Not much he can do to change what happened last summer. This looks to me to be a pretty good way to put the team in a better for this summer. And getting Deni on that cheap contract is a long-term win.
Who is the better option to listen to for the Blazers? He's at least entertaining and does have good NBA acumen. I'm all for listening to someone better but its not like we got some amazing deep portfolio of top tier Blazers podcasts.
The clip going around now showing how Schmitz thought that Deni could be the best player in the 2020 draft (in 5 years time) makes me a little sus of his talent scouting skills. Thats the same draft with Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton and Tyrese Maxey. (btw, what are the odds of two Tyrese's being drafted in the same year and both being really good players??)
Mike Richman provides a good amount of intelligence in his podcasting. Marang is sometime hard to listen to as his loud screaming and laughing. But in general I don’t hate him. He sometimes need to make us feel how plugged in he is and I don’t like it.
As an isolated decision, ok fine. But when the Blazers repeatedly overpay their own free agents, then have to send out additional assets to get out of the tax, its just a stupid way to go about building a roster especially when rebuilding. History of the Blazers doing this goes back to Olshey in 2016 and guess who was his right hand man then. Hoping we don't see the Blazer continue these mistakes in July with Ayton/Ant extensions.
My favorite wrong media was Dwight Jaynes pushing his friend David Kahn message about giving Nic Batum a contract. Kahn was at that time the Wolves GM. Minnesota didn't even have cap space to offer it, the NBA rejected the offer sheet. The Wolves fans were blaming the NBA since the wolves had "implied" cap space. I kind of miss the days of some truly horrible GM's in the league, it was so entertaining.
So listening to Dirt/Sprague from earlier this morning. Dirt had an interesting point. If you remove the Dame part, and you only look at the Jrue trade, would you be happy with this trade for Jrue knowing what we know now and making an assumption that it's the Celtics pick that conveys to Washington in 2029: Jrue/2 second rounders for Deni Avdija/RWIII
Richman has decent content at times I just can't stand his delivery and mannerisms.... not sure what it is. Also he needs a cohost. I actually really like the Casey and Freeman podcast they did years ago, those guys had a good dynamic. Was great to have Casey insider access but still have Freeman on there to discuss items such as now when moves aren't official.
Yuck - thats a pretty horrible deal. I liked the Boston trade at the time, but not flipping Brogdon/Timelord at that time seems to have really backfired. I guess if it was just a gamble their value would go up, we were working to close trades, and we lost that bet I'm ok with it. If the holdup was trying to win at the start of last season and we turned down good offers for them its a fail on Cronin/Blazers. Very hard to judge unless we know what those offers were. I guess you might need to add Thybulle into this comparison somehow as resigning him to that stupid contract caused the Blazers to go into the luxury tax and lead to them getting less assets in the Wizards deal.
Dwight has me blocked on Twitter because of that whole Batum Minnesota debacle. I called him out for not knowing how the cba works, as it was quite obvious he was getting his info from khan. And bam, only person I am blocked by.
I would have done the same thing. You need assets to rebuild as well. It was not a bad strategy to try to get something for Grant and Thybulle as opposed to letting them walk for nothing. Will it work? Too soon to know but it was an aggressive move. They gave Washington an extra pick for Avdija because they think he is really good not to get under the cap. They didn't take any more players back in the trade to stay under the cap. But the extra 1st was for a player they valued. Again...it was an aggressive move. Only time will tell if it was a smart one.
Same justifications I heard in 2016 when we gave Evan Turner $70 million and Meyers Leonard $50 million. Mediocre role players on overpaid contracts aren't an asset - their a liability. Nothing is worth more and the far superior option.
If Meyers and Grant were similar in value then I would agree. But they are not. Turner was not our player, so again not the same. Thybulle is a much smaller contract than either and salaries have gone up in 8 years. Again, not the same
Also I think there were times when Banton felt like he HAD to score because there was no one else on the court who could. I guess we will get a better take on him in the coming season.
Mike Richmond for sure. The only thing not great about him is that he is good friends with Jason Quick. But that's about all I can find
Good trade by Cronin, who can now move into a regular posture in negotiations post Dame trade. Worst case scenario, Portland ships out Deni for a first 2 years from now—now you've swapped a 29 pick for a draft you're less capitalized in.
