he wants a better team. These moves did nothing to keep him here. What they did was clear a shit load of cap room the year he expires
I think Aldridge was very upset at the end of the season, the team had lost 13 straight games! If you have an all-star approaching 30 on your team in that scenario I'd sure hope he thinks about playing somewhere else. I wouldn't want a player on my team to be content with that amount of losing.
Yeah thats a good strategy; I think we should aim for a 2 year run with Aldridge; but if it doesn't work out leave the cap clean in the following years to allow an accelerated rebuild. The problem with those early McMillian Blazer teams is not just that they were terrible, but they were capped out with Theo Ratliff, Darius Miles, Zach Randolph, Rubean Patterson, Derek Anderson, Damon Stoudamire on massively overpaid contracts.
That's the silliest thing to say. If we are top 5; then that gives us and Aldridge every reason to stick around.
Deal him to improve now? Or deal him to (potentially) save value. Could the Blazers immediately improve by trading Aldridge? Or, would Olshey be relegated to getting some up-and-comers?
You wouldn't see the team improve now that's for sure. What you hope for if you're Neil Olshey is that you get as much value for him before he gets so dissatisfied that he goes public with a trade demand and removes a lot of your bargaining power. I tend to look at the way Utah handled Deron Williams' trade request as a kind of best case scenario in terms of value and PR and Dwight Howard's very public and messy departure from Orlando as the worst. Hopefully if/when it comes to it, we're on the better end of that spectrum.
