Call me crazy, but i would experiment with lineups of both Hoard,Little and maybe even Brown together with Lillard and CJ. Those guys are raw, but it seems like they play with a lot of energy.
Yet another player the blazers organization and fans stabbed in the back. He played like 5 straight years for us without missing a game and we immediately dumped his ass upon his first injury.
I don't think not offering a max contract after a complete achilles tear really qualifies as "dumping his ass".
Perhaps you should maybe dig a little deeper into the story. Portland did not “stab him in the back”. He left because he wanted to be “the man” and that wasn’t going to happen in Portland. He had a real attitude problem at the end and my impression was that there weren’t a whole lot of people in the organization who were sorry to see him go. His time was up. Dallas came along and gave him an offer that would have been over the top even if he had been healthy. Paying a guy coming off a torn Achilles that kind of money was foolish....and we were smart. Your revisionist history makes for a nice story though.....that said, we DO need a similar type of player......with less ego.....
Dallas paid him well but wasn't it only like 17M a year? Certainly, the Blazers weren't going to pay him that much. They could have at least called the man and thanked him for his services. Since by all accounts he was forced into playing the role of officiator between Dame and LMA up until he got hurt.
yes bc there are so many passionate NBA players who are elite leaders, defenders, and 3P shooters that played through injuries without missing a single game for years, “without ego,” laying around. He never conditioned playing for the blazers on him receiving a max contract. Dallas took him after we ended negotiations without ever seriously trying to resign him - bc they had made up their minds to rebuild. You are the one revising history.
In 2015, the $70M he signed for in Dallas was the 4-year max for a player with 7 or fewer years of service. Also recall that Sacramento offered him a max deal, and he rejected them to initially sign for less in Dallas (his deal was increased after Deandre spurned the Mavs). The Blazers knew going into free agency that he was going to be offered max or near-max deals, and there was no way they were going to offer him the same. Do you honestly think that Wes would have taken $30M less to stay in Portland? Because I can't imagine the Blazers would have offered him any more than $10M/year to stay, especially with a top-10 pick at his position waiting in the wings.
Not sure how that prohibits the Blazers from giving him a 2 minute phone call though. They basically shunned him cause he was going to get paid. I realize they werent gonna match, but a player that worked that hard for your organization should at least get a bit of respect. I forgot that, that was the max for him back then though.
this is a non-sequitir. The blazers did not make ANY offer. They immediately decided to rebuild the team. Wes himself said he was insulted by their lack of interest. and yes he likely would have taken considerably less than the max to stay here, but it never got there bc the blazers showed NO interest in resigning him at all. you backtracked from “well they couldn’t offer him the max” to “they couldn’t give him more than $10 million”.
Nope. I never said they "couldn't" offer him the max. I said they didn't. Because they were never going to. Because they knew the severity of his achilles tear and knew it would not have been wise to offer him what it would have taken to keep him. How many times have you heard athletes talk about how "insulting" a low-ball offer was? The Blazers were in a no-win situation. Insult him by offering too little, insult him by not making an offer at all, or hamstring the franchise by offering "enough". They chose #2. I get it.
you implied that the only way we could have kept him is with a max contract. That is blatantly false. now you’re backtracking to something much more qualified, that we never even made him an offer bc we didn’t think his injury was worth what he’d done for our team, which shows that I was right when I said:
Again, not backtracking. I've been very consistent. We knew he was getting a max. We knew we weren't going to give him one. IMO, that's not "dumping his ass". That's accepting reality.
Barkley's analysis is brilliant. The Blazers are too guard/jump shot oriented and don't have enough interior scoring, so break up the team. Never mind, or even mention, that they have two guys in suits (Nurk & Collins) who are pretty good at interior scoring that are likely to be back before the end of the season. If he doesn't think that those two guys are enough and a trade is still needed, fine, but at least mention them and say why they're not the right guys. None of the other guys on the panel said anything about Nurk or Collins either, nor did Chris Webber. Lazy, sloppy commentary at best.
he literally pronounces Nurk’s name as “nur-chick”. He has no idea what he’s talking about most of the time lol. He only follows the favorites.
1) you’re assuming the blazers couldn’t have got him for significantly cheaper 2) you’re assuming Matthews would have been just as bad on the blazers - a team he had years of chemistry with- as he was on the mavs, which is not likely 3) his leadership and other qualities are what we miss even more than his skill set. 4) he’s actually playing well right now
I'm not assuming shit. I don't want a guy coming off an achilles tear to be an important part of the team.
that’s not what we’re talking about. you guys keen making a false dichotomy that it was either give him the max or not. That’s not what happened. We didn’t entertain resigning him at all, in any way, whatsoever. That’s the epitome of “dumping” a player who poured his heart and soul into your organization. I find it amazing people don’t get how bad of a look this was. if the numbers didn’t work for his expected value post-injury, then fine. Make an offer and move on. What we did was shameful.
