I need to see more from Ant in terms of what he can do the rest of season before we build around and pay him huge bucks. How many more years do you think it takes OKC & Houston to be legit contenders? IMO, it still a ways off and they dumped a few years ago already. This City having one of the three big time sports, wont be patient enough as the years it took Philly, Clippers, Wolves, and now OKC, Houston, but Im good with whatever direction new GM /coach/owner want to take us.
Yeah every example is going to have differences because theres 100 factors that make an NBA roster and construction unique. The Thunder built a young finals team with 3 MVP's and Serge Ibaka with their own lottery picks in 2007-2009, basically tanking. The 6ers tanking got a crazy amount of great draft picks and talent, although they botched a ton of trades after, yet still are a possible contender. The most comparable team to the future Blazers rebuilding with Dame might actually be the Lakers with Kobe post Achilles. Those Lakers lost tons, had the facade of "trying to win" with Kobe, and acquired Julius Randle, De Angelo Russell, Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance, Ivica Zubac, Alex Caruso, Josh Hart, and Kyle Kuzma. Its actually insane to look at all the young talent those Lakers teams drafted in such a short time, and equally impressive they now don't have a single piece of it.
So I guess your posts are directed at Cronin; that was unclear? You think Cronin made a bad trade to help the tank? I'm not ready to assume that yet; maybe by Thursday we will have a better idea?
All true. Fans in favor of the tank, though, need to look at what happened to all these teams. The Thunder made one trip to the finals and evaporated and now they are a million draft picks and a mess. It took the 76ers years to acquire all that talent and they still aren't a clear favorite in the east. And the Lakers were mired for years and got bailed out by LeBron coming there and even then they have the one title and a couple of subpar years ... and the Blazers, unfortunately, don't seem likely to draw a player of nearly-LeBron status who engineers a move there to bail them out. I guess what I think fans need to realize is that if this is what they want ... if this is what they really want ... be prepared for a half-decade or more of watching really bad basketball and uncompetitive teams. Be very patient. Personally, I'd rather build the way the Spurs and Warriors built and to some extent the Nuggets and Jazz. And before anyone says the Nuggets tanked when they traded Carmelo, yeah, to an extent they did, but the difference was they kept accumulating assets that brought talent into the organization, and they still are doing that.
It's too early to say whether my posts are directed at Cronin or someone directing Cronin, but, whoever it was, the result was a bad trade that I can't see helping the Blazers either compete or tank. To me, it was just an utter waste of resources/assets and I can't see any way, I can't see any subsequent moves, no matter how marvelous they might turn out to be, that he couldn't have accomplished without sending Powell and RoCo out and getting a better return. I said this a couple of days ago: I'm not a GM. Maybe there's some financial angle here that I'm just too obtuse to see that Cronin opened with the Clippers trade that makes the Blazers a better team next year than they've been this year, but that still doesn't explain to me how getting a late first-round pick from the Clippers wasn't included in that trade, at the very least. Whether you are tanking or thinking ahead, that's something you get out of this deal, not what they got.
First no I don't think LeBron bailed out the Lakers. If they had an excellent GM hired instead of Magic, just with the assets they drafted, they could have an exciting young playoff team right now. Instead they got a title, so of course thats the ultimate goal and great, but they had a lot of avenues to build a long term winner with all their good picks. Thats sort of LeBron's style, he pushes his team to trade all its youth to win now then bails to a team full of youth, rinse and repeat. He'll probably leave the Lakers in a year or two. I guess with what this Blazers team started doing Friday I'm to the point where I might mostly check out the next 3-4 years anyways. So the difference of trying to win with Dame, build like the Jazz, or tank like the 6ers doesn't mean much. Maybe I'd prefer to just go young for 5 years and have a chance at real youth instead of this disaster of a road we are headed on now. The Spurs Warriors Nuggets Jazz are great models to follow. Even the Lakers had a lot of picks outside the lottery that were very good. The team has to make smart moves to succeed with that path. The incompetence we are witnessing has me doubting they can execute that. Overall the biggest fear I have is this team is being led by Jody's incompetence, so whatever direction they take will fail.
Are you convinced CJ McCollum is going to be traded before next season starts? I am not. I think the plan is that Simons will not be a starter and we will trade CJ McCollum when his contract only has one of your left on it and Simons has had more experience.
CJ McCollum still has two more years left on his contract after this one and I bet we keep him until Simons proved to be legit or we get a fantastic return on a trade for CJ.
Tonight we are rooting for Knicks Wizards and Thunder. Unfortunately they are playing Heat, Jazz and Warriors.
As for the title of this post, I'd like to point out to the people who think the draft won't help Dame that 2 of the Top 5 picks in 2019 are now All Stars. If it weren't for injuries, there'd probably be 3. I think Dame wouldn't mind waiting 2 years for an All Star youngster by his side.
To try to take my mind off this 2nd debacle, I thought I'd have a little fun with numbers to see just how far we could really tank, from a mathematical standpoint... Cumulatively, the teams below us are 32 games back of us, or put another way -- we'd need those teams to combine for 32 wins, in the right arrangement, to land in the top spot. But really, with the new lotto rules, we only have to be top 3 for equal odds at the top pick -- from that spot, we're only 14 games back. The 7 teams below us have a cumulative 31 games against each other or us to close out the year. If you assume that we don't win again, that's 31 wins we "gain" on the competition. No guarantee it happens in the right arrangement, but 31 isn't an insignificant number, by any means. Further, those 7 teams also play 81 games against teams with less than 30 wins right now (rough approximation of the "middle" of the NBA, conceivably could be considered somewhat winnable games.) Even if those only hit at a 10-12% clip, that's 8-10 more wins. That's also not accounting for random upsets and end-of-season games in which playoff teams rest their players. Not inconceivable that those account for a handful more... Net net, we have to drop 14 games in the right sequence with 31 unsequenced wins guaranteed and, conservatively, another 5-10 (if not more) in the schedule... At this point, I think top 5 is highly likely and top 3 is certainly within reach...
