Chris Haynes on what Portland did at the deadline

You know he's probably the most connected guy out there to Dame/Blazers. Had a big segment on his deadline recap pod about what we did.



- Idea is to have a revamped team for NEXT SEASON.
- Team was not happy about the Simmons-Harden trade because THAT was the play for the summer. Wanted to use capspace and picks to try to land him, and multiple sources confirmed this.
- Dame is in on this and on board but he doesn't want this to be a tank job next season.
- Dame likes Ingles who could thrive in Portland if he gets past the injury.
- Is Dame being told the truth about pivoting into a good team soon? Portland can go on a full rebuild now with their chest of draft picks, and ownership could change.
- Capspace means nothing for Portland, and there's not any star level players in FA anyway.
- Don't discount Chauncey's influence on the FO, and he's always thinks more like a GM type than a coach, but he's going to be a good coach: want to bring in guys who are long, tough who have high BBIQ.
- Not gonna go after FAs, but guys with existing deals who fit Chauncey's vision.
- West is still gonna be open next year so climbing up quickly won't be THAT difficult. Unfortunately, the deals Portland made improved LAC and NOP .
- Portland's moves were made out of desperation to remove any and all contracts that Olshey had made and teams knew of this, and didn't give back as many assets in return as many were hoping.
- Portland was also looking at Dorian Finney-Smith before he got signed.
- They like Jerami Grant, and he's still going to be there in the summer.

 

Thanks for posting and the summary.

 

Very disappointing to me this front office thought they had a realistic chance of a Simmons with cap space pipe dream and planned for such.

First off they would need to push even more assets in to get Harris contract to a 3rd team. Secondly once Brooklyn saw this they would just trump Portland's offer and deal with Philly directly. No way Morey would give Cronin exclusive negotiations with this. Morey tries to extract every bit of value he can.

That the Blazers saw this as anything but a desperate long shot and planned for it shows they don't have a realistic vision of how to build an NBA roster. I expected as much after the terrible Clippers trade.

 

i wouldn't completely rule out the idea of Brooklyn trading Simmons this summer, fwiw.

 

For what players, Ingels and Bledsoe? We can't trade them Simons or Nurk since they are a tax team, tax teams can't acquire sign and trade players.

We don't even have a CJ/Roco/Norm to match salary and give them win now vets. The Nets won't want cap space since they are way in the tax, they will want players to win.

I guess Hart is the one guy we can send them, and draft picks. That doesn't sound very promising, even if the Simmons sage in Brooklyn is bumpy.

 

Well Maaybe, they should have held out longer before blowing their load.

 

To summarize, it appears that we had our sights on three guys: Simmons/Grant/Finney-Smith.

And that we lost out on all three in one day doesn't inspire confidence in our FO.

The saving grace is that these are at least the kinda guys that we SHOULD be going after. Long wing defenders.

 

And finally, if Cronin hadn't blew his wad the week before the draft to finalize trades they would have KNOWN SIMMONS WAS TRADED.

Thats why you don't make this stupid Clippers trade a week prior to the deadline. He would've known that Simmons wasn't an option and taken the deals that made sense to build this roster long term with what we now know.

Instead Cronin took shit returns to clear salary cap space to acquire Simmons here, then days later that plan ended.

This and the press conference show me Cronin is totally over his head and we need a real GM ASAP. The shitty thing is we can't undo the damage Cronin has done. We lost those assets for shit returns and won't ever recover that value.

 

We need a professional running the team this summer. Ideally need to make the hire before the lotto before Cronin gets on the phone again.

 

That explains why they got Didi instead of Hayes

 

Exactly. We might have been able to bring in Grant and another good starter to build a winning team around Dame. Probably still would've needed a lucky break somewhere to become a contender, but it would've been realistic.

Instead this team has no realistic shot to contend around Dame, and will need to move on to full rebuild.

Ultimately this falls on Jody and the Vulcans for giving sell low Joe this complete control when he isn't competent. I hope we get a new owner ASAP.

 

Making that clippers trade look worse and worse by the day. Cronin got played like a fiddle, seems like the Clippers convinced him to do that trade on the sell that they were helping us get under the tax so we could get Simmons? Am I understanding this correct? If so that hilariously bad, how could our GM be so naive?

 

Agree

 

There is no way Cronin is surprised about the nets/6ers deal... No way I believe that.

 

i agree; but there’s no way this happens. First opportunity to replace Cronin is midway through next season if we fall short of expectations. Even then, he may get the full year next year and changes won’t happen until the ‘23 summer.

 

I do think that Chauncey's has huge influence on the FO, and Dame is totally involved.

 

First thing to remember is that it is Olshey's fault that they were in a desperate situation.

 

Well that's disappointing.

I'm okay that we took a swing (taking a swing, actually) but I'll never be okay with that norm/RoCo trade ever.