God damn ESPN doesn't think to highly of our future: 28. Portland Trail Blazers RANK SCORE Players 27 19 Management 29 11 Money 7 70 Market T17 42 Draft 3 84 Overall: 29.0 Blazers star Damian Lillard recently told Yahoo! Sports he's confident the team can translate flexibility into a team capable of contending next season. We're clearly not as optimistic. Lillard and promising youngsters Nassir Little and Anfernee Simons don't yet look like a contending core. We're also understandably uncertain about Portland's management after a season of upheaval. That won't be resolved until the Blazers decide whether to make interim GM Joe Cronin's role permanent or bring in a more experienced executive. -- Pelton (Previous rank: No. 18) https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/st...wer-rankings-predicting-best-worst-franchises The full ranings were: 1. Grizzlies 2. Heat 3. Suns 4. Bucks 5. Celtics 6. Clippers 7. Nuggets 8. Nets 9. Warriors 10. 76ers 11. Raptors 12. Magic 13. Jazz 14. Bulls 15. Timberwolves 16. Hawks 17. Cavaliers 18. Lakers 19. Knicks 20. Spurs 21. Pelicans 22. Hornets 23. Pistons 24. Thunder 25. Pacers 26. Rockets 27. Magic 28. Blazers 29. Wizards 30. Kings ---------------------- OK, my two cents. I think when reading the write up on our team one thing that really dropped us down in the rankings is uncertainty. We don't know where our pick will end up this year, we don't know if we'll have the Pelicans' pick and we don't know who the GM will be for sure. So that's a lot to have up in the air. What I'm saying is that this is a bad time for them to be doing this and a more accurate one, especially for us would be after the draft lottery. We could end up with the our pick being 9th, the Pelicans pick not conveying and who knows what the situation might be with our management.
I have a bad feeling that we'll just be circling back to the first round play-off fodder. Top 16 make the playoffs, so somewhere between 12-18 is likely how I see the future teams.
need to define future...is it just next year...the next 2-3 years...the next 3-4 years? I'll be optimistic and say top-10 because of Dame fuck ESPN
Very few teams of the 30, get too contentd for the championship consistently. It will be nice once we know who the GM will be for next year and beyond. Either way, its back to the basic's, create excitement, draft, player acquisitions, watch cap, fill seats, make playoffs, advance, play for the cship, win the cship
Yep! It’s a sad and difficult reality that blazers fans need to accept. This is why I’ve been wanting to trade dame so the young core around Simons can get started on growing. There is absolutely nothing we can do unless we get Lebron, to make this team a champ contender. Now is the time to get the right mix of young talents around simons. Neil ruined Dame time in Portland, Cronin f-ed up any last hope we had of salvaging what was possible by trading cj, RoCo, Powell, and nance for what’s essentially just hart and Winslow. Trading the pelicans pick for grant will not push us to title contender
I should have posted this with the rest. From the beginning of the article: "The Future Power Rankings are ESPN's projection of the on-court success expected for each team over the next three seasons: 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24. Consider this a convenient way to see the direction in which your favorite team is headed. To determine the Future Power Rankings, we asked ESPN analysts Kevin Pelton, Bobby Marks, Andre' Snellings and Tim Bontemps to rate teams in five categories and rank them relative to the rest of the league. Since the last version of the Future Power Rankings dropped in October, we've played nearly an entire regular season, with some surprising teams emerging as contenders to take home a title in 2022. For an explanation of each category and a full view of how each team did in each category, click here. Each team also received an overall Future Power Rating of 0 to 100, based on how well we expect it to perform over the next three seasons. Here are our latest rankings." ---------- Again just my two cents, they really should have waited until after the draft lottery to do this with so many picks in flux and knowing that there will be coaching and management changes between now and then.
Leaving Nurk and Hart out of the discussion of the Blazers’ future core seems odd. Many other things seem odd. What’s Miami done that ranks them so high? Counting on Butler to carry them anywhere is optimistic. If Zion comes back strong, why aren’t the Pelicans rated higher? What does the Suns’ future look like if Paul goes down or retires? Does he really think the Warriors don’t have another run in them? Why are the Lakers as high as they are? Unless they can unload Westbrook, they’re still the same dysfunctional mess they are right now, with an aging LeBron trying to carry a team that’s always hoping Davis doesn’t get injured again. The Timberwolves always find a way to underachieve.
We opened all this cap space so we could go after Jeramie Grant. Yay! If he’s going to be our splashy acquisition I’m going to puke. If we give up one of our 1st round picks for him I’ll be pissed. Massively overhyped player.
I haven't read one rumor that has us giving up both of the picks for him. I've just seen that we're likely to offer the Pelicans pick for him. I would be cool with that though. He's a really good player when he's not being depended on to be the man and obviously with Dame here and Ant ascending, Grant wouldn't be our go to guy. I think a move here would give him the opportunity to concentrate on defense, making open threes and slashing for dunks. He'd be like a very upgraded version of Chief or Moe.
