Exclusive Ayton is agreeing to buyout

1) I understand and I'm not saying that people shouldn't react and comment about each move. It's fun and differing opinions are awesome to discuss. It just seems like there is zero nuance to many of the discussions here. Moves are judged as if they can't be part of a bigger plan sometimes and it's mind boggling to me.

2) As far as taking on Jrue, I think it has more to do with the overall offseason plan for the roster and how our teams finances will be structured. In this CBA you MUST have a large salary in order to complete trades for any potential star player. If they knew Ayton was being traded for another expiring or bought out and they have plans to move JG this summer, we have literally 0 long-term high value contracts on our books. Even with JG and Jrue we still have $55M in cap space next summer right now. If they are telling the truth about keeping Jrue, then paying him $30M this season to be a 3rd guard, vet influence and hopefully show last year was not the beginning of a decline, he then only has two years left on the deal and one year before becoming an expiring.

 

yeah, so far, Cronin failed the contract tests. He overpaid Simons, Nurkic, and Grant. The Dame extension was just boiler-plate cost of keeping a superstar. He matched the Thybulle offer sheet and gave Payton a max MLE. Hopefully, he can restrain himself on the Camara and Sharpe extensions

to his credit, Cronin seems willing to erase his mistakes instead of constantly doubling-down like Olshey. He traded Payton a few months after signing him. He added a couple of 2nd's to Simons and moved him. And now, less than 2 years after making Ayton the center-piece of the Dame trade, at the time saying that Ayton was "a top-5 C with room to grow", he dumps him in a buyout

there's still Grant and maybe there's a trade on the horizon. But the thing is, Grant's skills actually fit this Blazer roster much better than either Simons or Ayton (I'm speaking 2023-24 Grant, not 2024-25 Grant). Yeah, it would be best if his salary was half what it was, but ya can't win-em-all

 

Yes and no. In a vaccum I can see your point, but I also think the last 1-2 years has shown many teams how prohibitive this CBA has come to competing over a long time span. This has snowballed into how NBA teams are viewing contracts right now which kind of puts the whole league and trade values in limbo because we have players playing on contracts from the previous CBA where the value and salaries just do not match at this point.

 

It’s not too far of a stretch to presume this was the plan all along and that maybe we see more deals go down when FA officially begins.

 

Man the blood is in the water to land DOMINAYTON.

 

100% agree

 

Yeah, I have no problem with this. The only problem I have with the Ant trade is that it put more money on the books long term but I still think that Jrue could be very tradeable and might even be traded before he ever plays a game here.

I'm just in wait and see mode. No judgement until opening night and still there never is a final judgment.

I really do hope that Scoot, Shaedon, Tou, Deni and Clingan are the starters for our team at some point this season.

 

via DusterBuster realgm:

 

I've been pretty critical of Cronin in the past, but I gotta say I'm pretty happy with what's happening. You can't say he isn't being active.

 

Probably the best working theory out there. It’s pretty much spot on in certain cases.

 

That's the "rumor" someone else posted in the Grant thread, from the Blazer Surprise guys

 

I hope this is true.

 

I wonder what kind of compensation we would have to add to Grant to pull off a…

Rui
Vandy
Dalton

for

Grant/Orlando 1st

Would that do it?

 

I would not. If you are giving up a 1st, I suspect you can find a better deal sooner or later. It's not like the Blazers are in a rush to get off Grant's contract at this point. Either start Grant or Sharpe off the bench while you look for a better deal, imho.

 

Never heard of them. Seems our very own Mediocre Man has the same "intel"

 

I’d definitely give up the Orlando pick for Dalton.

 

You don't know that. If we had a shorter or chaper expiring contract instead of Nurkic we could have likely got more value back in those trades. Maybe we only have to give up the one lottery pick in the Deni trade.

I never said I was upset we didn't get value from DA yesterday. I never expected much if any value. I actually wasn't even critical of acquiring Ayton - I was critical of keeping him over a year later when it was obvious he was not a part of our future and giving this stupid AytonGrantAnt trio all the shots as well as minutes they got. I was highly critical of every one of the Ant, Nurk, Grant contracts the day they were agreed to.

Plenty of posters here will criticize everything the team does. Others praise even the dumbest moves the team makes. I enjoy reading and posting reasonable judgements on Blazer moves.

I'm just praising moves that were good and criticizing moves that were bad.

 

This is a stupid argument I often see repeated. Every season every NBA team will hand out salaries to get to the salary floor. You can just overpay a player on a one year expiring contract. That contract can be used to match salary in a trade. There is NEVER a need to acquire a 3 year 100+ million contract just to "complete star player" trades. There are alternatives that a team MUST do and provide far less downside risk.

Now maybe the Jrue trade ends up being a great deal. Maybe he plays well and greatly exceeds the worth of the rest of his contract. My comment isn't to judge that element of the trade.

I'm just saying the justification of overpaid long term contracts to match incoming players in trades is a complete fallacy. One year expiring deals will always be preferred as a pure salary matching mechanism and will always be acquired before the season if the team is short on salary.

 

I wouldn't give up an unprotected pick for him. He has nowhere to play right now anyways.

 

I believe he is willing to take a buyout also. Got the impression in his end of season statement that he wasn't planning on being here.