Zombie Blazers Rejected Warriors' Offer Of David Lee, Brandon Rush For LMA

He was right.

 

In review, ultimately, we turned over Aldridge, Wes Matthews, and Batum for Milovan Rakovitch. Danny Ainge turned his aging regime -- Garnett, Pierce, Allen -- into three lottery picks.

I'm not saying our aging core was the equivalent of Boston's, but it was probably worth more than Milovan Rakovitch....apologies to Milovan Rakovitch. Maybe someday Ainge will long to return home.

 

To be fair, our core was worth about 1/10th what Boston’s was; Wes was injured, LMA was heartless, and Batum was completely inconsistent. Milovan is worth 1/3 of a pick.

 

The audacity of those cawk munchers.

 

Many people were really keen on Asik back then. How times change.

 

I was going to say the same thing! It's kind of funny reading these old threads. Asik and Lin for Aldridge would have been awful.

 

Garnett was 37 and Pierce was 36 when they were both traded to Brooklyn. Were they really worth that much?

 

Not everyone gets to fleece a Russian oligarch. The first GM to do it isn't a genius because he did it.

 

I think it was more the circumstances. The Boston Celtics were coming off of a .500 season in which they lost to the Knicks in the 1st round. Garnett and Pierce were still under contract so it made trading them a possibility as it was apparent to everyone (except Brooklyn) that their careers were fading.

The Blazers on the other hand were on the rise. Olshey built a 54 win team that made the 2nd round. The next season they were likely going to get the 2nd seed before the injury to Wes and had Aldridge saying he was going to re-sign and be the best Blazer ever. I'm not sure where it would have even been possible to trade away players on that team. I guess you could argue he could have traded Aldridge and others the year he took the job or after the first season but their value wasn't as good as it could have been. Pierce and Garnett were champions, at that point Aldridge hadn't even been a part of a winning playoff series.

 

This point of view I can understand and fully support.

Trading your best players when you are having a very good season and look like you might compete is pretty much always a bad idea. Obviously at the time it wasn't known that Aldridge would ditch the team to join San Antonio and that we also would let Matthews and Batum go, in a hindsight we might have done better to let them all go when they were at their peak but who in their right mind does that? You would literally need a crystal ball to justify such decision to the fan base.

Celtics already won championship before and they were clearly not going to build any future around Garnett and Pierce as you say. They found a team that was desperate and got amazing assets in return because Brooklyn expected their picks to be in low 20s for the considerable future, not taking into consideration that players age and get progressively worse after 30. I don't get what they were thinking but it worked out brilliantly for Celtics. They got Tatum, Brown and Irving back for Garnett and Pierce, wow. There was no such deal available for Blazers though and even if someone was willing to offer two or three picks for Aldridge and Matthews, we wouldn't have had any reason to take it at the time.

If, however, there were signs that Aldridge was dithering then he should have been moved. I don't think we had a clue.

 

LaMarcus left the team in a ringer. He says he want to be the greatest Blazers, then books. You don't get rid of a talent like LA unless he's a standup guy and tells you he wants to leave, get what you can. LA blindsided the Blazers and their fanbase. I appreciate the years he did play for us, but the way he left was BS. He would look so good on this team it hurts. Dame, Nurk, CJ, Chief and LA. Damn! Benedict Aldridge, damn.

 

Nah. We saw how the team performed with LA and it was middle-of-the-road Playoff team...as long as he had someone better than him on the team (Roy/Dame). When he was the best player on the team, we were a lotto team. We've essentially stayed the same (middle-of-the-road POs) without him - he's not a difference-maker.

 

None of this happened

 

I wonder why Portland had been engaging in trade talks for Aldridge if they didn't know he wanted out?

 

That team was never getting the 2 seed. We had gone on a major losing skid before Wes got hurt.

 

Brooklyn needed a superstar team to draw in fans and compete. Russian guy promised title in 5 years when he took over. They thought putting up pictures of Deron, Joe, Paul, Kevin, and Brook outside Barclays Center not to mention Nets legend Jason Kidd on the sideline would make the Nets a hot ticket and even if Paul and Kevin were on the downside of their career, maybe they could squeeze another title out of them with a "better" supporting cast than they had in Boston. That team ended up sweeping the Heat 4-0 in the regular season. It just didn't work out in the playoffs.

 

I'd love to know where Greek Freak was on their draft board. Were there heated and passionate discussions weighing CJ vs Freak? Was there table pounding for Donovan Mitchell this past summer? Was a guy like Jokic even on their radar?

It's difficult to add cornerstone players without a top 10 pick, but every draft seems to have at least one guy picked later that does become one. And we're never in on that action. Maybe Vulcan needs to look into why.

 

Just because they swept one lEastern Conference team doesn't mean they didn't mortgage the future and were ~12 million over the tax line with no upcoming picks. That franchise totally screwed themselves because of "Russian guy's promise".

 

I was pretty vocal about Mitchell.