blaming injuries is part of it but a shitty excuse imho. losers always can blame injuries or refs or the weather or... portland was not good enough. period.
I heard that spewed a lot after the playoffs the previous year against the Pels and look what the team accomplished this year.
I understand and I did point out that GS could be hurt, or break up and they may not be an issue next year.
He does make a couple of good points....there is a strong possibility that we do not re-sign any of our FA's outside of the one we have bird rights for. So we might be forced to stand pat except for a couple cheap vets and a rookie. I would not mind resigning Chief, I just don't want to see him starting anymore. And I do not want to give him a raise. So maybe we lose him too. Collins of course is key. He has to spend hours in the gym every day shooting 3's. He is left open outside and he never hesitates to take them. He went from 31% to 33% and now he needs to make a bigger jump. I think he can do it. He is a bit streaky right now where some months he shoots 20% and other months he hits them at a 40 or even 50% rate. But the biggest reason for standing pat is what we have all discussed last month and that is being in a position at the trade deadline to offer 41 million in expiring contracts to a team wanting to get out of a huge contract. I realize it would take some luck but how often are we in position to take advantage?
Here’s the thing you stupid idiots, if Olshey is actually following the Spurs model, we should prepare ourselves for this exact scenario. He will take someone at 25 and keep him. He will replace Curry with Simons. He will replace Kanter with Collins. He will replace Collins on the second unit with Skal. He will replace Skal with a vet on a minimum contract cough KOQ cough. And finally, for the BIG SPLASH, he will replace Hood with a veteran that will take part, or all of the tax MLE. Someone like Garrett Temple, Hezonja, etc. If we prepare ourselves for this now, we may find a way to accept it then.
I tend to agree, but also think it's a bit of semantics and relativity... "Standing pat" suggests some sort of influential action on behalf of the Blazers, when in reality, they have absolutely zero control over losing Curry, Kanter, and Hood and will be really against it with Aminu and possibly Layman. As much as anything else, this could just be that the term "standing pat" sounds better than "shit out of luck" or "completely fucked" or "absolutely powerless to change..." Important to remember too that these articles aren't being written for the super fans on message boards, but for the less-in-the-know masses, so you could argue that dissecting the semantics of "standing pat" is also somewhat unfair to Tokito...
Its not that his point is good for the Blazers, it is "good" in the fact that it may be true/inevitable that we lose all three. I would focus on keeping Hood if possible and start hm at SF along with Collins at PF. If we can use our expiring contracts now to improve the PF spot we need to do it. But that is a big IF. Worse case scenario is we have to wait until the deadline and pray we get lucky.
Nah, I don't agree with that. If you're arguing that this team made it to the WCF and just needs to have better health and should stand pat that doesn't account for the loss of 3 rotation players. It's not semantics. Standing pat would be retaining at least 2 of the 3 between Curry, Hood, and Kanter and running back the same team with hopes that young players step up and injuries are less impactful.
I think Pinwheel’s take is most on point. Losing three rotation players would hurt, but the Blazers may be able to patch things together until a trade can be made at the deadline using one or more of the expiring contracts. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I think it’s the fallback plan. Olshey doesn’t have much money to work with.
The only reason to stand pat is to clear cap space for next summer and hope Dame and CJ can lure a top of the line FA to Portland since i believe they will have some money to burn after the bad contracts come off the books this is the ONLY reason to do this and maybe to get a lotto pick to use for a trade next summer. Any other reason like let's just let this team meld together and get better naturally is a complete crap answer since Dame and CJ are in a win SOON mode so waiting for next summer might be an ok play that is a gamble but at this point it might be the best play unless a sweet heart of a deal falls into NeO's lap this summer.
I'm not arguing the strategy. I'm saying using "patches" is not the same as standing pat and running the same team back next year.
I probably should have used a different title for the thread, but does any NBA team ever “stand pat” in the sense you’re using it? Even the Warriors added Boogie last year. Everyone wants to get better or drastically worse for a rebuild.
