Kevin Love didn't really come into the discussion until LeBron went back to Cleveland. They were desperate to put another star next to Kyrie.
Mags, when I've been saying it for 2 years and 17 days it's not hindsight. I've already explained my position...that it's "silly", to use your parlance, for anyone to bank that they can keep an All-Star UFA. Happens less often than winning a blackjack hand hitting on 19. I agreed with giving an extension in 2013, and one in 2014, that max/maxed him out. LMA said no. Olshey then hit on 19 and lost, when he could've had Wiggins or Oladipo/Thompson. And you guys are saying that the trade idea was silly. I'm not saying he should be fired for it, and he might've had his hands tied. Who knows? But it a) wasn't silly to talk about the prospect of him leaving, b) talk about the history of UFA All-Stars in general leaving, c) for damn sure not hindsight. GTFO with that.
Huh? You just posted a link where they offered for him in 2013 draft. They were looking at Aldridge and Love all along, with seemingly putting higher value on Love than Aldridge. Edit: Oops, you didn't post the link, Brian did. Anyways, my point stands, there was A link. Someone posted it.
Except for the odds you're giving about LMA staying, I agree with your analysis. The way I look at it, if Wes's achilles hadn't snapped, LMA would most likely still be a Blazer. What are the odds of that happening? That's the extent of my Monday morning quarterbacking. Given the way that things turned out, I would love to have traded LMA last summer...even though it probably would have given me a coronary at the time.
The silliness is using hindsight as your proof of what you tried selling 3 years ago. Also, there was no guarantee any of these rumors were even true. Using even the Love for Wiggins scenario may have not netted us the same with Aldridge because he was older and Love was still considered a highly touted PF. At Aldridge's level and 4 years younger.
Depressives who call themselves realists also tend to be more accurate in their perception of the world. There is a line between pessimism and realism, however. A pessimist is not necessarily more accurate than an optimist, but the realist will hedge his bets and concede that anything is possible when we are dealing with probabilities instead of absolutes.
A). It was 2 years and 17 days ago. Not 3 years ago. B). It's not "hindsight" if I said it 2 years ago, I said it 1 year ago, I gave reasoning and analysis for doing so, and it turned out that it was sound reasoning. C) LMA is 3 years older than Love, not 4. D) LBJ wanted to get an all-star PF and Wiggins was their easy trade chip b/c LBJ didn't want to play with a rookie. Fine, maybe Bennett and the pick don't get thrown in. E) It seems disingenuous to say that LMA would not have received as much in return as Love b/c Love was younger and had more team control (he didn't), but then to also say that having multiple years of control of Wiggins or Thompson/Oladipo or Len is silly.
I do not think Neil was blind to what the LA situation was since he was not 100% sure of him resigning either. His moves were made with him possibly leaving. Hitting on 19 is pretty accurate with the dealer showing 19. Could easily took the easy route and pushed with a trade. Paul wanted to double up and took the chance by hitting. Let us see how the prospects pan out before giving a final grade.
There's no point arguing with them. It didn't work two years ago and it won't work now, even after we were proven right. We literally predicted exactly what would happen, and yet they still argue.
Oh, come on. You're like the kid on the playground standing there pointing at the coin on the ground and saying, "See, I told you it was going to come up heads, and it did! No point in arguing with morons like you."
Whatever It seemed logical two years ago that he would leave and sign with a Texas team because it's closer to home, his mom is in Dallas, and he grew up loving those teams. Duncan was his idol. Now he gets to go home, be the savior, and win a championship with his idol. Makes sense to me. If you choose to think it was a last second decision, that's up to you.
Wait, so this entire thing is based on you guys wanted to get in on some imaginary trade, then when it didn't happen, you're saying it COULD HAVE happened so you're all right and we're all morons? Do you realize how petty you sound? You're grasping at straws. Like "why didn't we spend RLEC?" straws.
Also, at what point in the future will you guys have finally had enough gloating over your imaginary trade, so that we can all actually talk about the Actual Fucking Blazers without this shit getting mentioned? 2017? 2018? 2020? Let me know, and I'll gladly change my habits accordingly.
You can just pretend we did trade Aldridge, we started our rebuild 2 years ago. The goal of our rebuild was to load up on a bunch of different young assets. 2 years later, in our rebuild we've added CJ McCollum, Aminu, Davis, Henderson, Plumlee, Vonleh, and Harkless. So here we are.
...and Wiggins died in a car crash, but his twin brother still plays for Minnesota. There, all fixed.
Let me ask you this; since Portland seems to be looked upon as Tha NBA equivalent of Siberia, how many future star players will that same type of analysis be true of? Based on that type of thinking, Portland should ALWAYS trade away stars a year before their contracts end because they MIGHT jilt us again. Doesn't seem like a particularly likely route to success to me.
