Milwaukee's pick and Portland's 2028 first. If the Blazers could work out a deal with Chicago to lift protections that could more of their own firsts' to trade
I would love this because the only idea dumber than trading for Jerami Grant, is trading for DeAndre Ayton. Brain. Dead.
we effectively can't trade a future first until that CHI pick conveys, or we provide them some sorta compensation to change protections. Minor issue, but I'm sorta glad it's there to prevent Cronin from over-committing.
This is annoying and concerning… Cronin proved that he is dumb enough to trade a top-10 pick for Grant.
Yeah... I don't see why we're interested in Ayton. Nurk is one of two folks on our team that are actually dependable and proven starters. Giving up assets and/or a lot of money to (maybe?!?) upgrade over Nurk doesn't make sense to me. If Dame were 10 years younger, then it would make sense, but part of Ayton's allure is his youth, and that's not relevant given the current Cronin/Dame timeline.
I don't think you can assign the term dependable to a player that misses like half of the games since he's been here. The best ability is availability, as they say. On top of that he isn't dependable when it comes to finishing in the paint when he is healthy. He isn't really dependable to hold onto the ball either, he has way too many turnovers for a post player and doesn't have enough assists to justify them. I'm hoping that Chauncey can finally help Nurk pull his head out of his ass, so he'll stop trying to do things he's not capable of. I will say that dependable is a great adjective for him when he's playing on the defensive end. Don't get me wrong I like Nurk and I'm not against keeping him on a reasonable deal. At the same time Ayton isn't (maybe?!?) an upgrade over Nurk, he's a very obvious upgrade but I don't know what he'd cost our team. If getting him means giving up Hart and any chance of adding any other starting quality players to what we currently have then the upgrade isn't worth enough to justify the cost.
I voted "other" as in....trade who or what for Jeremy Grant? As it is I think that wink wink deal was done before we knew we had a 7 pick....I think it'll be Bledsoe and a young project like Johnson though ...not the 7 pick which I think we'll use in another trade for another vet wing plus the Bucks 2025 pick....Joe said he wanted to win soon and get bigger vets and two way players...now let's see him do that..I know players come to Portland and get better more often than not. I think Grant will play better with Nurk and Dame and Hart than he does in Detroit. I'm really hoping Joe succeeds this summer and puts us in a position to win 50 games and make some noise. Winning fixes everything and we've got some assets now.
Not that your criticisms of Nurk are wrong, but I look at this more as the ability of the team to best upgrade positions and the cost to do it. By default Nurk is possibly the second best player on the team, and the only quality rotational player along with the guards of Dame/Hart/Simons. So the Blazers need to add a mix of maybe 4 or so rotational players including 2 competent starting forwards to have any chance to win. Going from a replacement level player to above average at another position makes more sense to improve the team. That should have a lower cost and larger benefit than the small upgrade from a proven (Nurk) to slightly superior starter (Ayton) at a huge cost. If the Blazers do spend a bunch of cap space and other assets to add Ayton, they will still need starting forwards, but then would not have cap space nor other assets to go get them. So in a sense its a comparison of having starting forwards & Nurk traded for Ayton. Does a Dame, Ayton, Simons, Hart roster filled out with scrubs get this team in a better position to win? I'd say most certainly not. Although sadly either road with Nurk or with Ayton appears likely to fail.
Grant is an inefficient volume scorer on one of the worst teams in the league - an absolute black hole on offense. Again - FUCK NO
Being on one of the worst teams in the league tends to lead to a "black hole" description for a lot of players. But once they move to a different team with vets, it often changes. I am not completely sold on him for various reasons, but being a black hole on a shitty team is not one of them. I want to keep #7 unless we trade it for someone better than Grant. But I still want to add Grant too.
Forget that he’s overrated for a second - why he isn’t worth a first rounder: He’s a FA next summer - unrestricted
