How's everyone feel about Smokin' Joe Cronin now?

nope...that the wrong attitude. 'Argumentative' is the life-blood of S2

and you're correct:

 

He did change his HS graduating class from 2025 to 2024, so the draft he'll be eligible for is 2025



STOMP

 

They just may have to obtain him!

but we’ll need to take back salary…I say we look at small forwards

 

at this point, I think a full evaluation of Cronin as a GM needs to be deferred. That doesn't mean you can't give him some partial graded though

* essentially, he didn't start his work until approaching the trade deadline in 2021. So, only 20 months on the job. And what was his task? It was to dismantle the overly expensive, fucked-up, dysfunctional roster that Olshey had spent a decade fucking up. That was not an easy job, at all, and contrary to a lot of opinions here, what Cronin had to trade had pretty poor value. I never shared the opinion that the Powell/RoCo trade was bad. What it was, was absolutely necessary. The CJ trade was a good one in my view. Maybe a double with an RBI if I can mix metaphors, and who is going to stop me? The reality is there is only one player left from the Olshey era. Cronin did screw up by signing Payton, but he salvaged that with a trade

so, grading him on dismantling a roster that needed to be dismantled: B+; maybe A- depending on what else happens before the trade deadline

* grading the rebuild is a grade that has to wait. I'm pretty optimistic about Scoot and Sharpe (although forcing Sharpe into a SF role will be worth several demerits). Guardedly optimistic mixed with skepticism about Ayton. And giving Cronin more time to address the Blazer massive talent holes at wing...which is where NBA power resides.

* another area I'm waiting to grade is his willingness to cut bait. He was more that willing to cut Olshey's bait; now the test is his own. How quick will he see square pegs not fitting into round holes? How fast will he move on from injury prone players? Can he ever move Portland out of trotting out undersized lineups? Can he build a decent defense without sacrificing offense? Will he land any 2-way players?

 

AKA the final tally of the Gerald Wallace and Mason Plumlee trades…

 

*Cronin drops mic*

 

And a decade of NBA Top 75 play.

Not a bad deal. Thanks, Crash!

 

Don’t watch BlazersUprise lol

 

“Cronin’s peers, who had been in these circumstances, privately told him what he had publicly declared: His obligation was to find the best deal for the Blazers, not for Lillard,” Adrian Wojnarowski wrote. “If those conflicting elements matched up, even better for everyone.

“Through it all, Cronin told himself: Eliminate the emotion, the frustration, the fatigue. And most of all, Cronin implored himself: Don’t settle. Don’t let yourself settle.”

 

I actually kinda like them but they are super redundant with their negativity and seem to still be fixed on the Miami deal for some weird reason.

 

The past week has been the most seismic Blazers trade extravaganza since we traded into drafting Roy and Aldridge.

Will probably have even longer term consequences that that, given the Bucks pick and swaps.

We'll be talking about this for years if not decades.

 

We acquired a #1 pick in a position we needed (Ayton) effectively pushing through another year of rebuild in a single day. I'll take 18/10 with upward mobility any day of the week.

We get extra picks for the next five years, which will be used to shore up depth and replace veterans with youth as our youth graduates into veteran status, without having to resort to dumpster diving or taking flyers on second round gambles.

This is, seriously, setting us up for 15 years of success if the picks pan out into gold. I haven't been this excited since before Oden's microfracture surgery.

 

It's too bad because some of their analysis is good.

 

At least Joe was humble (and smart) enough to bring on a guy like Mike Schmitz to backstop him and keep him honest. Olshey was too arrogant for that and ran off the excellent staff he had when he arrived. With Joe it looks like a much more collaborative process.....

 

Absolutely.
They should have two channels.
One that does analysis, and one where they rant non-stop about Joe Cronin and Jody.

 

Possibly, it's hard though because the market wasn't prepared to offer much more than what Milwaukee did or Miami could've.

 

That's not the point man. The point was there was a lot of people saying that package was terrible, and now they're shouting at us to give Cronin props for what is, in our opinions, a similar package.