Most fans enjoy a good trade and that hope that something better will come of it. But despite the anticipation of a trade that will 'move the needle', (for quite some time) Neil Olshey's time in Portland has been rife with bargain basement shopping off the proverbial rack. Want a list of players not acquired via the Draft? This is a 'Who's Who' list of bench players for the most part. JJ Hickson Ronnie Price Sasha Pavlovic Eric Maynor Allen Crabbe Dorell Wright Earl Watson Thomas Robinson Robin Lopez Terrell Harris Mo Williams Chris Kaman Steve Blake Arron Afflalo Alonzo Gee Tim Frazier Mason Plumlee Pat Connaughton Al-Farouq Aminu Ed Davis Luis Montero Maurice Harkless Cliff Alexander Noah Vonleh Brian Roberts Evan Turner Festus Ezeli Shabazz Napier Tim Quartermann http://www.prosportstransactions.co...=yes&BeginDate=2012-6-1&submit=Search&start=0 Working for one of the richest owners in all of sports and now with the 2nd highest payroll in the entire NBA, that bucket of mostly refuse is what there is to show since 2012. Lopez, Plumlee, Aminu and more recently Harkless have been the only legit starters out of that group and most could make a very good argument that 3 of the 4 would not be starters for a quality playoff team. 29 players and only Lopez has been a starter both before and/or after his time in Portland. That is not exactly a resume' one would send out to highlight great accomplishment. Neil comes across as very well spoken and someone who could sell a glass of water to a drowning man but the history doesn't seem to back that up. Is Portland really that tough of a place to get players to come to or is Neil just not as good as many hoped he would be?
Players don't get a say in trade deals, so the attributes of the city aren't a factor. Probably 99% of NBA trades aren't needle movers and those that are usually involve high end players going both directions. The Blazers haven't had many of those types of players lately. They probably had a shot to make such a move with LA, but chose to try to retain him. Bad move, ultimately.
Portland is a very tough place to get a premium free agent. Not very many of them move around and they have so many offers that they can choose based on "soft" factors (like how much they like the area, the glamor of the team, etc) rather than the actual money. So free agency is probably not going to be a factor, no matter who the GM is. As for trades, there's a sense that "good GMs" are capable of ripping other teams off, but that's rarely true. It's rare that there's a truly incompetent front office out there to take advantage of. Most trades need to appear win-win at the time they happen. Obviously, not all trades end up win-win because players disappoint, get injured, etc. But almost all trades are somewhat balanced at the time they happen based on the information at the time. So while fans constantly dream up "lots of my trash for your single superstar" trades, GMs in the real world don't propose them because they know they'll be rejected and don't want to lose credibility around the league. So how do you pull off a "needle-mover" of a trade? By trading needle-movers of your own and hoping the player(s) you get overperform their past and the player(s) you trade don't. If Olshey considers moving Lillard or McCollum, he may be able to pull off a "needle-mover" trade--of course, the needle could end up moving the wrong way for Portland and the right way for the other team. That's the risk you take. "Sweet talk" doesn't turn Vonleh, Crabbe and Leonard into a star. You have to give up big value to get big value. Most GMs aren't willing to trade their own stars unless they know that star is likely to leave for nothing. So "needle-move" trades are rare. Olshey may never do one. Most GMs may never do one.
Enticing top tier free agents to Portland has always been a challenge. The list of free agents we've landed who were even able to come in and be solid to good starters is rather short IMO. Rod Strickland, Kenny Anderson, Brian Grant, Andre Miller, Wes Mathews. I may have missed a couple but my point is the same. None of these players with the exception of Mathews ever played a long or ultimately significant role in Blazer history. As luck goes, we've probably had just as much in some of the ones we didn't land as well. The GM of this franchise is going to need to build this team through identifying high value in the draft and making shrewd if not bold moves/trades. Much like early 90s Drexler teams. Get something solid going that you can sell and then maybe the free agents come. If thought we were going this direction before the offseason now I'm not sure how he plans on fixing it or if he thinks it needs fixing.
playing a better brand of defense would be a needle mover. Whether that comes from a change in the teams mindset on defense OR a trade for a defensive (young) big man, I don't know.
Somewhat in this vein, to me, Olshey's best plan forward would be to convert Lillard or McCollum into a two-way star who may not be quite as great offensively, but still very good offensively and also good/very good on defense (Jimmy Butler stands in as the model acquisition here). Once you have your foundational star tandem (let's say Lillard/Butler), then start working mid-tier free agency and lower-key trades to turn the role-players we have into role-players with better defense. Harkless is a good start. A player like Noel would be nice. Hitting on a draft pick to get a good three-and-D player could round things out nicely. A mix of offensive and defensive role-players on the bench would be helpful. None of these things are impossible or even historically unusual. It'll just take making quite a few good moves with few missteps over the next couple of years.
The only trades I questioned when made were overpaying Denver for the Dorell rental, and if we waited too long to trade Batum. The one FA we let get away without making an offer (at least that was made public) was ROLO. He would have fit in perfectly with this roster. I miss ROLO, and do not understand why we let him get away, for nothing. Going forward, our best option is to get lucky in the deep draft. We have two first round picks and Houston’s second. PA needs to hire a regiment of scouts to find a needle mover, or two, in this draft. Guess I like to look forward, not backwards.
Even if SAC offers as Cousins for Turner and draft picks we'll have to decline it because Paul Allen is still traumatized.
I think Neil's performance has been a mixed bag. His drafting is pretty good (Lillard, McCollum, Crabbe). Trading Barton for Afflalo wasn't great. He found some decent value players like Plumlee, Aminu, Davis, etc. but he also handed out some very questionable contracts this last summer for bench players like Turner and Crabbe and Meyers. Win some, you lose some I guess. But where it gets hard to defend him, is situations like losing Aldridge for nothing; especially when there were warning signs he was a flight risk as much as a year prior. Maybe his hands were tied by Allen, or maybe the organization got bamboozled by Aldridge talking about being "the greatest Blazer ever!"? Who knows? Whatever the reasons, the buck stops with him and he gets paid to be a couple of steps ahead of looming problems and the fact is, he let an All-star player walk out of the door for zero compensation. The other part of Olshey's tenure that baffles me is the organization pursuing what looks like a very tenuous path to building a contender -- eschewing the draft after losing 4 of 5 starters two years ago and instead trying to rebuild a small market team with cast-offs and retreads that don't exactly fit together. Sure that team surprised us all (and probably Olshey too) by getting to the playoffs, but it sure felt like they were punching above their weight and had a very limited ceiling (as evidenced by the major regression we've seen so far this year). Maybe this is all part of some long-game that I don't see yet, and he'll redeem himself with a trade that balances this mismatched roster in the next couple of months? If he doesn't then there's plenty of people in the world that want one of the 30 GM jobs in the league and I'm guessing we'll have a new person to criticize and second-guess in a year or so.
