Kind of. I wondered this myself. But there are three things that are better about this: Ant is 8 years younger than CJ. His annual salary is markedly lower. He still hasn't hit his peak... I think most people would agree that as good as CJ is, he isn't going to get a lot better.
They would have? Nice to know we have someone with such intel into those 3 front offices. Detroit has Cunningham and Ivey. Why would they want Ant?
Another way of looking at this (or maybe just restating your point): how could the Blazers better use this money? A sign and trade? For whom? Let him walk and sign... whom?
i think they asked an answered the question. there is minimal opportunity cost here given the rest of our cap situation and the weak FA market.
They aren't. But Powell is making quite a bit less and everyone was hammering that as a bad deal. Not a bad deal if Ant is getting 4/100 and Brunson is getting 4/110
he’s a rfa, it’s not like he walks immediately if we don’t overpay him. That’s the whole point of RFA. Was OKC really waiting to throw him 130 million?
Where did I ever come close to saying anything close to that? No one else bid. They could have let another team bid, and then match. Doubtful it would have been for as much as they paid. So few teams had that amount of cap space.
why give them a chance to? there was an article by a former blazer front office employee who suggested OKC throw a poison pill deal at him.
I think it remains to be seen that Ant is definitively a better player. He has the upside and likely will meet that. But, lets not try to continue to downplay the player Powell is. He is making substantially less, btw.
I wanted no part of allowing Ant to go out and let some other team st the market for him, with the risk they give him some shit 2/1 deal that has him unrestricted in 2 seasons. No thanks. I've also read plenty of stories about players feeling a little off put by their teams telling them to go find a deal, instead of committing to them. We want to build around him and Dame, why would we tell him go find a deal you like.
he's a starting caliber player with opportunity to grow into more. it's not like had we not paid him, we could have replaced him with a player of his caliber. i don't see the problem with this.
I look at it that we traded CJ and Norm because we wanted to keep Ant. 25 million for Ant is quite a bit cheaper than 50 million-plus whatever you all wanted to pay Ant.
