I fully expected Scoot to look this bad and Miller this good. When he calls PG13 the goat, he means personally to him. They are a great comparison. Call me optimistic, but I think Scoot will be great as well.
There's a big difference between counting a player out, and not banking on a player. And I do not want the Blazers to bank on Scoot. The blazers should not be looking to trade Simons, at least not until Scoot erupts (the odds of which, I think I below 50%).
Realistically he should be coming off the bench, and I don't think he's gonna want to be paid like a bench player. But sure, if he's making like 18 a year that's fine.
Keeping Simons does nothing but hurt our chances of getting more talent. If Scoot fails we'll need even more talent, so all the more reason to get what we can out of Simons ASAP. If Simons were worth hanging onto he'd do a much better job of improving his teammates than an underachieving rookie.
I think they should decide by the trade deadline of his final year who they are going with, Scoot or Simons. But if Scoot still has a sub .500 TS% it can't be him unless he's an elite level passer/defender.
We've been sucking even with Simons though. Get rid of Grant, he has no place in the future, but Simons might be our long term PG. He's still only 24, the age Damian was in his 3rd year in the league. He can be a Lillard type player for us. We just need to surround him with talent. Scoot on the other hand, he's more likely the next Markelle Fultz.
I'd most likely be fine with Simons next contract if we had a competent GM negotiating extensions and resigning players. Simons on a Norman Powell contract is fine. Simons being resigned to a big CJ level raise would be a disaster. The problem is I have little faith Cronin can do well with these negotiations seeing the overpaid contracts we have handed out to all of Nurk, Ant, Little, Grant, Thybulle. Same concern I have with keeping Ayton here. But thats going to be a consistent problem and issue that prevents the Blazers from building a title contender, so unfortunately it's not a problem that starts and ends with Simons. If I were the Blazers GM I would've looked to trade or walk away from all of these vets - Ant, Grant, Ayton, Timelord, Thybulle. Maybe it could work to keep one this season and eventually resign another, but theres zero logic to have ALL 5 of them.
Nice try, but actually it was Cronin that handed out every single one of them. Olshey was fired in December 2021 Ant signed 2022 Nurk signed 2022 Little signed 2022 Ayton acquired 2023 Grant signed 2023 Thybulle signed 2023 Timelord acquired 2023 Not to say Olshey didn't give out bad contracts too - Turner was the worst, but Meyers and Crabbe were bad. CJ deals weren't great value.
