Did any of you read Zach Harper’s and John Hollinger’s columns in The Athletic this morning? Let’s just say that Joe Cronin is unlikely to ever get constipated again in his life after having two new assholes torn for his mishandling of virtually everything since becoming GM.
....and that legendary NBA HoF'er Facundo Campazzo. Ugh, I had forgotten how bad their starting backcourt was.
" albeit in ways that would allow Lillard to proclaim no one ever heard it from his mouth, thus protecting him from backlash. " This is one of the things I never did like about Damian. He would say things covertly and act like he didn't mean what he meant but he meant what he said when he said what he said a long time ago so quit asking me what I meant. Neil f'd things up, no doubt (more so than anything Joe did, and thus deserves 90% of the blame), but Damian seemed perfectly content when the team got bums like Mario, Stauskus, Tolliver, Snell, Harkless, Aminu, Turner, Crabbe, or drafted bad players like Swanigan (he was a bad player, and that didn't change because he died), or massively over paid and traded for players (like Roco and Nance), or NEVER got a decent PF for 7 years after LaMarcus left. He should've been demanding it in 2015, instead of 2021.
I'm sure Joe understands how these guys operate...Throw shade, get clicks and shares then repeat. “It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
People can accuse the Blazers front office and scouting department of performing poorly, but anyone saying they didn't try to give Dame anything he wanted immediately loses all credibility. Show me any other organization that would take a player's cousin off the street and use a roster spot on him FOR TWO YEARS before you ever say the Blazers did Dame dirty and Dame was an angel. Dame was mealy-mouthed and got himself manipulated by his entourage and the talking heads in the end.
Yeah, ffs, they had Blevins on the roster for 2 years! He isn't even g-league worthy (if he was, he'd be there now...and where is he? Oh that's right, he signed with a league in Romania, averaged 5 points and was subsequently waived. If you can't make it in a Romanian league, you clearly should NEVER have sniffed an NBA contract).
there will be plenty of iso-ball next season if Ant is a starter; and if he's on the team, he'll be a starter
I really hope not. Give our future back court the reigns and let Ant get equal minutes off of the bench. We have to be operating with eye towards the future now. Start Scoot and Shaedon in the back court!
did the Blazers fork over 5k to Quick for this article? Maybe a 2 year Door Dash gift card ?? I see a few Blazer fans blaming Dame for every single non-overwhelming player transaction in the last 10 years. The Kevin Bacon algorithm, everything Portland messed up on leads back to Lillard. Now I know those fans aren't being crazy weirdos. They're just absorbing what a team employed sports journalist wrote in an opinion piece. Thank you for posting this article KingSpeed, I honestly thought Blazer fans were losing their minds.
I've got a strong feeling we are going to continue to play 2 players out of position Scoot Simons Sharpe Grant Nurk (as of now) ... We are going to give up a million points per game but maybe Scoot / Simons / Sharpe can re-create "Lob City" I'd be pleasantly surprised if it were: Scoot Sharpe Murray Grant Nurk Bench: Simons Probably still going to give up a million points but at least we would be normal sized
I got one good thing from there. The pick that we took Rayan Rupert with came from trading away Gary PaytonII.
I hope he loses. Not because I'm bitter towards him, but because I want us to get as good of draft picks as possible, and their value is probably inversely proportional to him winning.
From Harper (after breaking down all the Cronin trades): Essentially, they sent out Powell, Covington, McCollum, Nance, Snell and Payton (after just signing him) and got a return of netting five extra second-round picks, Grant (to whom they agreed to give $160 million a day before the Lillard trade request), Walker, maybe Thybulle if they keep him, Rupert and Murray. And essentially, you could add in that the Blazers’ mismanagement of so much of this retooling of the roster is what led to Lillard deciding he needed to go somewhere else. From Hollinger (key bit): The point I really want to underscore here is that the Blazers could have traded Lillard at any moment in the last two seasons, and it would have been the 100 percent correct move. That they didn’t and instead engaged in this bizarre dance where they sort-of tried to compete around Lillard without firing lottery picks into the sun, basically wasted everyone’s time for two years and short-circuited Portland’s post-Lillard rebuild. Compare this to, say, Utah’s approach with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, and the draft capital that yielded. Portland’s haul for Lillard will be nothing like that; the only reason the team is in halfway-decent shape for the next era is due to its own brazen tanking the last two springs. Not only did Portland fail to make the obvious move and trade him, the Blazers instead doubled down on a contract extension that lowered his trade value. In between, they coughed up other assets on “win-now” moves that weren’t going to be nearly enough for this team to actually win. (Reminder: That extension is for two years and $122 million and will pay a 36-year-old Lillard $63 million in 2026-27). Hilariously, the final insult came mere hours before Lillard’s trade demand, when Portland agreed to pay Jerami Grant roughly double what he’s worth on a five-year, $160 million deal, the type of contract that would make sense only if he was the final piece on a championship contender. (Narrator’s voice: He was not.) The Blazers, incidentally, had already surrendered a first-round pick just to acquire him and help themselves to a 33-win season in 2022-23.
Because Portland has made bad decisions for most of the last decade and Hollinger has seen it and been consistent in calling them out? That's my opinion.
