okay, well acquired players on contracts is not the same as handing them out. But i was wrong. I thought Olshey did the little, nurk and ant contracts.
The only player on this roster from Olshey is Ant... and Cronin resigned him to his current contract. That was the case last summer too, so its been two seasons since we had an Olshey acquisition on the team. People can stop using Olshey as an excuse for any of the Blazers current roster issues, its all Cronin. Well I guess we don't know how much is meddling from Vulcan/Bert/Jody/etc, but its certainly not been Olshey for quite a while.
Loving an instant drive through life? How many teams flip complete rosters in two years. If Joe said he was done id be concerned but as of now we have the most balanced roster we've had in years. The issue isn't the roster as much as it is fans unreal expectations regarding how quickly he can move pcs on the chess board. If we are headed into next year with the same roster, id be concerned. Until then, ill have patience to allow him to try to find the best value aNd not just sell cheap to gain half a season of this team without them. Half a season of Grant and Ant on this team is not affecting the long term future growth of the youngs. And i believe anyone using that as an excuse is digging hard to try to find something to complain about. And to say they will hurt our tanking chances this year… ill just refer those people to last year where we got the three pick in spite of those players on the roster. So we can absolutely still get a top three pick with them on the roster. We just did it.
Simons isn't good enough to be our long-term point guard. He has no place with his team. He doesn't make this team better except against the dredges of the league. And we need to lose all the games we can have against those teams right now. Scoot is already about as good at making his teammates better as Simons. There's no way he won't be much better in a year or two. Scoop will probably never be as good of a scoring guard as Simons. But he will almost certainly be a better defender and better distributor. If that's good enough to be our championship point guard of the future or not, I don't know. But I know for a fact 100% that Simons is not. Nobody makes that leap after 7 years in the league.
What we did last year by faking injuries is not how this should be done. I don't like it one bit. Trade those guys.
The cost of retaining star/potential stars in PDX will be higher than other markets for the most part. We all pay more to live here.
Yeah I don't mind the losing. But I want a roster of young players that are trying hard to win the whole season. They most likely won't win, thats fine, the consolation prize is a pick. But this starting the year with mediocre vets and flip to fake injuries after a few months is way worse to try and root for. We should have followed the Thunder and Rockets rebuilding strategies. We didn't see them hold on to overpaid vets at the start of their rebuilds. We already have been losing for more seasons than either of those franchises did. The Thunder had two bad years of heavy losses - we are on our 4th.
Stars and potential stars all get paid max contracts so the costs to NBA teams is the same. The problem is the Blazers paying mediocre veterans like they are stars, when they're not.
That is your assumption. I doubt we faked any injuries. Though i am pretty sure we let those injuries heal extra extra long. But to say we faked injuries? Maybe we faked the healing timeline… and yes that can be done again(not my preference) But either way. Those guys on the roster for half a season will not have a major impact on long term plans. And my point in this is not discussing those players. Is how some people blame joe for the current roster. Whats to blame currently? He was forced to trade our superstar Nd got about as good value out of him as we could have, as we see the dust settle. that was after signing grant to try to appease the superstar, which everyone wanted him to do… make Dame happy. He signed little and nurk and then Used them in the trade with Dame so those contracts being complained Bout worked out well in the end. So we now have Ants contract which was an over pay but also paying on potential, that, unfortunately will likely nOt come to fruition. But gms make those gambles all the time. And in a year he is an expiring, so his contract has value. Point is. Those down on Cronin, I believe are down on him wrongfully so.
Given the salary floor the return from that trade has to be other high salary players, it's the CBA. There's no way around it in this version of the NBA. Until the new players prove they are worth the big salary, you have to navigate the big salary players carefully, between giving them play time to retain their trade value and keep them off to improve the pingpong balls odds. It's not a simple task, unfortunately.
I'm not placing any blame. I just don't like that we have all of these middling vets who can't help in the long term. We should have moved off of them by now. I hope we do it soon.
Simons is a capable NBA level PG as a passer, he's every bit as good as Damian in that category. Scoot has shown above average abilities in that category already, but he was so abysmal on both ends of the floor, he wouldn't even be in the rotation on most teams. Simons can be piece on a good team. Heck, we almost won a championship with Damon Stoudamire as PG. And Simons is a lot better than him.
Yeah, good point. But certainly these guys are good enough that they could be traded for literal busts, right? Couldn't we just give some shitty players we don't intend to play big 1 year contracts? This seems like a solvable problem.
You make it sounds like the Blazers were way under the salary floor recently? We were in the LUXURY TAX at the start of the summer... and had to send out a draft pick that could be as high as #2 overall in the Deni trade to get salary relief in the Brogdon deal. There certainly has been a real talent cost to the Blazers for giving out some of the stupid contracts they have done. Let's worry about meeting the salary floor when were even remotely close to that situation many years from now. Until then, getting players on contracts that have positive value rather than being overpaid with negative value should be an aim of the GM and management.
Some would say the reason we didn't is because Stoudamire was the PG. As Pippen liked to say: HE was the PG. If Dunleavy had started Detlef Schrempf or Greg Anthony instead of Stoudamire and just had Pippen run the plays...
Simons is not better than Stoudamire. And he's not as good at anything as Lillard. We will never again have the advantages that we had when we built the team with Stoudamire. We don't have the financial commitment and it's much harder to do now, even if we did have the financial commitment.
Being below the salary floor isn't a "Problem". It would be a benefit, and we could use that space to take on dead salary for a first round pick like the Spurs did this summer and many teams have done before. Wasting that space on overpaid mediocre veterans is just a poor strategic path to build talent on a rebuiling team.
Call it whatever you want, but trotting out those lineups full of GLeague scrubs as we have done for many months all of the last 3 years is a horrible way to watch my favorite NBA team.
