a GM intending to stake out a high slot in future lotteries. They are the moves of a GM intending to buy a home in Purgatory.

 

This feels like we're midway through a decade of losing.

I was excited about Nate as Coach. Pritchard as GM. Paul Allen as a governor who, more than anything, wanted to compete and had the financial backing to to make it happen.

I'm currently mostly okay with Cronin, have no confidence in our coach, or our governor, and the city now owns the Moda center and painted the 3pt line wrong in a nationally featured event.

 

painters and drugs are a bad mix

 

A Thompson played well last night.

 

Beast on the boards.

 

So you prefer to evaluate moves later with hindsight, very strange to me but fair enough.

I prefer to evaluate NBA moves when it happens, with the most realistic expectations of the unknown future components. Otherwise you'll never completely grade anything for often a decade or longer.

The value from the Dame trade could ultimately all be nearly worthless. Or we could end up with multiple superstars to contend like the Celtics did in Tatum and Brown from the Nets. Won't know that for probably a decade.

I and the vast majority of Blazers fans were very happy with the return Cronin got at the time. Always made sense to me the Blazers would get real value though, Dame was a legit superstar, many here were arguing he'd get very little in a trade and they were proven wrong.

Now that the franchise was in such a shitty position at that time was from tons of prior poor decisions. But it was a great move to trade Dame then, and might look even better today despite yes two of the players from the haul looking worse after these 7 months.

 

the Blazers cheer squad* on the radio had a freudian slip yesterday. They were comparing Portland with Philadelphia's tanking for Embiid.

While hyper hyping the Blazers rebuild, one of them blurted out "look at Detroit, they're rebuilding". Dwight Jaynes chimed in, "you're right, there you go".

.... Detroit has only nudged .500 ball twice in the last 16 years. It is the worst possible comp to stick on Portland right now.

*is this a better description for radio shows HCP?

 

And Adam Silver looks the other way while an NBA team that’s been in the league over 50 years intentionally loses games for the third year in a row. It’s disgusting. The only reason Blazer fans put up with it is because they’re desperate to become a “winner.” What a joke. The NBA is corrupt, and the Blazers are pathetic, and I refuse to support them any longer.

 

We went to conference finals. Sixers haven’t gone that far.

 

And Ayton and Camara.

 

You forgot about Herro.

 

A .500 team with Dame would not have even made the play-in this year. Check the standings.

 

Problem with this is that Dame demanded a trade.

 

buying Enron stock was a great deal, and just about everybody said so....until the company went bankrupt and investors lost their money. What's the best way to evaluate the value of Enron if you were one of those that lost their money? From initial expectations or from results? It's by hindsight of course. There are always justifications for making bad decisions when it's unknown what the outcome will be. But the only way to evaluate the quality of a decision is from the perspective of time