This. You can't just look at the minutes the young guys play. It's the quality minutes and games they play. Sharpe, Scoot, Camara, etc. get more out of being the third option and playing 28 minutes in games where LeBron, Steph, Kawhi, etc. are playing until the final buzzer because the outcome's in doubt than they gain by playing 36 minutes where the nothing's on the line and they're playing most of the second half against those teams' versions of Skylar Mays, Moses Brown and Keljin Blevins. Playing with guys like Brogdon and Grant makes the former much more possible. That's how you learn the difference between winning in the NBA and just playing in the NBA, and it speeds up their learning curve.
Guys might have to work harder in practice, study tape, train harder to earn their minutes? The horror.
When and if that happens, I guess we'll see CB's plan for handling it. My guess is that Thybulle and Camara will be the first playing-time casualties.
Or Duop. More small ball. Guys like Camara and Grant getting more of their minutes at the 4 and 5 over Reath and Jabari.
There's a difference between being competitive and contending. No the 8th or 9th seed is not contending. It might be a waste of time in purgatory. But it certainly can and normally is a competitive team. Some people may argue the benefit to the youth development from being part of a competitive team is worth more than the extra asset value of a better draft pick. Others strongly feel the opposite. Im not saying one way is always right or always wrong; just that your "competitive" description is incorrect.
Well when we have a dozen+ games of every Blazer player being 100% healthy I'll have more concerns about how we get playing time for all of our players at once being 100% healthy.
Agree with this. It's valuable to have Brogdon/Grant/Ayton/Ant/etc have the Blazers more competitive so the minutes and roles Scoot/Sharpe/etc play lead to developing a winning style of basketball. That said yes getting value in a trade such as picks for Brogdon/Grant would have value as well. So these aren't two conflicting viewpoints that are 100% right or wrong. There are benefits to either direction. If Grant can get a certain level of return in a trade it's worth losing the other benefits he provides here. Different posters will have a radically different judgement of what that tipping point is. Now having a better Blazers pick does have value. But at this time with all the young talent we already have I believe it's more valuable to have the Blazers win and get that youth winning habits than improve one years pick X spots. Remember, we already have two years of hard tanking: we don't want it to turn into a permeant culture here of losing habits and poor work ethic. So the Blazers winning is great. However if we fail to win as much as we hope there's at least some consolation we will get that better draft pick. As opposed to this years Warriors or the 2029 Bucks/Celtics who don't have that downside protection! Perhaps some posters feel the increased value of the Blazers having a higher lottery pick greatly exceeds the benefits of more wins this year. I and it sounds like many others disagree.
I also look at it like this; the Blazers winning more games this year can help the future value as a Blazer or as a trade asset for all of Brogdon, Grant, Ayton, Sharpe, Scoot, Ant, Camara, Thybulle, Walker, etc. A higher draft pick only increases the value of one Blazer player/asset. As a fan of the Blazers it's much better to have those 10 players/assets increase in value than just 1. Yes it's a nice consolation prize if we fail to win - at least we get a better draft asset though. Now a HOF level generational Wemby stud prospect could change some of this calculus. But this next draft looks more like the Another Bennett sweepstakes. Id rather see 10 Blazers players/assets be worth more than win the Bennett, or if we make a great selection, the Oladipo sweepstakes.
And i said in another post, or asked why shuffle deck chairs? To save a little salary? We do not need to save salary. So what exactly would be the benefit of shuffling the chairs and taking a chance we dont land quality personal like grant and brogdon? Plus you have been saying trade them for picks, right? Sorry. Just not following your logic.
Didn't you just logically answer your own question? Trading Brogdon/Grant and getting different vets would net the Blazers picks.
No i didnt because i already and several others answered that already. We already have picks. We need mentoring. We have enough youth at the moment and we have picks down the road. How are those picks going to mentor the youth we currently have? im not sure you read up on the convo before responding to this?( like ive never done that. Lol)
This season, Grant is the leading scorer on the team and shoots 42% on three-pointers. Last season, Grant shot a near-career-high True Shooting percentage of 60.6% while taking 14.5 shots per game scoring 20.5 points per game. Is that the kind of vet the Blazers would get back along with picks?
We have are own 7 picks, plus 3 extra over the next 7 years, minus are own, minus a net of a few 2nds. This team needs talent more than anything. Picks can get talent. Totally disagree that we have enough. For the 2025-2028 drafts (4 years) we very likely will only have 3 picks. Now Grant and Brogdon do have value and I'd be very prepared to keep them the entire season if I were GM. But I'd also explorer dealing them if we got good enough assets back (primarily good picks).
i apologize as i see i haven't specifically stated that i would also trade them at the right price. Ut i do not think ww need to trade them, or ant just to make room due to minutes on the floor, which has been the main premise. Detroit wants to give us a filler and a couple firsts? Done. But the trade options i think will be limited Nd im not interested in trading them to contenders for a couple of late firsts. Has to be lottery picks.
No, the purpose would be to get picks for Grant, not a similar vet. Then acquire a vet more for leadership than on court. Possibly even a buyout or vet signing. Would give more opportunity for Ant Ayton Scoot Sharpe to increase their offensive touches too. Definitely think the Blazers would be worse. If Scoot were playing as a ROY favorite, and TimeLord were healthy I'd be more inclined to keep Grant. Also don't expect him to continue this efficiency. But if no teams offer good picks we keep him. It's great were able to make a trade and capitalize on another team being desperate. But we don't have to force any of those types of trades, so we can hold out for great compensation.
This is an excellent way of looking at it. This draft may have no winner in 5 year’s time, after all, so there is no need to “tank”. I personally wouldn’t say we’ve been tanking, we’ve had a bunch of injuries and the team is just terrible on offense. At the end of the day, having the 6th still means there’s a good chance of landing in the top 4. The wins are going to not only help the young guys grow, but also inflate the value of the vets in a draft year without a true prize. Winning actually helps the outcome of the Dame trade look as good as possible. We’re sitting at 3 1sts and 2 swaps for Dame at the moment. If Cronin can trade Brogdon for that coveted ‘2 1sts’ package, I don’t think there’s been a GM that has milked that many picks from trading a singular star. Obviously, that only happens with a combination of a) Brogdon and Grant playing well in these games and b) us winning games to showcase these guys’ impact on winning. The goal shouldn’t be to bottom out, and it shouldn’t be to try and compete when we know the talent we have isn’t mature enough. It should be to help accelerate the learning curve of the young guys, AND waiting at the right times to capitalize on pieces that would be valuable to a contributing team. I guess you could say we wouldn’t need to seriously lose games unless a Cooper Flagg becomes available. I don’t think Cronin is going to be interested in ‘24 picks, so a team is going to pony up picks in ‘25 and beyond.
Yup. I feel like despite the strong debates about this on this thread, everyone is smiling ear to ear on the inside. This summer has at least shown that Cronin has business chops. We know that he isn’t a pushover. We know that, at least for now, he is not willing to bottom out just to bottom out, which is smart, Philly was terrible for way too may seasons to only have the success they’ve had recently. We (maybe it’s just I) can at least assume that Cronin can form a smart business. To me, that was Cronin “crowning” the #1 contender in the east by trading Dame to the Bucks. Even if they aren’t the best team on paper, the acquisition of that magnitude at least gives off that perception. He then trades the returning piece to the next best team for about just as much as he got for Dame, and the east looks relatively balanced again. To follow through with this would be to work with Miami and milk them of both those ‘28 and ‘30 1sts imo. But no matter what happens, I’m sure the outcome will be among one of the better ones for this team.
