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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Building a contender is what they were hired to help to. We don't know yet if they will be successful.
They are contenders in diversity. So good to see. If only they care as much about basketball, it would be even better.
