But we're not gonna. Which is why I advocated trading Dame and rebuilding. Our best/only young talent was just about to get paid big money without being able to prove he's worth it, so we're crossing our fingers he is. (Our other young talent in Little has proven even less.) I feel like I've swung from optimism about this team to more "meh" and spending this much on Ant and extending Dane... it just doesn't make winning very viable with the rest of this roster.
Powell wasn't a bad deal if he was going to be useful to us, but he was in the way, and age made it an undesirable deal. There were other guys teams could get who were younger, taller, or made less. There wasn't a market for Powell.
What if management loves Dame and told him we will do everything we can to put a contender together for him over the next two years, but if we are not looking like a top four seed the trade deadline after next, we will shop the league to gauge the return from a team he chooses and look to go into a full rebuild with Ant as the only really high paid guy on the roster, sharpe taking form and the haul of picks from trading Dame, I could see giving it two years and then pulling the plug and we could still be In decent shape for the future. And my middle name is run on sentence.
Ok, so what in his game did he "struggle" for 2 months then? His shooting was good, his assists were good... maybe, and I might be going out on a limb here, the person who said he "sucked for 2 months" as a starter might be full of it?
He's too old for that contract and his playing style and size. Again, if we didn't have Hart it would be fine. But nobody was going to give us anything of value for Powell.
I'm guessing he was referring to the other part of the game besides offense. It's been so bad on this team for so long, some people forget it is a VERY important part of the game.
After seeing the contracts being handed out, i'm not sure I agree with that. He isn't too old for that contract either. He would be what, 32 when its done?
They MIGHT have that approach/attitude, but it's a bad one. It's the same thing they've been doing for the last four years or so. But in 2.5 years Dame will be older and Sharpe will be closer to a new contract and the Blazers will not have added much due to trading so many first rounders, with few bright spots on the horizon coming out of the draft (including one to get Grant). I don't know what we could get for Dame now, but it has to be more than it will be in another couple of seasons... and while I know it's gotta be tough to sell tickets to a 20-win team (which we'd probably be after trading Dame), it seems like a better move in the long run than having a perpetual 45-win team that'll crash down to 20 wins and a bare cupboard. Hope is worth something and the team doesn't really offer much at the moment IMO. Mine is "danger". Good to meet you
Both Powell and CJ had contracts that were going to get better as time went on--they were going to see the market go up (making them relatively more valuable) and the remaining years go down (so the financial burden would be lowered). Giving two starting-level guys away for nothing... it still hurts. I acknowledge that Cronin might have had to do it for financial reasons, but if that's the case it still hurts and I am no more confident now that we'll spend wisely.
I said it wrong. He had two good months as a starter and sucked the other two months. That's what I meant.
Norm just bricked two clutch time freethrows and a layup that would've put him in the playoffs losing to CJ who then went on to lose in the first round...both guys have lost early in the playoffs last two seasons....Ant looked a hell of a lot better than either guy when they shut him down this season...I don't miss Norm or CJ and I'm happy we moved on from Roco and Norm ..even happier with Grant, Hart and Winslow.
Better to get guys that are never in the playoffs, I suppose? That's a little unfair, as they have 54 combined playoff appearances in 20 combined NBA seasons. Of course, it's a team game and nobody can make it to the playoffs alone (see LeBron this year) but Winslow and Hart have showed a remarkable inability to be on good teams and Grant hasn't sniffed the playoffs since leaving Denver.
I don't think that's much at all for CJ... and we could have gotten Grant for just about any future draft picks, so I don't see moving CJ as instrumental to that deal (OTHER than maybe to clear salary space).
Good point. I'm not a very big Grant fan and don't think he'll be a big difference-maker here, but you rebutted my "we could have gotten him anyway" assertion very well.