I believe this started with me saying 30 hours into to free agency is premature to draw grand conclusions. I didn't think we were hard capped at this point. Am I wrong? I believe I'm not technically wrong given that we aren't even allowed to sign players yet and I don't believe the Grant trade has happened.
The hard cap rules have been explored in multiple threads. I’m not going to rehash it in here. We decided to use the MLE 30 hours into free agency which essentially hard caps us.
Order of operations doesn't matter, the Blazers have to stay under the hard cap. The only way the Blazers can do other moves or gain flexibility would be to back out of the contract they agreed to give GP2, which I don't believe an NBA team has ever done.
1. Under Cronin, this wasn’t expected to be a one-summer-fix to the roster. Right? 2. Up to and during the draft, he went for it with the Blazers mentioned often in the chatter and picked Sharpe — the definition of aiming high in this draft. 3. Having gotten unlucky with Paul-George-Covid and not getting a 2nd (and late) lottery pick, the MIL ‘25 pick and #36 delivers the best recent, actual-scoring-forward — Jerami Grant. No AWESOME trade made — and the reality of Grant and Sharpe are pending — AND that leaves a high caliber SF yet to get … and an actual back-up BIG (preferably a PF/C). And the team won’t necessarily be “done” in order to contend. 4. Little, Hart, Payton — covering SF and back-up guard minutes. I like all 3 as back-ups. Winslow, Watford, Brown getting back-up Forward minutes. NO, I’m not thrilled about SF or back-up bigs. To suggest that Cronin has “failed” or that this is an “epic disaster” or even a disaster? Not buying it. With Olshey and Stotts gone (and CJ), I like this team better. Since I’m not a fan of Cronin — for or against — it’s not about him or the past. I simply look forward to next season.
Louder for the people in the back! 30 hours of free agency is a bit earlier to be claiming epic disaster due to a lack of moves.
Agreed... So if/when they sign Payton, they are hard capped. July 6th is the first day we could be hard-capped, but it doesn't prevent us for making any moves the rest of the year, correct?
The only big salaries that can be traded are Dame and Hart. Hart makes $12 million, so he can't match salary to most of the starters many fans hoped the Blazers may consider bringing in. If the Blazers weren't hard capped they could explore all sorts of trades right now; such as Eric Bledsoe nonguaranteed $19 million going out in the next week+. It could bring in a starter, bring in John Collins, bring in OG, be part of a package for a Durant trade, etc, etc. Or even be the 3rd team in one of these trades, gaining some assets to help another team get a star. But none of those trades are possible right now because the Blazers are hard capped. The rest of the trade restrictions such as Ant and Nurk are lifted in December, so the Blazers could make a trade then, as long as they take back less salary then they send out. Taking back less salary usually requires giving up more in a trade. So yes the Blazers could make a small number of moves now to improve, they could make a lot more moves in December to improve. But the majority of moves that could have improved the Blazers are not available now and will not be available through the trade deadline due to the hard cap. So odds are for the next 5 and a half months the roster is likely more or less set as is.
Yeah I'm wondering if it might ultimately be a worse move than the Clippers trade. Its will be very hard to judge, because we don't know and will likely never know what trades or other improvements could've been completed if the Blazers weren't hard capped.
Also the Roco trade exception ($6 million) is basically worthless as the team doesn't have that space under the hard cap to bring in salary. I believe that was the rumored way to bring in Thybulle in a trade.
Thybulle could theoretically still happen. His contract is ~$4.3M & we have ~$5M under the hard-cap. The Roco TPE could still be used
Do you agree it's fair to assume that the front office and their support staff are fully aware of the implications of being hard-capped? If we assume yes, you'd have to assume they think this is still the best route to go, which is why they're doing it. Is it possible they've been given a directive they're not allowed to spend more than $155m anyway? This wouldn't be too far fetched given the spending habits the last couple seasons.
The blazers agreed on a deal with payton after knowing durant requested a trade. You would think cronin knows the implication of Yup. Of course they knew the implications.
