Joe has never been a GM before. How does he know what he is doing? Because he watched Olshey for a decade? That doesn't make him a knowledgeable GM. Only first hand experience can do that.
I see Simmons as a risk worth taking. Because he's a negative asset, you're doing Brooklyn a favor, thereby upping your return for Dame. He's only on the books for two years, where we'll still be losing. If he doesn't work out, we don't re-sign him. He will also help fill up the amount we need to take back for Dame's salary. If he can rejuvenate his career here, we will have gotten an absolute lockdown defender and basketball unicorn for next to nothing. We need to start swinging for the fences. Simmons is a moon shot.
I have watched every public move that was done and it seems logical to me. He also has been an assistant GM and has been in the organization for a while. Yes, I believe he knows what he is doing and seems to have a clear plan. It also seems like the logical plan given what he was given. I do not believe in quick fixes, based on my experience in my own professional life and more recently in my personal life - in a remodel project we did. When there are problems, painting over them is going to be useful only for so long (See RoCo for however many picks the Blazers paid for him). To fix real issues, you need to tear down the bad parts and live with the mess that creates until you can rebuild it better. Dame didn't want to live through the mess. That's fine. He has every right to want out. What's sad is that it is the opposite of what he said before.
The impressive part of that quote is I have no idea how Fentress could be understood with Aaron Goodwin's balls in his mouth.
Comments like that are so completely clueless it's embarrassing. Yeah the Blazers didn't try to improve all those years. They largely failed, but to suggest everyone wasn't working hard to improve is idiotic. And it's ridiculous to suggest a team doesn't owe it first to their fans, city and owner to get the best possible package back. Like the only person who matters is the person requesting to leave after they signed a fucking contract. Somehow that equates to "we're trying to screw Dame!" No, that's completely, totally, 100% backwards. Dame is doing the screwing and anyone in the league with common sense knows that.
You weren't supposed to notice that part. Dwight still thinks that that vast majority of what Olshey did was good.
is anybody surprised by that? He was so deeply buried in Olshey's jockstrap he thought a wedgie was just a warm blanket
Obviously, I don't want James Harden on this team. No matter the talent, he should not be around our rookies. That being said, I love the idea of including Philly in any trade for Dame. It causes Miami, Brooklyn and Boston to s*** themselves as replacing Harden half-assing it all over the court with Dame means they are the favorites to win the East. The result is a set of MUCH better offers for us. The other thing it does is it allows something like: Dame to Philly, Harden to whoever would take him (I think his value is lower than Dame's), and a whole bunch of stuff from Philly and that third team coming to us. Perhaps even a fourth team gets involved to take other pieces (Nurk, scraps from Philly or that third team). We get back picks. Lots of picks. And promising young players. The indirect benefit? Philly fans are the f***ing worst. Nothing would be better than to dump Lillard there. I don't care if he wins a Championship. They booed Mike Schmidt at the end of his career. They threw snowballs at Santa Claus. They have zero loyalty. It's the opposite of Portland, where we love players who don't love us back.
Well, he'll be faced with a choice. He can report and play for another team, or he can sit. If he's trying to kill the market for Portland, then we need to be vociferous about it. Dame makes good money playing basketball, but his future is in his reputation and marketing money. We can set that aflame. My guess is he plays nice wherever we move him.
That's the strategy. He's not going to say anything. When it gets contentious, he'll blame it all on his agent. Plausible deniability, where he gets to be the good guy.
Please. The "player opinion" facet is the most overrated bulls*** going. First, no one is coming to Portland as a free agent unless we overpay them. Second, player worth is the size of your contract. If we offer the most, they'll follow the money. They won't care about how we "treated" Dame.
I took that to be his point, that how the Blazers treat Lillard on the way out isn't going to change a thing in regards to free agents and the Blazers.
