It’s about more than just binary thinking. Yes we’re not elite now so we aren’t making win now decisions but there has to be a believable plan in place to get there that the fan base can get behind. Neil has fallen completely flat in that regard. His “plan” of overpaying for bad assets regardless has gotten us further from a title than it has helped. So regardless of time frame or likelihood of title contending he has not done a good job of rebuilding. He has done the opposite of what the successful rebuilding gms have done. He has saddled the team with tons of bad debt and dead money and he traded away young players without receiving assets in return. The Neil believers on here really gotta start squaring that by almost any metric outside of a couple draft picks he has not done a great job.
The Olshey apologists are out strong today. I just can’t believe you can look at this roster, the moves made since 2014, the frustration from our franchise PG, the lack of any real direction or plan going forward and think “We’re on track”. It honestly baffles me. Doesn’t matter though because I really think if Olshey doesn’t make some type of deal to obviously improve the team by draft day he’s gone.
If that is what you made of it then you are obviously not going to listen to anything he says. He specifically said he would make moves this summer but this year he got under the tax. There is nothing wrong with that if he follows through with that.
No. Because the only players on the roster anybody wants are the players we're unwilling (rightly!) to trade. This is an abysmal position to be in. If there were even 3 players outside of Dame/CJ/Nurk/Collins that had value, then you could argue that the financials are ideal. But that's not the case - we are almost entirely reliant on Nurk/Collins becoming All-Star-level talents in order for the team to improve.
While some of us decrying the tank-for-picks route some espouse, don’t assume we are also NO apologists. He has had some successes but also many failures. Don’t approve of many of his moves but also don’t know how much is Paul’s doing and NO had to act as directed.
No, it wasn't a rebuild, Olshey refused to say that word, he called it a reload. So now we've taken a step backwards, we've gone from reloading to rebuilding.
And that's it right there - we are worse off today than we were the day LA decided to leave. We are worse off because of the decisions Olshey made, starting with the Nic trade.
Every single trade and UFA is Neil's doing. You can blame Paul for Crabbe, Meyers, and Harkless and I won't argue, but everything else is 100% Neil.
There is a difference between a BW fan, and someone who refuses to spend their hard earned money on a product that is less than acceptable. If Portland were to ever go into full tank mode, I would still be a Blazer fan and be happy if they won a game. Or as Riverman puts it a quarter. But I wouldn't ever drop a penny on the franchise. However I did drop 800$ in December on Blazer merch. Would've never dropped a penny if they were in full tank mode. I don't care if they were gifts or not.
It's never been about binary thinking, Neil has always had a plan. He's said it several times, Get young talented players with upside, have them improve so that they become "assets", make consolidation trade. The plan is clear, but the PLAN DIDN'T WORK (that's on the player and on the coaching staff, I argue in another thread). So, the question is "what to do now?"
I say he made a bad bet, you say he made a bet that was supposed to work but didn’t because the players and coaches didn’t make the bet work out... seems to me like that is just making up excuses for him but what do I know
Not really. He has great footwork on both ends of the floor. I just think people are getting ahead of themselves
The "track" to build a contender is never straight forward. Has Olshey made some blunders, Yes. Is he completely off the rails? I don't believe so. He has, as stated, two more years.
I've been pretty hard on Olshey, especially on his Summer of '16, but I actually have no issue with giving him two more years. I don't think he's covered himself in glory, but he also hasn't been the kind of train wreck that cries out for getting him out of the front office as fast as possible. Philosophically, giving a GM five years to rebuild a team after some of the foundations are cut away (Aldridge leaving, Matthews getting injured) is reasonable.
Is finding a way to sign Derrick Rose to a max contract considered a move? Because that's right up Olsheys avenue.
