good post...and the LeVert trade sure didn't help the situation. Or the news that several teams are interested in RoCo
So where did LeBron, Giannis, Durant, Steph, Duncan, even as recent as Ball, Ayton and Ja Morant, come from?
Are you suggesting there are players on their level in this draft or free agents on their level willing to come to Portland?
I forgot I thought it was a team sport. Yes he had good offense game but his team lost by 24 and the last run was when he was on the floor. No it wasn't all his fault I didn't say that did I but overall the clippers defense suck tonight and he was part of that defense.
Did you look at the rest of their roster? It's a dumpster fire. It's worse than ours. Norm is the best active player on that roster right now.
Look at the box. All Clippers starters were between -18 and -30. Norm and RoCo were -3 and -2. The Clippers team was much better when the ex-Blazers played than when they didn't. Don't make disingenuous arguments to try to denigrate players that we were fleeced for.
Chris Bosh is a HOFer. He was the best big man in the league when LeBron made The Decision. It's why people were pissed off so much. LeBron, Wade, and Bosh were 3 of the Top PERs in 09-10.
A team that is not a destination for top FAs can't just punt on the draft. Even in the worst year you have a better chance of getting a good player in the draft than you do signing minimum wage vets.
As before, I'm suggesting there are quality contributors in every Draft.....just have to find them. I believe the comment was about contributors, right?
Then there is this... a bleak but realistic take on the way things look from the outside. I just don't see how that deal could possibly mean that we're trying to get better, now or next season. Maybe Cronin has something up his sleeve and will shock both me and this writer for CBS Sports. Maybe by Thursday afternoon I'll have a rosy disposition about my right now shattered hopes for a title team led or at least co-led by Dame. That's not likely going to be the case though. What's likely is that we see an underwhelming to downright tragic trade involving CJ and maybe one involving Nurk. If we do see those and there is again no way that they were aimed at making us better now or next season then the front office's objective will be clear: get Dame to request a trade and grant that request to kick start a total rebuild around what you get for Dame, Ant and Nas... hopefully it will also include something we get for CJ, Nurk and/or Larry too but I'm not holding my breath. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/...ng-norman-powell-for-nothing-was-a-bad-start/
It seems to me that the Powell-RoCo dump was indicative of a change in direction from Olshey’s three guard lineup that he saddled Chauncey with. Moving Norm’s contract was always going to be difficult. RoCo was clearly not a good fit with Chauncey’s system and was going to be gone for nothing this summer anyway. Winslow isn’t the perfect 3 by any stretch of the imagination, but you could see the value of a bigger, defensive-minded wing in his debut against the Bucks. It was a shock to see two solid starters net so little in return, but I do think that I like the change in direction that the move indicates is coming. I hated the 3 guard lineup.
I agree the Norm starting at SF for 35mpg lineup is not good. The problem is the team still has Dame CJ Ant as their top 3 $ contracts between $20-50 million each all with duplicate skill sets and short comings. We can't play all three of them together either. With Powell cheap contract he could have been the 3rd guard in a rotation with two of them and 5-10mpg sliding to SF, which on the cap also allows a big contract for a forward. Instead we moved Norm, lost a starter for nothing and didn't solve the logjam of short guards. We still need to move one of Dame/CJ/Ant. Now if we got a useful short term or long term asset for Norm perhaps I could see the logic. Instead we got 3 scrubs earning $11 million next season. What the fuck?
