Maybe the Blazer big man curse has morphed to a get traded away/get injured curse! Nance and now Norm
Powell is a tad injury prone not big injuries but tends to get nicked up and miss small clusters of games and THIS is why the trade while I will concede they could have gotten a little more is why Norm's value is not as much as some think it is .... Since he came into the league he ALWAYS seems to miss 12 to 15 games or so a year and all you have to do is look at his career stats to see this so while i wish Norm the best the Blazers were forced to resign him cause of the trade NeO did since we gave up Trent. In my opinion Norm is only a 12 to 15m per year player and that is the truth in my humble opinion and while Cronin maybe should have gotten a little more for him the Blazers were kind of forced to sell at least a little cheaper cause NeO screwed the pooch on Norm to begin with and this trade was WAY WAY worse then when NeO traded for Arron Afflalo and it's not even close in my opinion. I will admit I was a tad more in the NeO camp then most but this season as taught me that NeO really was kind of clueless most of the time. He had his moments and if he was a hitter in MLB baseball he might be batting .300 ish and be good but as a GM having that avg made him BAD and starting to see it now after all the fallout.
the injury has nothing to do with the trade. Sorry for Norm though as far as the lottery chase, The Clippers were ahead of both PDX and N.O. before the trade, and have gone 1-3 since. I'm not sure this changes anything although I guess you could say the Cips might have won more once they figured out how to play to Powell's strengths and while it's faddish to trash RoCo, anybody who has paid attention knows he can get hot and win a couple of games by himself. Probably won't, but he still could...theoretically Paul George may return in two or three weeks as well
Cronin is such a visionary that he saw this injury coming, so he made the trade before it happened while he still could.
Looks possible that San Antonio and Sacramento could pass New Orleans. New Orleans strength of schedule is now listed at 4th most difficult. Sacramento at 8th, San Antonio at 15th and Portland way down at 27th.
Now we know why Cronin shot his wad a week before the deadline. He had his own injury deadline to beat.