Clippers trade enabled us to be able to re-sign both Nurkic and Ant. I’ll chalk up CJ’s trade equaling Grant and Payton. We cannot afford Durant. We now need a small deal to get set for an exciting 2022/23 campaign; add a PF/C back-up!
do you suppose Blazer management was aware of the implications of matching Crabbe's offer sheet? do you suppose Blazer management was aware of the implications of giving Evan Turner 4/70? do you suppose Blazer management was aware of the implications of turning down Chris Paul to draft Martell Webster? do you suppose Blazer management was aware of the implications of trading two first round picks to draft Zach Collins? is it possible that Blazer management, at any point, could make a bad decision? I spent about 7 years arguing with people who made that deflecting 'management knows what they're doing' argument to defend olshey's terrible decisions and shut down criticism of those decisions. hard-capping the team for a player like Payton is a very questionable decision. Maybe it will be fine, but maybe it will be a major monkey-wrench. Portland isn't just hard-capped for the first two weeks of July...they will be hard-capped till next July (or maybe till the end of next season in April...not sure). They may or may not be fully aware of all opportunities that are available right now that impact being hard-capped. It's doubtful they are, but they could be. But they sure as hell are not aware of all the opportunities that will open over the next 8 months, and a lot of those opportunities won't be available to a hard-capped team they have already essentially shit-canned their two remaining TPE's by being hard-capped. Those are the first casualties. We don't know if those will be the only ones but it's highly doubtful they are
I think there are logical answers most your examples, even if they were questionable at the time. Let's take the Webster one. The Blazers thought they had their PG of the future on the roster and Webster had the purest shot we'd seen in a long time to go with solid athletism. Did they miss? 100%.Was the logic at the time super crazy? No. I 100% believe front offices can make wrong decisions. What I can't usually put my head around is why they would intentionally put themselves in a horrible situation without having considered the consequences. This is why I'm asking for someone to speculate why they would do this. If the reason is that they know GP2 will ruining all their furture plans, make them worse, upset Dame, and get them fired, I can't imagine that they would pull the trigger. So, I'm not asking you or anyone to explain why the front office is smart for hard capping themselves on Wednesday, I'm asking for some speculation for why they do think that's the best move given the situation. For example, if they have been told ownership is unwilling to spend any more money, is it possible that being hard-capped is meaningless? Just to be clear since this is a different thread than the GP2 signing thread: I don't love the signing if this is all they are doing, it would be a bummer.
Well, that's a 2 way street, right? Who knows if the people they really wanted would be available if they took their sweet time to make up their mind. I think they identified a problem (opposing guard defense), they identified potential solutions and when the opportunity presented itself, they executed. It's as simple as that, because maybe they wait, GP2 takes the 2 years deal (instead of 3) to return to the warriors, some of these guys decide they do not want to come to Portland - and Portland is left with sloppy seconds. As long as this was their real plan, I have no issues with it. Like everything else, it either works or not, but if there is one thing we have seen from this new GM - he has a vision and he is willing to execute it. The same, btw, was true for NeO, the only difference is that NeO was married to his vision 5 years too long. We do not know if this is the case with the new management, yet.
I think there's two ways of looking at it. 1: If you are planning on keeping Dame until he's 40 and you think Dame can still be a superstar at 36, the offseason was fine. We got Sharpe, we kept Dame and Nurk. We got Grant and Payton. We will almost certainly be back in the playoffs again. 2. If you think we have a short window to win while Dame is a top 10 player, and this summer was critical towards taking the first step to contending.... this was a very ho-hum summer so far. While I agree that defense is a major point of need, it’s further down the list because this team does not have the the overall talent to contend.We need Ant and Sharpe to pop if we're going to contend in the next couple years. So we are burning another year of Dames prime to be an also ran. They’re putting a lot of faith in the Dame/Simons/Grant combo. And being hard capped really prevents us from making any significant moves until our free agents can be traded in January.