Keep Ant, Shaedon and the 3rd pick

Please share your fail-proof championship plan that has no risk of "I told you so..."

 

A lot of people seem to be good with being a couple years away, for decades.

 

I think a lot of people can't deal with having expectations for a team, so it's easier to always be 2 years away.

 

No because if we pick up Deandre Ayton and Paul George we'd be championship contenders in your eyes? I really don't think so. But we'd have an old, loser team with nothing to root for

 

That's probably the more accurate statement!

 

Ok how about this trade scenario:

To Brooklyn
Dame the GM Lillard
Jusuf Nurkic

To Portland:
Utah watanabe (a terrific defender with a high motor and improved 3 point shooting)
Nic Claxton
Cam Thomas

All young, up and coming players who would fit with the timeline of Ant, Shae and the first rounders

 

Brooklyn needs Claxton. They don't have much in the rim stopping big guy department, because they're stupid and traded Jarrett Allen. A return trade for Lillard would need to involve a ridiculous salary, and future picks that stretch over the horizon.

Ben Simmons is better then everyone thinks, All-Star talent, and would make a fine addition to Portland moving forward through cap space and flexibility.

Ben can play point center even better then Watford!! Imagine 2 Blazer big guys pushing the tempo, hard to stop transition offense. (as long as they can actually grab a rebound, loose ball, someone steals a bad pass). A fun Blazer team to watch while tanking hard for better rookies.

 

97% of teams don't win a championship each year, whatever plan the Blazers go with is unlikely to ultimately succeed.

But does trying to win now with Dame have any chance of winning a title soon? Its fine if jt most likely does not work, but there needs to be some sort of chance it realistically could make the Blazers a contender.

If not then it's much better to hold long term assets like the pick or Sharpe/Ant and target contending in future years. Yeah the Blazers probably won't win a title in that time either, but there's more uncertainty of future moves over a larger number of years. Thus if a number of moves work out well the team may be able to contend.

Throwing away those future chances to win with no benefit of possibly contending now would be a stupid move that doesn't improve the short term but does harm the long term.

 

Is Utah watanabe a Japanese player with a slightly off white oversized dress shirt, plastic name tag, and a bad tie?

 

Lol

 

I'm still waiting to see that link that Slypokerdog asked for from the OP....

 

@BlazerMoneyMaker knows how to build a contender y'all!

Things are getting weird. We need draft day to get here already.

 

No I don't agree with your sentiments.

I would much more prefer the Blazers trying to win now if contending were possible. Even if it was a longshot possibility, and yes many posters here would flip and be happy with that as well. The problem is the Blazers haven't been in that situation for 23 years. The Blazers yes did have that core with the WCF JR Rider team, and more so with the next year Pippen/Steve Smith teams. They had that superstar core with the Oden/Roy/LaMarcus trio although it never panned out. They had maybe 1 longshot year at the end of LMA tenure with him and Lillard as well as 5 strong starters.

But right now the Blazers don't have the players or assets to realistically make that improvement in the next year or two. They are too far away, with too little depth, to few veteran two way players, and too few contracts to trade for the needed improvement.

Now do many people prefer having young players or picks with upside over veterans that aren't good enough to contend now? I'd say yes, and while the youth or picks have a risk of never improving 0r even ultimately being much worse - they also have a benefit of possibly being better than the known mediocrity of veterans the Blazers have trotted out for decades.

 

Troll alert!!!

 

Ben Simmons is better then everyone thinks. " A fine addition to Portland" WHATTTTTTTTTT!

 

I would say keeping Dame increases the chance of winning a title soon. I'm not against trading Dame, but the offer would have be very very good to let him go.

I feel like many are over-valuing the potential of a rebuild, when history would show full rebuilds, based around ditching all-NBA players for lottery picks, almost never turns into titles.

 

I have zero problem if that's what you (and others) want. I still believe you're under-valuing the odds of winning a championship with Dame and over-valuing the odds of winning a championship with this new young core. If we believe there is a good chance Sharpre or Miller/Scoot will be a top 10 NBA player, then I think the discussion is a different one, but I do not believe that is the case. If we do keep them, I hope I'm wrong, I will be rooting for the team regardless of the direction they go!

 

Here's the problem with that way of thinking.

It's more accurately what are the odds of winning a championship with Dame over a span of maybe 4-5 years compared to what are the odds of winning with Sharpe and Miller/Scoot over the span of maybe 10 years.

Dame has a much smaller window. It might not even be 4-5 years. It might be closer to 3-4 where he's still playing at this level. How long will he be a top 10 player in the league? And that has always been my issue. We messed around and used up most of Dame's prime. There are very few sands of time left.

 

Well, we know it takes at least 1 true star to win a title. We know Damian is a star. We don't know what Sharpe and Scoot will become. Because of that, the window is smaller, yes, but I'd say the odds of winning with Dame are more likely than the odds of winning with Scoot/Sharpe.