He was hyping an asset, that's not uncommon. There's nothing wrong with that, and I think you're just mad because KP couldn't make a miracle trade happen that everyone wanted. It sounds like it's more on you than it is on him. Holding that against him is ridiculous imo, especially when he probably made the best move which was no trade at all. I trust that KP will never allow himself to get hosed, which is just one of many reasons why he's a good GM.
No, I'm not confusing them, but I am extrapolating a bit as to what KP and his staff may have been looking at when they decided not to make a move using RLEC. The luxury tax threshold was just under $70M this year. The Blazers are at $59M with their salary right now. If they had used RLEC for a max-level player, say at around $12M, they wouldn't have had any cap space to use to get Miller, so that would have put them at around $64M, under the threshold for this season but totally screwed luxury tax-wise for the coming years after Roy's and Aldridge's raises kick in next year and even worse when Oden gets a new deal the following year.
I left one other piece out. I assumed that if the Blazers didn't get Miller with cap space, they would still have needed to get another PG and probably would have used the MLE to do it, which would have put them right around the luxury tax threshold. Still, what I should have said in my original post was that the larger issue with using RLEC was luxury tax issues starting next season. The Blazers did have to pay luxury tax last season after Miles' contract went back on their books.
You say that Pritchard had his choice of good players Then you say it would have taken a miracle to get one. As for the hype defense, all I read at the time was that NBA experts agreed that the asset was true gold, not just Pritchard's hype. NBA GMs were quoted as saying they expected Portland's trade to be the big one of the midseason deadline. Not one hint that it was fake or overrated, as revisionist history now claims. RLEC wasn't just hype, it was gold. Insurance would have paid the salary. Since the remaining salary was more than $3M, the effect was the same as if Pritchard could break the NBA rule and include more than $3M cash. Then why did he try up to the last minute to make a trade. Quick reported he was exhausted on the February deadline day afternoon and shocked that no one had caved in to his demands of a giveaway. No, he couldn't make an EASY trade happen. He blew it. If the best move is doing nothing, he sure is good at that. After failing to negotiate successfully with motivated seller GMs at the midseason deadline (he makes enemies when he tries), he went through 2 more summer failures (in which he avoided negotiating with GMs by just throwing big money at players, and was still outmaneuvered by GMs) before being forced to sign Andre Miller. (Only Allen's generosity made him feel "forced"--any other GM would have been "forced" by his owner NOT to spend every penny available, and would have wound up with nothing). Miller was at the bottom of the list of the so-called expert talent evaluator, the backup backup backup choice. You somehow construe Pritchard's random, stumbling arrival at a decent player as praise for him as if he planned it that way. As his fans say, KP is a genius!
I hope you don't get offended but a posting on this board is not proof of anything. I was asking for the original news source so I could decide if the idea had merit. For example, if it came from another message board then it has no merit. If it came from espn, then it has some merit. If it was hoopsworld or realgm, see message boards.
In the final analysis, without Nate McMillan's stubborn insistence nobody in Blazer's management would have strongly considered going after Brandon Roy. It was Nate who first pushed for getting Roy, and I remember reading before that draft several articles which quoted Nate speaking about his personal knowledge of Brandon's game and of his character and leadership abilities.
I don't like people who get offended. Sometimes my writing may sound that way, but I never stand on my rights, because I don't think people really have any rights. I think all we have is reasoning, and if your reasoning fails, then you deserve to lose the argument. So not having rights means I'm never offended. (Heh heh. Re-reading that, I think I threw you for a loop there. You weren't expecting that.) Anyway, the point of referring you to the 2 posts was that they answer your request for a link--the posts say that we have none. Sly didn't give his source (I asked for it and he didn't answer, which is what I expected--he knows some insider) and I said that I had long since forgotten where I read it (it was somewhere in the media coverage right after the LaFrentz fiasco, and a message board linked to it, and I read the article). So I had already answered your question, and Sly had already declined to answer your question. That's why I referred you to the 2 posts. In summary: Q: What's your source? A: Don't have a link, but 2 posters on this board heard it from independent sources. Can't prove it, but those 2 posters are sure of it, even if they can't convince others.
Nate and Brandon is a marriage from heaven meant to be, and apparently McMillan recognized early on that they were made for each other. Mwaahhh !! I like an Action Jackson type of GM. More moves, please.
