Blazers and the WNBA

Just finished that article and was on my way to post it here. Was pretty interesting and sounds like Joe is a great GM when it comes to training and helping his staff grow. I hope they all succeed in helping the Blazers improve.

twobullz said:

Just finished that article and was on my way to post it here. Was pretty interesting and sounds like Joe is a great GM when it comes to training and helping his staff grow. I hope they all succeed in helping the Blazers improve.

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I think Joe actually seems like someone that understands that there are no quick fixes for the problems he inherited.

There is a lot of calls for Joe's head for being an incompetent GM, but I think a lot of these calls are from people that have never been in management positions and expects things to change immediatly. I honestly think Joe seems like he understands that to be successful you have to do a continuous job of improving and that it takes time. All his moves seem to be very reasonable with this in mind.

Great read and a sign of good faith from the front office...we also have a female owner which is rare in sports. I like Joe Cronin a lot as GM.

andalusian said:

I think Joe actually seems like someone that understands that there are no quick fixes for the problems he inherited.

There is a lot of calls for Joe's head for being an incompetent GM, but I think a lot of these calls are from people that have never been in management positions and expects things to change immediatly. I honestly think Joe seems like he understands that to be successful you have to do a continuous job of improving and that it takes time. All his moves seem to be very reasonable with this in mind.

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hasty, quick changes rarely have a positive output unless its actually putting out a fire.
Id say most are also not in the construction business.
If they were, they would know its a hell of alot easier to tear something down than it is to put it together. And finish work often takes as long as everything else combined.

Great article and I also am a fan of Joe.
But not sure I agree with the title of the article. We aren't a contender yet, even without all the injuries we've had this season.

andalusian said:

I think Joe actually seems like someone that understands that there are no quick fixes for the problems he inherited.

There is a lot of calls for Joe's head for being an incompetent GM, but I think a lot of these calls are from people that have never been in management positions and expects things to change immediatly. I honestly think Joe seems like he understands that to be successful you have to do a continuous job of improving and that it takes time. All his moves seem to be very reasonable with this in mind.

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This is the only correct take.

andalusian said:

I think Joe actually seems like someone that understands that there are no quick fixes for the problems he inherited.

There is a lot of calls for Joe's head for being an incompetent GM, but I think a lot of these calls are from people that have never been in management positions and expects things to change immediatly. I honestly think Joe seems like he understands that to be successful you have to do a continuous job of improving and that it takes time. All his moves seem to be very reasonable with this in mind.

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That's fine.... but that doesn't make sense because we don't have a lot of time to build around Dame. Either we go for a slow-and-steady approach, which doesn't fit Dame's window at all, or we try to make quick moves to improve the team to make it a contender. He doesn't a lot of time to fix the team.

And some of his trades were bad. I don't care if it's short term thinking or long term thinking... they were bad.

Natebishop3 said:

That's fine.... but that doesn't make sense because we don't have a lot of time to build around Dame. Either we go for a slow-and-steady approach, which doesn't fit Dame's window at all, or we try to make quick moves to improve the team to make it a contender. He doesn't a lot of time to fix the team.

And some of his trades were bad. I don't care if it's short term thinking or long term thinking... they were bad.

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Lol just because it doesn't line up doesnt make what Joe is doing wrong. That's basic common sense.

Neil fucked us and Joe is doing what he can to unfuck it.

It's really that simple. Glad I could be of help.

Natebishop3 said:

That's fine.... but that doesn't make sense because we don't have a lot of time to build around Dame. Either we go for a slow-and-steady approach, which doesn't fit Dame's window at all, or we try to make quick moves to improve the team to make it a contender. He doesn't a lot of time to fix the team.

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But he is not going slow and steady, he is going as fast as is reasonable and steady, not fast and stupid.

He maneuvered to replace CJ + Norm + Roco with Grant, Ant and Matisse - that's an amazing upgrade in the right direction in basically a year.

Natebishop3 said:

And some of his trades were bad. I don't care if it's short term thinking or long term thinking... they were bad.

