Any chance keeping these four past the trade deadline and past next off-season will be the best direction for the Blazers? Brogdon provides a great veteran presence on both sides of the ball. This both elevates the teams ability to win now but especially helps the other young players develop properly. Sharpe has looked more effective at SF than expected, particularly his individual defense. He still can play the bulk of his minutes at SG, it's just SF some of the time appears fine. The Blazers SF options are underwhelming so there is no urgency to free up all SF minutes for those lineups. The Blazers team defense is much better than expected so perhaps a Scoot Ant defensive duo for a portion of the game will be fine. Blazers primarily need offense production so losing any of these 4 (likely Ant or Brogdon) will further harm the teams biggest need. Scoot might not be ready to be a franchise PG as soon as we hoped at the draft. Injuries - what are the # of games we actually expect all 4 of these guys to be active? Seems like it's only a third of the season. It's great right now if there's a few missed games we can still have a legit starter instead of last year giving Brandon Jennings 35 minutes or starting Keon at PG.
Past the trade deadline? Unfortunately I can see it. Would prefer one of Ant/Brogdon are moved. Ant will be coming off injury so he might get lesser offers, but the injury will heal 100%. His value will be good soon after his return. As for next off season, yes someone needs to go if no deal at the trade deadline.
IMO, both Ant and Brogdon should be moved and if it was only one departing it should be Ant but I'm pretty sure the Blazers are stubbornly clinging to a running back a 10th straight season of going with a 6'3-bad-defense starting SG, so if one was moved it's likely going to be Brogdon. He may have more trade value around the league anyway. He's much bigger, more versatile, plays defense, shoots well from the arc, and was good enough coming off the bench to win the 6th-man-of-year award most of the awkwardness with the starting lineups and rotation than many of us see would be eliminated if Ant was a 6th man instead of starter
Ideally a team would want a long, high-level, point-of-attach defender somewhere in the 1-2-3 positions. The 72-win Bulls team had a starting 1-2-3 of Michael Jordan, Ron Harper and Scottie Pippen, with sharpshooter Steve Kerr off the bench to back up Harper. Kerr and Harper's average playing time per game was 23 minutes for both players.
I have been going back and forth on which one id prefer to stay, to the point i changed my mind while writing this three times.... at this point i dont think it really matters, trade whoever gets a better return or whoever doesn't want the job IE, Ant coming off the bench or brogdon wants to go ring chasing and go from there. Ant will give you more offense and keep defenders honest which hopefully opens up ayton a bit but we sacrifice shae or scoot to the bench as well as some defensive prowess, while brogdon will be more of a floor general, better defense, 6MOY, Vet, has came off the bench before and doesn't seem to have an issue with it but is kinda middle of the roadish shooter and can have defenders sag off a bit. Neither one of them is perfect and both have their pros and cons, but I think it's more about figuring out whatever return could get for our tradeable players (Grant, Ant, Brogdon ect.) and how we want to navigate plugging the holes we do have in our roster, either from players returned from the trade, or during the draft next year. Gut tells me to keep Ant since we need shooters desperately and while i think brogdon's defense has been really good I don't think it will be devastating blow to our overall defense. But again I keep flip flopping on it. To me it really is about the return of the actual trades and not really about which actual player to trade away because lets be fair, either way it will be fine as long as the players being traded aren't named scoot or shae but one of them gots ta go.
I think Brogdon's value will be high enough that we have to cash it in during this season before the trade deadline. Depending on what comes back from the Brogdon trade, I could see Ant moved as well. If Malcolm is traded established vets have to be added, hopefully vets that will be fine with little to no playing time or at least only the balance of what getting our young guys maximum reps allows. If Ant is traded shooting has to be added.
I’m sure I’ll be happy with what Brogdon fetches in a trade at the deadline. The question is Ant. How much of a return is Ant going to bring back? Is Ant good enough that the purgatory NBA GMs would take Ant over any combo guard prospect in the next 5 years? Is a team like the Pistons going to be willing to give up Ivey and say, the #6 overall pick in ‘24 for Ant, where we can draft two top end forwards in this draft? Otherwise, I’m not really interested. I don’t think Scoot, Ant, and Shae is a terrible situation to be in. One of Scoot or Ant will have to come out early and then play more with the second unit. Right now, it might be better to have Scoot come out early so Ant and Shae play most of the quarter in the backcourt. Eventually, Scoot is going to be good enough that Ant comes out earlier and basically operates as the 6th man despite not actually being the 6th man.
so you're only interested in the unrealistic? Portland had the 7th pick and used it on Sharpe. Would you have traded that 7th pick (Sharpe) and a 'promising' young player for Ant?
Sorry, I should’ve mentioned that ideally, the prize in an Ant trade would be a foward on his rookie deal. I don’t see that deal right now. But yes, I wouldn’t trade Ant for picks unless it was a pick that high. We’ve already invested a lot of years into Ant to give him up for a 1st. Depending on when Brogdon gets traded, we’ll get a decent sample size of Scoot, Ant, and Shae. If it still looks horrid, I’ll concede to trying Ant off the bench. I think that a 1st is the price of a really good 6th man anyway, so might as well try that before even thinking about moving him for filler and a 1st.
So I wonder a bit about this? First. If he waited a year he still would not have been a #1 pick. Then I got to wonder? Does he get picked before Miller or Scoot? Could he have fallen to #4 this last draft? I think he made a good decision going into the Draft when he did but I'm a bit biased obviously. The remarkable thing is as good as he played at the end of last season and as well as he has done this year with the numbers he is putting up he still cannot crack the top 25 list of players under 25. I wonder does he make it to All Star week rising stars game? Does anyone even know he is in the league at this point?
Exactly this. If Brogdon isn't unhappy and you aren't being blown away by offers for him, hold onto him. He's a perfect mentor for our younger guards, especially Scoot. I'd say even more so than Lillard was in many ways.
Again...it all comes down to the return. Sometimes addition by subtraction is a good idea, but I don't think this is a good example of it. However I think some of you might.
I would love to keep them all. This would keep all all fresh. Jell this team for ripening. I feel we have a winning combination.
