We got screwed when Dame tried force us to trade him to only Miami. That took a lot off the table. Teams would have been willing to give more with more competition. Under the circumstances I think we got the best deal for him we could.
We are going to have all those assets after Dame's time and likely Giannis's time in Milwaukee ends. Maybe they will both come here to join our developed guys and win one.
So, I think we doing great. Last year with Dame was waste of both, Blazers and Dame's time. Now, the main problem we have is who to trade after this season - Ant or Scoot? Hard decision, but it is good problem to have. We got Grant and Brog to trade for more young potential. I still believe Ayton can be good piece with youngsters. We got nice backup bigs. We got Camara. We got Mike to make draft decisions. We got draft picks. I'm not really sure where is the problem.
Not a good problem to have. We aren't the type of franchise that can afford to keep trading good players away and hoping more will come. We really need to work on finding and keeping talented players. We can't just keep drafting guys trading them. We also have to be careful not to get into a position where we have to overpay a bunch of underperforming players in order to keep them around. For a small market franchise like ours that has trouble with bringing in big names free agents or even good ones and trouble keeping players around after we trade for them...or again having to overpay those players, we have to strike a delicate balance. We have to be somewhat quick on our rebuild, a couple seasons or it's going to collapse in on us again.
That's the hope, but hardly a certainty. There's a lot of history of small market teams remaining lottery fodder for looooong periods of time. Rebuilds through the lottery have to net you a superstar in order to be a realistic pathway to contention. The Spurs have consistently had the luck to grab those types of players. The Blazers....not so much.
I don't want "more". I want SF on the same level. We can't afford to keep Ant and Scoot and play them both + Sharpe. It's nonsense.
my perspective is that I wanted Portland to make at least one honest effort to put a contender around Dame. Olshey never did that and neither did Cronin, IMO but if Dame did ask out, I wanted Portland to also trade Nurkic, Grant, and Ant and actually launch a full rebuild instead of continue straddling the most convenient fences around. I especially wanted the Blazers to STOP repeating mistakes of the past at the same time they recognized what the modern NBA was about. Meaning no undersized wings who can't defend; no overpaid C's; no injury prone big men. They don't appear to have learned any of those lessons
This is it. Right here. Well put and this is my sinking feeling. If we are going to do it, do it all now. Stop straddling the fence/treading water. Swim to the shore, start over and take another dive into the deep end. But stop doing circles like a one footed duck in water. I only see this changing with new ownership and i'm not sure we will see that anytime soon, or I think it would have already happened.
I'm not saying we can afford to pay them all. I'm saying we need to make very careful decisions for this to pan out.
Imho dame is too old to be the best player on a team. Look at how many 34 yo lead a team to a ring. The list is short and is limited to goats. Dame is good but not even close to that good. The odds are stacked against success in such a scenario
Hmmmm? If they just would have done what I said to do before they did what they did they wouldn't be doing what they are doing and that would be way better than where they are and where they will probably end up.
All the talk is about the players involved in the rebuild. I think we might have some pretty decent talent, we need someone who can coach and then we may better understand what we have. My feeling is that so long as Chauncey is the coach, nice guy that he seems, the Blazers are doomed to a perpetual lottery look-see as he doesn't seem able to build and maintain a coherent team identity nor hold non-performer's (such as lack of defensive effort) accountable. If they are not accountable, why would we expect them to change? Yeah, they may have the occasional good game, but overall, it is chimera.
I wanted them to trade Dame after getting punked by the 3rd string backcourt of the Nuggets. Imagine the haul we would have got back, Dame would have had a bigger window to wind a title, and we would be further along in this process. Instead, we kept Dame for 2 more years with terrible results and then started the rebuild....which is why it feels like this rebuild is taking so long. It is really just the first year, but because of how bad we were, it seems like it has been much longer.
My biggest concern about this Blazers rebuild is the Front Office intervening in the natural flow of basketball. If the Blazers do get better in the next couple seasons, and begin inching towards a playoff spot, how will pulling the young starters to tank for a pick effect team chemistry? Former team captain Lillard couldn't hack being asked to lose. Dame packed his bags for Miami, and ended up in Milwaukee. Will Scoot be OK in year 3 or 4 getting benched for the final 6 weeks, so Cronin can cheat for a better pick?
