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.
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
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.
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 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
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
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.
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').
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.
I didn’t expect them to be very good … let me point you to my thread “This offseason was a complete failure”.
Nah I'm good. I don't need your thread. This is an under .500 team, should have been pretty obvious in September bro.
Major roster issues. The lack of addressing it at trade deadline points to the obvious TANK city, baby
I think a back-door tank was a likely direction after the Blazers found their available assets didn't have much value at the trade deadline. Cronin has made some mistakes in my view but he pretty clearly inherited a broken roster that had almost no valuable assets. It's pretty hard to turn a dime into a quarter and that seems to be the kind of hurdle he has to complete to upgrade the roster. I didn't really see any trades around the deadline that appeared to be realistic missed opportunities for Portland. Maybe I didn't track all the trades though
It was obvious to me way before September, which is why this fluff piece is complete bullshit. This “rebuild” has been a complete disaster.