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Individually, who cares. The trades are done to work in tandem, some of them are precursors to other moves, based on a plan of balancing the roster. Dame understood that his options were trade me or do it right so we might have a year or two of an opportunity when the roster rebalance happens and he chose to stay. That's about as good of a plan you can make given the shit show that NeO left Portland with.

andalusian said:

But he is not going slow and steady, he is going as fast as is reasonable and steady, not fast and stupid.

He maneuvered to replace CJ + Norm + Roco with Grant, Ant and Matisse - that's an amazing upgrade in the right direction in basically a year.



Individually, who cares. The trades are done to work in tandem, some of them are precursors to other moves, based on a plan of balancing the roster. Dame understood that his options were trade me or do it right so we might have a year or two of an opportunity when the roster rebalance happens and he chose to stay. That's about as good of a plan you can make given the shit show that NeO left Portland with.

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Ant was already on the team. How is he part of some upgrade?

AngryFan said:

Ant was already on the team. How is he part of some upgrade?

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Time and opportunity. He would never have got the time and authority to do what he does if CJ was not moved.

The Blazers basically got more or less CJ's production at a 66% of the cost by giving CJ's minutes to Ant. That's the upgrade. (Just like CJ got the time/opportunity after Wes was injured and was not re-signed).

Don't you dare try and take away things I can point a blame finger at!

I like Joe. I like him a great deal more than his predecessor.

I have more to say on this later but I see ONE major hole in the article ...

The headline says the Blazers as a contender ... Did i miss something cause if they are saying the Blazers are a contender then not sure what team they are watching cause I am not sure this team could win a series versus a D-1 Top 10 Women's team at this point let alone an NBA contender. --- ROFL

If Blazers really cared about diversity they would have dogs in the front office.

SlyPokerDog said:

If Blazers really cared about diversity they would have dogs in the front office.

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Olshey was a wiener. Isn’t that close enough?

Ripcity4life77 said:

I see ONE major hole in the article ...

The headline says the Blazers as a contender ... Did i miss something cause if they are saying the Blazers are a contender then not sure what team they are watching cause I am not sure this team could win a series versus a D-1 Top 10 Women's team at this point let alone an NBA contender. --- ROFL

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They left out the last part - the Blazers are a contender in the Wemby sweepstakes.

Feel better?

Ripcity4life77 said:

I have more to say on this later but I see ONE major hole in the article ...

The headline says the Blazers as a contender ... Did i miss something cause if they are saying the Blazers are a contender then not sure what team they are watching cause I am not sure this team could win a series versus a D-1 Top 10 Women's team at this point let alone an NBA contender. --- ROFL

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Building a contender is what they were hired to help to. We don't know yet if they will be successful.

Blazers would absolutely contend in the WNBA, although Phoenix, Las Vegas and NY look tough

They are contenders in diversity. So good to see. If only they care as much about basketball, it would be even better.

Nice story and nice efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. Genuinely. I really understand the value in this stuff. Even the WNBA thing.

Still well in my lane to criticize the lack of vision and their pursuit of cost savings instead of wins.

andalusian said:

I think Joe actually seems like someone that understands that there are no quick fixes for the problems he inherited.

There is a lot of calls for Joe's head for being an incompetent GM, but I think a lot of these calls are from people that have never been in management positions and expects things to change immediatly. I honestly think Joe seems like he understands that to be successful you have to do a continuous job of improving and that it takes time. All his moves seem to be very reasonable with this in mind.

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true, for the most part

Olshey was given a decade to dig the hole he dug with the roster and assets, and it was a damn deep hole. No GM was going to dig out of the hole overnight, or even dig out in a year....which is essentially what Cronin has had

I loved the dismantling Cronin performed in last season's trade deadline. It was absolutely needed.

