Blazers ranked 3rd worst future of NBA teams ahead of only Wizards and Kings

ESPN put out their NBA franchises future power rankings. https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/in...wer-rankings-predicting-best-worst-franchises

The Blazers dropped from no 18 last year to now no 28. This is how they ranked in the five components;
Players 27
Management 29
Money 7
Market T17
Draft 3

Here is their explanation;

Only teams worse were the Wizards at 29 and Kings at 30.

 

Painful to see this, and more painful that I totally agree with it.

The franchise trusted the most critical aspect of a rebuild to an interim GM that has shown and explained how he is in way over his head. Plus whatever stupid middling cost cutting moves from ownership. The problem is now even if the franchise gets an amazing GM, its too late. It will be a long time to improve this shit roster to be even a handful of moves away from contending.

Kind of surprising that our market is actually ranked in the middle of the league. Goes against Olshey's excuse of how he could never get free agents or players here.

 

IIRC there was already a thread on this a week or so ago. I remember saying 'fuck espn' in it

 

Well someone can merge if they want. I don't follow the team or board like I used to. I can handle the team losing or rebuilding. Heck rebuilding is often more exciting than rooting for a flawed playoff team.

But what we are seeing now is far more disappointing; with the incompetence, lack of vision, sabotaging of long term future, prioritizing dollars ahead of talent, rumors of offering lottery assets for overrated players, and inexcusable poor management decisions that have all gotten much worse since Olshey left.

Now I primarily blame Cronin... but its hard for me to know exactly how much of that blame should be focused on Jody/Vulcan.

Although many league experts actually say managing an owner is a critical part of being a great GM. Thus perhaps Jody and Vulcans faults are the faults of Cronin.

 

I'm not going to spend much time defending Cronin. But it's clear to me his mandate was based upon a decade of Olshey mismanagement and the foundation of that mandate was to dismantle olshey's roster and dig out of olshey's salary-cap hole

personally, I think the Blazers are in a much better place right now than they were when Olshey was fired. Portland was going nowhere, stuck on a treadmill at the end of a dead end street in purgatory. Getting out of that predicament was not going to be damage-free or pain-free

and again: FUCK espn and that idiotic ranking. Portland's talent is not 27th in the league

 

Totally agree, we can debate about the returns we got in each of the major trades that were completed. But lack of vision is something I strong disagree with. Cronin didn’t have years to rebuild and is having to make a splash to keep his new title, other GMs know this and are going to use that for leverage in any negotiation he enters into right now. I think he’s done a pretty decent job considering the hand he’s been dealt.

 

I guess the Blazers will be a surprise to rest of the league next season. Or maybe just to those idiots.

 

just remember the same morons had the lakers and nets as the top teams last september. power rankings are click bait and mean shit.

 

I don't think our future is bleak. I actually think if our goal is to build a contender around Dame, that can be accomplished this off season with the right moves and/or picks. That being said we are not going to have any cap space. Right now if we opt out on Bledsoe and opt in on Hart which seems like the right thing to do, we will have ~78M in salary. Then you add in ~40M so we do still have Ant and Nurk and that puts us at ~118M then if our picks stay about where they're supposed to that's another ~6M and at least one second rounder that costs ~1M. That's ~125M when the cap is going to be ~122. That's also 13 roster spots taken up. If we want to keep the option of going way over the tax so we can use our TPEs then we would only be able to use the TPMLE for that last roster spot or we can sign Ingles to any amount we want. A lot of different moves could be made besides just standing pat with what we have and adding two lotto picks (if we get that second one) but almost every likely scenario in which we are trying to build a contender around Dame leaves us with no cap space.

I did start the thread that this is a duplicate of and I don't know if I just delivered the info or gave an opinion but I think our future is bright. If Dame and Ant can be more than the sum of their parts on offense and not be a huge liability on D then we are in a really great place and if they're not a fit let's just hope whoever is running the team is smart enough not to have this team making the same mistake two times in a row and we move one of them for the considerable value they should have. We have a lot of good talent Dame, Ant, Hart and Keon are a really fucking good back court, Nas, Justise, Trendon and Greg are pretty good forwards and Nurk is one of the best space eating bigs in the game. Then we have our pick which will land somewhere in the early to mid lotto... so that should be another really good player. We have the possibility that I still see as highly probable of having a late lotto pick too. We have an early second rounder and one of the last second rounders. We have an almost 21M and a 6M TPE. We have the opportunity to take the protections off of our pick we owe Chicago for a small thing like cash or a second rounder, thus giving us access to our future picks starting in 2025 to move. We do also have the opportunity until some time in July when we'll either have to guarantee it or opt out to use Bledsoe's salary to combine with others if we're trying to land a player in a trade with a bigger salary than we can fit into the TPE.

We'll know better who is for sure running the team and what exactly we have on May 17th but the future looks bright. Go Blazers!

 

But we’re tanking! That’s the ticket to future success, or haven’t you heard?

 

When your team is being described in the same sentence with the Kings and Wizards it should give you some pause.

Not going to pay to read the rest but I'm betting numbers 25-27 are not really great examples of teams we want to mimic.

 

How can the Lakers not be the worst, aging brittle superstars and no draft picks

 

They will move off of Davis this off season is my guess. Russ too if they can find a taker?

 

After the trades, the Blazers beat the Bucks and the Grizz on the road. It was obvious that they would not get a good Draft pick with those players and the new coaching emphasis, so nagging, little injuries that players might play through, became cause to sit out.

Bring those players back (Nurk, Ant, Hart, Winslow) and add Dame who was out before the trades with his injury. Add in a Lottery pick (fingers crossed for a Top-3) and then the possible asset from a 2nd Lottery pick, and the Blazers will be well above #27 barring injuries.

If you could find win totals for next year that were made based on the ESPN projection being so low, I would make a wager.