The super Melo to Portland thread + The Big Blockbuster

May pick up a Melo jersey for the memes. Would be a nice piece of nostalgic memorabilia in a few years.

 

Great trivia question! I had to look a bit. The 2000-01 team also had 20 total.

Kemp-6, Dale Davis-1, Pippen-7, Steve Smith-1, Schrempf-3, Sheed-2 (later got two more). No love for Sabonis....

There may be other years too.

 

Hey! I guess free agents will sign in Portland now! Two all stars this season alone in Pau and Melo!

 

Yo wtf this is crazy.

Add me to the excited group. It can't hurt (much)

 

OMG I love the Big Brother reference!

 

I was saying that all non-guaranteed contracts in the NBA are guaranteed on that date, of course there could be contract clauses that make it guaranteed anytime before that.

My guess is that it's the 7th to give him a chance to clear waivers and see if other teams are interested before the 10th. Hopefully he plays well enough to just stick on the team though.

 

I always forget out of all people Schrempf had to put up with that (totally awesome, if I may add) roster.

 

Well, it should be, but it's another opportunity for Stotts to fuck up.

 

I’ve got a feeling a trade will happen soon!

 

Well, when you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose, as Bob Dylan once put it.

Worst case scenario is really that he's just useful enough for us to make the 8th seed and miss out on the lottery. We weren't going to get a top 3 pick with Dame on our roster anyway, so it's not really much of a downside.

I guess there's also the embarrassment. I don't mean somewhere down the road, I mean this very second. It's hard to view this as anything but an admission by the GM that they fucked up in signing Hezonja and Tolliver. They are acknowledging that the decisions were so bad that they might as well have saved some money and brought in Melo for the vet minimum.

They built no real depth behind Zach, and they had no plan for handling all the big wings in the league other than Nassir Little. It's all just so embarrassing.

That said, I think a major reason Melo was available for so long was because of the shame any GM would feel about going with him. Nobody wanted that stink on them, in much the same way desperation kind of forced the Lakers to give Dwight Howard yet another try.

The Lakers were such a shitshow of poor management for so long that losing their reputation wasn't even part of the equation. Like I said, when you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose. What little shame they had has died away, replaced by a weirdly unfamiliar aura of savvy in spite of themselves. Dwight Howard actually did it. Who knew.

Our GM has vaulted his failings to the NBA headlines with this acquisition, and you know, I'm all for that. A much deserved wounded ego is a small price to pay.

Especially given that there is a best case scenario that's pretty attractive. Portland uses him like we used to use Aldridge in pick and pop situations. Melo accepts whatever role is asked of him. Maybe he becomes a super sub off the bench and just lights up other teams second strings.

Here's Anthony's game log for his 10 games with the Rockets. In 3 of those games he put up 20+ points on 55% shooting. (Not brilliant, but a damned site better than anything Tolliver or Hezonja has given us.) When they cut Melo, the team had just won 3 of 4 games, and he played 20+ minutes in all of them while coming off the bench. You could argue he and D'Antoni were kind of finding a groove before he got kicked off the team (by Harden? I don't really know. But given the rumors of how CP got booted it seems likely.) The Rockets lost 5 of their next 10 games following him getting cut. They finished out the year well, but I'm not 100% that their rocky start really deserves to be pinned on Melo.

I'm not wildly optimistic about this. It does give me something else to watch besides the Lillard/Simons/Little triumvirate, which is nice. It exposes our GM for the ridicule he deserves. And who knows, it's actually possible, maybe not likely but at least possible, that it saves our season.

Tolliver and Hezonja were nothin', so let's roll the dice on this loser.

 

*Terry barging into Neil's office after the Raptors game*

"That does it! Get me Carmelo Anthony! We have to after that SHIT display this Nassir kid just pulled off! That guy CLEARLY doesn't have what it takes."

 

Best case scenario - Dwight Howard in LA

Worst case scenario - Dwight Howard in LA

 

Thank God we get to see this sweet jumper instead of Tolliver's abomination. Might not go in all that much, but it sure looks good.

 

This is gonna help just about every media avenue out there for the Blazers. You were doing great already now even you might be surprised where this goes!

 

Starts like this....

 

You got all that from filling an empty roster spot with a Vet Min non guaranteed contract?
I kind of just figured Pau Gasol isn't healing the way they expected so they decided to go with a cheap scoring PF.