I was not in love with the transactions Cronin made last summer. I was hoping he was going to end the era of Portland bidding against itself in free agency. But I'm convinced he paid well over the existing markets last summer for Ant, Nurk, and Payton. Which make Grant's impending free agency worrisome

wizenheimer said:

I was not in love with the transactions Cronin made last summer. I was hoping he was going to end the era of Portland bidding against itself in free agency. But I'm convinced he paid well over the existing markets last summer for Ant, Nurk, and Payton. Which make Grant's impending free agency worrisome

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I actually think he paid market price for Ant and probably GP2 which does not matter, since he extracted himself from GP2 when the opportunity happened.

He paid a little over for Nurk, but the issue is that with Dame's salary the Blazers are going to be over the tax sooner or later. He had to retain Nurk as a trade chip because letting him go would mean there were no vehicles to get people here other than the exceptions as free-agent signings. This was still, imho, a required business expense that he had to do. If not, we would get a LMA situation without a cheap team with a budding superstar to build like NeO had when LMA left. This was still a very reasonable business decision. You have to look at what individual decisions mean in the context of what the team tries to do and where it is expected to be within a couple of years, otherwise you get the same kind of singular stupid mistakes NeO did.

Overpaying Nurk $2-3m a year is not giving Crabbe $10m more than what he was worth

I still think that these were savvy business decisions. This does not mean that they will all pan out. Simons might never live his contract and would never be traded, the Blazers might be stuck with Nurk if they never manage to trade him, but the decisions made a lot of sense, imho. These are reasonable risks to take if you do want to be able to build a competitive team within a couple of years.

BTW - the bolded part is exactly why the Blazers are working so hard to stay under the tax so they delay the repeater tax later. This actually is another example why not splurging for a minor upgrade like Nerlens Noel makes sense. If anything, it tells me that the FO plans on going over the tax and building a better team later. If this happens or not is not just dependent on the FO but ownership, obviously, but the positioning is quite clear if you pay attention, imho.

Natebishop3 said:

That's fine.... but that doesn't make sense because we don't have a lot of time to build around Dame. Either we go for a slow-and-steady approach, which doesn't fit Dame's window at all, or we try to make quick moves to improve the team to make it a contender. He doesn't a lot of time to fix the team.

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I think there is probably GM-speak for public consumption and GM-speak for private consumption. And my hunch is that Cronin has had conversations with Dame about the difficulty of building a contender quickly around him vs the value of a patient approach

which means the ball is in Dame's court. If he's ok with the direction and a methodical approach, Portland can rebuild around Dame. It very well may take 'too long' to build a contender, but it's been 23 years since Portland had a contender so that's nothing new.

If Dame asks for a trade than the Blazers can accommodate. If he doesn't then the Blazers can avoid stupid-in-a-hurry trades that mortgage the future

Natebishop3 said:

And some of his trades were bad. I don't care if it's short term thinking or long term thinking... they were bad.

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you need to be specific and explain why. I'm basically seeing 4 trades he's done; some in a bank shot manner:

* CJ (+Nance) for Grant + Hart + two 2nd's which has since morphed into CJ for Grant + Reddish + Thybulle + a 1st + two 2nd's. That's a good trade that moved a player that should have been moved 5-6 years earlier

* (as the extended part of that trade above it turned into Hart for Reddish, Thybulle and a 1st)

* Payton for 3-5 second's depending on circumstances. That's a good trade that comes with the disclaimer that Payton never should have been signed in the first place

* Powell + RoCo for Winslow, Keon, a 2nd, and 50-60M in salary and cap relief. This is the trade that rankles people. I don't really agree with that because I remain unconvinced that there was any better deal available elsewhere. I've seen people talk about Cleveland trading Rubio and a 1st round pick for LeVert. But Cleveland publicly said they needed to get longer in a back court because of Garland and 6'6 LeVert accomplished that while 6'3 Powell wouldn't

so I'm not seeing any trade that falls into the "bad" category. I'm seeing trades that were either part of an absolutely necessary dismantling or part of follow-up moves

now, you can legitimately argue it would have been better, this season, to have Powell than Winslow and Payton, but then the Blazers would have about 95M/year invested in a 6'2+6'3+6'3 back court and how dumb would that be?

