In Neil I Trust I believe he's doing everything he can to get the guys he and Stotts want. Like a kid on Christmas, you don't always get all the presents on your wish list.
I concur. The Blazers have never signed a big time free agent. They've had a goodly amount of success signing lower profile free agents that really fit our needs/system. Every now and then they're able to take a couple of those middle of the road free agents and package them up in a consolidation trade and take the team to the next level. Sort of seems to me that should be the plan for a team like ours that is simply unattractive to free agents.
In a world with SuperFriends, with whatever the hell GSW is about to become, with SAS being SAS, with LeBron not on our team... Our shot for glory comes with being the mid-2000's Pistons. Take a collection of good players who know their role and roll the dice against the SuperTeams. Those Pistons got to the conference Finals 6 years in a row, in a conference with Wade/Shaq, LeBron, the Big Three Celtics and ended up in the Finals beating the L*kers and barely losing to prime Duncan/Ginobili/Parker. The bones are here for a good team, especially with Dame, CJ and some of the D/rebounding role players like Aminu and Davis (hm, who Neil signed last year, interesting). This year he picked up another piece in Turner who increases the overall talent level of the roster. Yeah, we still need that 'Sheed trade to put us into the stratosphere, but sitting where we are today is markedly better than most could have hoped on July 5, 2015 after LMA left and Aminu was Olshey's 12:01 choice. I like the premise of this thread. It doesn't matter what the likes of Bouma Ndiaye say, or even what comes up in a twitter feed. It's interesting to look at this process from the perspective of a guy who is about as plugged in as we, the fans, could ever hope to be, and opine on that. For those calling for NO to be fired: which GM not named Danny Ainge, Pat Riley or Bob Myers got their FA targets and proved their worth to be our GM? I mean, I guess if you guys wanted to go back to Rich Cho I'd be down for that--he got a max player to sign with him. DAL super-scored with Harrison Barnes for the max, Deron Williams and trading for Bogut, so I guess that pretty much means Championship. Who else? You want to give up RFAs to give Mahinmi 64M like Ernie Grunfeld (who also, come to think of it, got Brad Beal to accept 100+M and Andrew Nicholson 4/26M). Daryl Morey got Eric Gordon for 4/53 and Ryan Anderson for 10M more than we gave Turner. Mitch Kupchak scored --nevermind, stop laughing. See what I mean? Sure, NO, resign tomorrow. But who in blazes (pun intended) do you expect to get to replace him, if "signing awesome free agents" is your hiring criterion? Perhaps we should look at the aggregate, see a bunch of guys that fit together, a couple of misses when he swung for the fence on the first pitch, but even then NO choked up with two strikes and stroked a line drive to the gap that's at least a single and maybe end up as a double if it works out well. I also am concerned with the who he's going after, but to scream for resignations after we "missed" on #allthefreeagents seems counterintuitive.
