We’ve already seen Sharpe put up near 25 ppg for an extended period of time against teams fighting for playoff spots, and Scoot is a consensus generational talent by the account of most scouts that spend way more time watching film and following players than we do. You making a statement that they will never be as good as Dame when they are only 19 is ridiculous. In what way will they never be is good… scoring? I could care less about how many ppg a single player puts up. I want team players that wins… and the reality is, Dame has never won anything… and to act like he had no part in wasting his prime by trying to make him and CJ work for so long is naïve. CJ was the biggest asset we had to build a balanced roster and we waited til it was too late to trade him. That was Dames best friend and he was adamant year after year they could make it work. Now the reality is Dame is 33, making over 50 mil per year on average over the next 4 years. The reality is, there is no roster you can put together when you factor in salary and the fact that players need time to gel, and the fact that it will be harder for Dame to stay healthy from 33-36 years old, and the fact that the west is loaded right now. No way to build a team with chance at title. And just because you somehow already know Sharpe or Scoot won’t be as good as Dame individually doesn’t mean they won’t be better as a team. I’d rather spend the next 10 years with odds they can be better as a team, and will eventually give us a true contender. Even if we disagree, there is no way you should be so negative with the pieces we have acquired the last 2 drafts.
I don't think that really strongly refutes his point, Chris. Are we trying to win, or are we trying to make the next few years an extended meritorious service tour for Damian Lillard?
And, let me be clear before anyone else brings it up: I think the Blazers can do both if Lillard is on board with it. I'm not one of the absolutists that think there only are two courses for this team and anything other than those two is wrong without room for dicussion.
And to further clarify, is keeping Dame because he's been so awesome, or because he's going to continue to be so awesome? Because the odds of him being this good when he's 36, for example, just are not that great. We need to continue to do what's best for the team, whether that means keeping Dame or not.
He is using a rag to mop a flooded floor. He has exhausted most of our assets rebuilding with little to show for it. He traded away several players to rebuild, including our second best, and hardly got any picks. He basically gave them away. Likely, the only player netted in those moves on next year's roster will be Grant, if he resigns here. We have Sharpe and Scoot outside of Dame after two years of Cronin. He is talking about the upcoming trade market as if he has a lot of pieces he can move. He doesn't. He puts an emphasis on FA, which the Blazers have been historically terrible at. He drafted Scoot and that and the other picks were probably all Schmitz. But, he drafted Scoot in the hopes that if Dame asks out, his ass isn't in a sling. I'm not surprised he didn't pull off any trades during the draft. With his past moves he has set a precedent for being a carpet. Other GMs thought they could get players and picks out of him for nothing, and were unwilling to give fair deals.
I think he drafted Scoot with no ulterior motive other than he had by far the best chance to be a transcendent player. For the most part, NBA Draft history has favored teams drafting the best talent with little regard to need and then figuring it out. If the talent is on par, then maybe you take the lower guy on your board and figure the trade-off's negligible, but that wasn't the case here. It'd be another drafting Bowie over Jordan situation if the Blazers didn't draft Scoot.
What's Walton, chopped liver? And Drexler got us to two finals and the best record in the league. Sheesh. If you said best POINT GUARD, then I would agree.
I guess some people attribute winning to one player rather than to the team. There’s absolutely no question that the quality of the teams that Clyde and Walton played with were far superior to those Dame has been saddled with.