I also think you need to put an asterisk in front of all Cronin's moves because I think he's been operating within restrictions imposed by the Vulcans. They had finally decided to shitcan OdiousOlshey and I'm certain told Cronin to dismantle Olshey's dysfunctional and way too expensive roster and stay out of the tax, unless maybe, he could show them a contender

which still doesn't explain the contracts he gave out last summer

andalusian said:

I actually think he paid market price for Ant and probably GP2 which does not matter, since he extracted himself from GP2 when the opportunity happened.

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when I say 'market', I'm talking about the specific market last summer, not the generic market. There were only about 3-4 teams last summer that had the cap-space to even offer Ant 20M/year, let alone 25M. IIRC, Indiana, Detroit, & Orlando were 3 that I was looking at. I think there was no chance any of those teams were going to go after Simons as an RFA and lose those crucial 3 first days of the off-season only to see Portland match. I am convinced there were no other bidders for Ant

Nurkic at 18M year? with Chauncey as the head coach? with Nurk's injury history? and inconsistency? nope

now, I can see an argument of trying to keep your player on-board and happy, but after years of Olshey bidding against himself I was hoping for better

wizenheimer said:

when I say 'market', I'm talking about the specific market last summer, not the generic market. There were only about 3-4 teams last summer that had the cap-space to even offer Ant 20M/year, let alone 25M. IIRC, Indiana, Detroit, & Orlando were 3 that I was looking at. I think there was no chance any of those teams were going to go after Simons as an RFA and lose those crucial 3 first days of the off-season only to see Portland match. I am convinced there were no other bidders for Ant

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I was talking about the market as in a player that can average his kind of offensive production while also being a young 23 y/o with upside. Could the Blazers play hardball with Ant and got him for $22m instead of $25? Probably. Was it worth it? Probably not imho.

wizenheimer said:

Nurkic at 18M year? with Chauncey as the head coach? with Nurk's injury history? and inconsistency? nope

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I am on record for anyone that cares enough to go search through the forum archive that he is worth $15m a year in today's NBA. So, $17.5m a year (his actual salary) is a slight overpay with the idea, I am almost certain of it, of trading him sooner or later if he does not pan out in the system. Again, he was a free-agent. The Blazers had to retain him because there is no way of replacing even a fraction of his production given the expected salary situation. This seems like a tradeable contract, probably this off-season.

now, I can see an argument of trying to keep your player on-board and happy, but after years of Olshey bidding against himself I was hoping for better

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Needed to do it for Ant simply because of his potential. It was worth it to ensure Nurk does not leave for nothing, and they probably had to pay a little extra to ensure GP2 did not take a really low salary at GSW - so it was a smart decision as he was a real position need - and once the opportunity to upgrade from him came with Matisse, they got out of his contract without too much trouble.


The Ant + Nurk contract together does seem like it would fit with a star a team has decided to move because they need a reset. If Toronto decides to move away from Siakam this off-season, that combination gets you very close with Toronto only having to add some dribbles to match it.

andalusian said:

I was talking about the market as in a player that can average his kind of offensive production while also being a young 23 y/o with upside. Could the Blazers play hardball with Ant and got him for $22m instead of $25? Probably. Was it worth it? Probably not imho.



I am on record for anyone that cares enough to go search through the forum archive that he is worth $15m a year in today's NBA. So, $17.5m a year (his actual salary) is a slight overpay with the idea, I am almost certain of it, of trading him sooner or later if he does not pan out in the system. Again, he was a free-agent. The Blazers had to retain him because there is no way of replacing even a fraction of his production given the expected salary situation. This seems like a tradeable contract, probably this off-season.



Needed to do it for Ant simply because of his potential. It was worth it to ensure Nurk does not leave for nothing, and they probably had to pay a little extra to ensure GP2 did not take a really low salary at GSW - so it was a smart decision as he was a real position need - and once the opportunity to upgrade from him came with Matisse, they got out of his contract without too much trouble.


