I swear someone posted this already, but I won't root for him to win a title. I'm not a fan of the Damian Lillards, I'm a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers. If he wins, good for him. But I'm not gonna be like "FINALLY, THE ROCK HAS COME BA...", er I mean, "Yay! Damian won! I'm happy!"
Kobe "didn't win shit" without Shaq or Pau Gasol DWade "didn't win shit" without Shaq or Lebron Lebron "didn't win shit" without DWade, Kyrie/Love, or AD this standard you guys are using to crap on Dame is bogus. How many rings would Dame/Giannis have won by now?
Quick question, did Dame get a divorce from his wife? I've noticed a number of people either mention it or possibly allude to it. Someone said something in a thread and got a few likes about him having fun with ladies in Miami after his divorce. Not sure if people are saying all this metaphorically (like this post seems to be?) or if that really happened. When I search for it, all that comes up in amicable divorce...from the Blazers.
The thing that's annoying about this situation is we have no way of knowing what happened in the FO and with management. For all we know Cronin was told not to try and improve by Jody. This seems unlikely as he got Grant and traded CJ, but I could see it as it's pretty clear to me Jody just wants a bigger bag of cash when it comes to the team and nothing more. OR it could be that Cronin operated in true good faith and that he just couldn't get it done without some huge sacrifice like trading Sharpe or the #3 for a marginal upgrade like OG Anouby. If it's the latter then I support Cronin 110%. Trading Sharpe would have been Jermaine O'Neal on Giga-Steroids and we would have regretted that for a decade and been roundly mocked by the League. While this is painful and sucks, where I blame the FO is not shit canning Olshey (duh!) after what was it the 2016 signings that were so insanely bad and not trading CJ for Paul George etc. Olshey I blame without hesitation, he was an absolute dumpster fire of a GM who was high on his own ego supply and thought CJ was the second coming of MJ. As to Loyalty going both ways, how exactly was the front office not loyal to Dame? We gave him the super max with the 5th year that would have been crippling (I actually am low-key super relived much as I love Dame not to be paying north of $50 mill) had he stayed. We signed his H-league cousin to multiple contracts. We traded a first for his boy Grant. We paid big money to his boy Grant, to which he responded by waiting until just before the ink was all the way dry to demand a trade (that timing is still suspect AF btw) and kept his buddy CJ quite possibly in part due to him lobbying to do that (again behind closed doors we will never know). We hired Billups despite a HUGE controversy at the time and over superior candidates like D'Antoni again at Dame's urging. Dame was damn near a Co-GM Lebron style for a decade. I mean we kinda did everything we could to appease Dame other than execute on a big trade (again FUCK Olshey). What more was the FO supposed to do other than fire Olshey in 2017?
Why do some posters believe by criticizing Dame for his actions, it equates to "trashing" him or "s**ting on" him? My feelings are largely sadness with a bit of indifference. I've gone through the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief pretty quickly. I'm now comfortably in the acceptance stage. I'm okay with Dame deciding that he wanted to be elsewhere, just as I was okay with Walton, Drexler, and Aldridge making the same decision. Other than Aldridge, when they returned to Portland, I gave them a polite thank you clap when they were introduced for the first time. After that, they were just players for the other team. Walton for years (until he realized how special the Blazermania era was) HATED this organization and wasn't overly fond of the city. Drexler completely turned his back on his time here. Aldridge was openly ecstatic to leave. And once he's traded, unless it's to see his kids, I doubt Dame sets foot in Oregon again unless it's to play for his new team. That's okay. Oregon isn't for everybody. Dame and the Blazers will have to go through the same process. I think the Blazers are further down the line than Dame, which is to be expected, as they have a broader responsibility to clean up the mess. I think Dame and Miami are currently in the denial phase, moving toward anger. They want what they want (Dame for scraps) and they want it for previous services rendered (11 years of faithful service). They'll get to bargaining once the season gets closer, and that's when progress will be made. I'm a Blazer fan. I've always had player favorites (TP is my all-time fave), but in the end, it's a business. I root for laundry, and I'm okay with that. You will note that Dame hasn't even bothered to mention the fans or the community in this change. It would have been simple to do, but he's chosen not to do it. To me, that speaks volumes. The fans are like the kids in a divorce. The parents have all the power, and we just have to accept the new situation.
But that hasn't happened here, either. If Dame tomorrow said "psyche, MIA can't get anything Joe will buy off on, and I damn sure don't want to go to BOS, so I'll stay here and play and see what happens" it'd be the same situation K*be came back to in 2007. And retired 9 years after that as a L*ker demi-god. Edit: And as for the rings, the talk at the time was that K*be was being dogged pretty hard because they were "Shaq's Rings", especially after Shaq won another one with Wade. He wanted his "own". And because he didn't love how Mitch was building around him, he put a list of 3 teams together, and then said "no" to the trade with one of them because he didn't want his new team sending out so much. 4 months later, they traded for Gasol. 6 months after that, they went to the Finals. One year after that, they had rings.
My dream is Dame goes East wins a ring or three and then comes back to retire in PDX, or even better, to win ANOTHER ring as the backup PG on the tail end of his career as Sharpe, Scoot and ???? lead us to that ring, but Dame hit's some clutch threes that help us to win it all. I'm not super mad at Dame just hurt about how this has been handled (one team scorched earth media/whisper campaign e.g. won't show up for training camp GTFOH!), but Goodwin can eat a bag of dicks. People demonizing Dame are ridiculous people downplaying how fucked up what Goodwin is doing - I'm looking at you Blazerkor - are also ridiculous. IMO, the correct stance is we all love Dame, but Goodwin is the biggest POS agent I can think of.
Awesome post, and great analogy. I also agree Dame could have come out and said, "Look I love the fans, I love the city, I love the state. I will always cherish my time in PDX, but they chose not to build around me, a business decision, now I'm making the same business decision.". Or something like that. He also could reel in Goodwin a bit or a lot like an owner choking out his dog yanking on the leash.
Hot take, unless dame goes to Boston with Tatum and brown or Milwaukee, he is not in next year's playoffs anyway
It's simply speculation. She has been off all social media platforms and absent in all the photos or videos he or his family have posted over the past 6 months or so. Whether that's a divorce or she's simply taking a break from being out in the public so much, it's unknown. And I don't think it's our place to conflate such things with what's on the court.
since I said something similar just above...the context was 'crapping' on Dame because he "didn't win shit" in comparison with Kobe. I was simply pointing out that Kobe didn't win shit unless he had an all-nba player like Shaq or Gasol by his side and Phil Jackson as coach (when Kobe won his first ring, Shaq averaged 31 & 15 in the playoffs while Kobe averaged 21; Shaq averaged more points than Kobe for all 3 years of the three-peat). Lebron hasn't won without an all-NBA player or two all-stars by his side. DWade needed Shaq, Lebron, and Bosh to get him his rings. KG & Paul Pierce have one title between them and they needed Ray Allen and Rondo to get that one title. Giannis won a ring while having 3 other all-stars in the starting lineup with him Dame hasn't had an all-star by his side since Aldridge, and Aldridge was a low-level all-star who was checked out on the Blazers half-way thru Dame's 3rd season. Dismissing Dame's talent because Olshey was an incompetent buffoon looks like crapping on Dame to me
