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

I didn't say everything they said and leaked was a lie, but they did leak lies and inflammatory info.

Miami and Dame were the toxic parties in this situation, not Portland.

Portland hasn't done anything most other teams haven't done multiple times. Including tanking. Holding that against them or trying to have them investigated for it is just more toxic behavior.

 

Understood... at the start of this I was talking about the comments made regarding Dame sitting out. I'm struggling to keep up with the moving goalposts on this topic. Without knowing the content in the conversations between Dame/Portland/Cronin/Miami, I'm not comfortable saying one party is morally clean and the others are toxic.

Regardless, I'm not upset at Lying Cronin or I Hate The Fans Dame.

 

I have always disliked the logic that.....A guy throws a Punch, and if the other guy hits back, it's even.

No....it's not....not if the first punch was not expected.

 

I'm having trouble keeping up as well. So at this point I'm just talking about my opinion and feeling on things in general.

Though I do think Cronin handled things perfectly. I probably wouldn't have tanked, but I think it was the most logical thing to do, and every good GM in the league would have done the same thing the last 2 seasons. Given the situation and how often it happens in the league it would almost be malpractice not to.

But I'm a fan. And I've never been able to accept losing on purpose.

Cronin is a better GM than I'd ever be.

 

Man, no offense, but I hate when people say things like that.

We're debating a topic. You clearly care enough to continue to debate it. I care about the topic. Why then turn around and then say, "who cares?"

I care about Dame trashing the GM on the way out after he was dealt to a REALLY good situation.

 

We agree. I've pushed back against the Cronin is a liar narrative as well.

I've been mostly supportive of Cronin's moves. I think he's done fairly well given the roster he was given and the owner he works for.

 

No offense taken.

I think saying "who cares" is in the same category as saying "come on man". Doesn't add a ton of value, but makes it a little more spicy and fun.

Let me rephrase: I don't care much about what Dame has sad on his way out as I don't believe it will have any real impact on the franchise moving forward. If people want to be outraged by it, that's fine. Same with the people who want to be outraged by Cornin being a liar.

 

It's hard to say what kind of impact it will have. Dame had a strong bond with some of the remaining players and the staff.

 

If the concern is how the remaining players feel, him making the comments public isn't really the issue. I think it's fair to assume the players talk about a lot more dirty regarding how the organization treats them privately.

Which gets back to my original point: If someone does wrong, they need to own the consequences of that; we shouldn't blame the person who shares it. Dame included!

 

Yeah but the "whisleblower" part is only one piece. For the players/staff, I think the comments about rescinding the trade request and the comments about Joe ignoring him and not responding to texts and all that, that's the part that concerns me because I don't know how players view that.

 

Ok. So if that wasn't in the Haynes piece, do you think Ant would've never heard about it? They're friends.

If Cronin did ignore Dame for weeks, then Cornin has to own the implications of how that is perceived by the rest of the organization. If Dame lied about it to make Cronin look bad, then that's not cool at all and I hope Cronin comes out and even provides footage of them talking at the PF.

 

I fully believe Cronin ignored Dame once Goodwin started the back channeling threats to interested teams.

Goodwin doing that was always going to make things very difficult. Especially once Dame didn't come out and have the team's back.

I don't blame Dame for keeping his mouth shut. But I also don't blame Cronin for cutting off unnecessary communication.

Both guys probably made the smartest business decisions in that situation. Unfortunately, that didn't leave much room for longterm relationships.

It's just business. If it were about friends Dame would have done things differently.

 

We agree, again!

It's too bad they couldn't exchange pleasantries when in the same room; I put that on both of them, but I get things had got pretty rough. I imagine in time, when emotions die down, both sides will be able to appreciate the difficulty the other side was in. For all these reasons, I dont't think any of the comments this week are a big deal at all.

 

Yep. Agreed

 

Zach Lowe perfectly sums up this entire fiasco from an outsider’s POV in this pod. Starts at the 53:00 mark. Definitely worth the listen.

 

yeah, it's a fairly decent outside POV. It actually starts around 51o when Zach Lowes talks about a conversation he had with another team's executive and the executive suggested Cronin tried to subtly engineer Dame's trade request with his actions. I think a lot of us here think that went on

they also mentioned, right on point, IMO, that the turning point was not the last draft but 2017 when Olshey totally bollixed the draft. they also talked about how Olshey stubbornly refused to look for CJ trades when his value was highest.

 

You throw around the word "delusional" too easily considering we've discussed how they could get to four 1sts all summer. Herro to a 3rd team for a third 1st, and then adjusting protections with OKC to open a fourth 1st (maybe they couldn't have done this, but we're talking about the best-case package). This whole situation was emotional. This situation had a ton of people pissed off or frustrated with someone. Cronin, Dame, Aaron Goodwin, Miami... And people were pissed off at anyone who wasn't pissed off at the same person as them, because lets be honest - if we were going about it this way but directing it towards Miami or Aaron Goodwin, you would've liked it. Just the way it is. I get it.

 

Just a point to remember ...
In an interview, Lillard was asked about his sitting out the remaining games of this past season. His reply was that he had some calf issues but wanted to play -- but that the Blazers were probably protecting him from himself. With the recent hit piece, the story changed.

Trying to add things up for a reader from very separate quotes is the hallmark of a hit piece.

 

If you don't care, why are you commenting? It's an interesting conversation to me. You're not only analyzing what a random person says on the internet, you're trying to police it.

Never once claimed Herro was worth two first round picks. We talked about this all off-season bro. You're getting after me for having a conversation about hypothetical value yet here you are having a conversation about hypothetical value.

 

I'm a huge fan of Howard Beck.

Fact is this, I haven't found a single national pundit (outside of Miami) who thinks we did badly. They all think we did fantastic. They all have our back on how things went.