The Ant + Nurk contract together does seem like it would fit with a star a team has decided to move because they need a reset. If Toronto decides to move away from Siakam this off-season, that combination gets you very close with Toronto only having to add some dribbles to match it.

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I agree with your Nurk take. $15M is a fair market rate, so I'm not mad about him getting $17M.

Simon's contract should have been around $15-18M (even given his perceived 'upside').

wizenheimer said:

you need to be specific and explain why. I'm basically seeing 4 trades he's done; some in a bank shot manner:

* CJ (+Nance) for Grant + Hart + two 2nd's which has since morphed into CJ for Grant + Reddish + Thybulle + a 1st + two 2nd's. That's a good trade that moved a player that should have been moved 5-6 years earlier

* (as the extended part of that trade above it turned into Hart for Reddish, Thybulle and a 1st)

* Payton for 3-5 second's depending on circumstances. That's a good trade that comes with the disclaimer that Payton never should have been signed in the first place

* Powell + RoCo for Winslow, Keon, a 2nd, and 50-60M in salary and cap relief. This is the trade that rankles people. I don't really agree with that because I remain unconvinced that there was any better deal available elsewhere. I've seen people talk about Cleveland trading Rubio and a 1st round pick for LeVert. But Cleveland publicly said they needed to get longer in a back court because of Garland and 6'6 LeVert accomplished that while 6'3 Powell wouldn't

so I'm not seeing any trade that falls into the "bad" category. I'm seeing trades that were either part of an absolutely necessary dismantling or part of follow-up moves

now, you can legitimately argue it would have been better, this season, to have Powell than Winslow and Payton, but then the Blazers would have about 95M/year invested in a 6'2+6'3+6'3 back court and how dumb would that be?

I also think you need to put an asterisk in front of all Cronin's moves because I think he's been operating within restrictions imposed by the Vulcans. They had finally decided to shitcan OdiousOlshey and I'm certain told Cronin to dismantle Olshey's dysfunctional and way too expensive roster and stay out of the tax, unless maybe, he could show them a contender

which still doesn't explain the contracts he gave out last summer

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Ok, we'll take a look at these one at a time.

* CJ (+Nance) for Grant + Hart + two 2nd's which has since morphed into CJ for Grant + Reddish + Thybulle + a 1st + two 2nd's. That's a good trade that moved a player that should have been moved 5-6 years earlier

This trade has the potential to be a good trade..... but it's not complete yet. Grant, Reddish, and Thybulle are all free agents this summer. If they all walk, it's an awful trade. If we re-sign Grant to a stupid contractor, it's a bad trade. This one hasn't played out yet and I'm waiting to see where the final dominos fall.

* Payton for 3-5 second's depending on circumstances. That's a good trade that comes with the disclaimer that Payton never should have been signed in the first place

This one is hard to peg. I'm glad he got value for a guy who clearly didn't want to be here.... but what if we didn't sign Payton in the first place? The data is incomplete. I have no idea what other options were on the table. The trade is fine though.

* Powell + RoCo for Winslow, Keon, a 2nd, and 50-60M in salary and cap relief. This is the trade that rankles people. I don't really agree with that because I remain unconvinced that there was any better deal available elsewhere. I've seen people talk about Cleveland trading Rubio and a 1st round pick for LeVert. But Cleveland publicly said they needed to get longer in a back court because of Garland and 6'6 LeVert accomplished that while 6'3 Powell wouldn't

This is a bad trade and I'm going to have a hard time being convinced otherwise. Roco and Larry Nance were free agents at the end of the year. Norm is on a reasonable contract. We could have let those two guys walk and traded Norm during the offseason. It was a bad decision, most likely done by the Vulcans, but it was horrible.

Love the circle jerk here, but let’s call a spade a spade.

The inclusion is great, but it’s not going well. It’s a complete dumpster fire.

I love the title on ESPN headline is, “Meet the WNBA stars powering the Blazers rebuild”.

WHAT REBUILD?

Is this another cost cutting move? I assume hiring employees with no previous experience in their role is cheaper.