Buck, Duck, and pretty much the whole 2000 team were from trades. I would argue that all our best teams have been aided by trades. Even the championship team, we traded Petrie to get Lucas in the ABA dispersal draft. Yes, it was easier back then, but we really only need one key piece now.
As shown above by players not playing by salary (5th in the league) - the Blazers definitely tanked. They just didn't blatantly tank by playing scrubs instead of the young guys they build around.
I think they tanked by playing the young guys and letting the vets rehab as much as possible. That's the extent of how they tanked.
Didn't that get debunked? Win shares were less for those guys compared to others? Ayton less than Clingan for example? Meaning if ww had started Clingan from game 1, we would have won more, not less?
Maybe it lies in the third word of that second line "scrubs". The idea that the minutes Ayton was getting would've gone to Clingan and the minutes Clingan was getting would've gone to Reath, probably would have had us winning less early on. Same can be said for taking Ant and Jerami out of the rotation. I don't know if any of that is realistic. I also don't know if giving our young really good players that much more usage that early in the season would have translated to even more wins down the stretch and turned guys we currently see as scrubs into viable bench rotation players. The fact is we are where we are, we can hope (with good cause) that our front office will make a trade or more and possibly a pick or even more that will make sense because they've been doing well with the actions they have taken. The only worry I have is that they won't take enough action and we might still see anyone, two or all three of Ant, Jerami and Deandre starting at the beginning of next season, again. Fingers crossed that we get the moves that give our team the best shot to contend on the most expedient but realistic timeline.
I was responding to this: "Rebuild towards what? We can’t sign a star. We probably can’t trade for one. Our best chance has always been to draft one." The point was that the 2000 team, which IMO was the best team in the NBA team that year, was for the most part, included players we traded for. So I disagree that our best chance has always been to draft a star.
Gotcha, and you may be right. But I would say drafting has certainly been our best chance since the salary cap curbed Paul Allen's free spending ways. And even before that, though. Most of the guys you'd call our "best player" have been guys we drafted. Drafted Walton, Drexler, Dame, Roy, etc
Agree..time to put butts back in the seats and at the same time watch salaries. The amount a top 2-3 make compared to 8-10 is significant. Maybe for a Flagg it's worth it, but you can draft solid players 8-10 range at much less much less rookie scale.
Dude 20 out of 30 teams every year are in purgatory, it’s where most teams are. Being in a place that is neither heaven nor hell is just being normal. In fact you can just call it that. We’re a normal team right now.
Starting Ayton, Grant and Ant when available is not tanking. It’s negligence on the Conductors part, but not tanking
