And I was right ... Of course, things got a little derailed again, but is anybody sad we flipped Wallace for Damian?
I guess the question is what do people mean when they say they want to "blow the team up"? Trade everyone for picks and ending contracts? Keep Dame, trade CJ for another good player, keep a few of the other guys and off-load the rest? Keep both Dame and CJ, tank for a lotto pick and trade or dump everyone else? Then there's the question of when you make the call to detonate the dynamite. Do it now so you get as many ping pong balls as possible? Wait until the All-Star break to see if the team gets things turned around before pulling the plug? Tank now, but wait until summer to make trades since you can probably get the best return on CJ then? And then there's the even more important question about what do we discuss next year? I assume we'll become the new T'Wolves and be looking at about a 4-5 year (or maybe even longer) time period swirling around in lottery land. That's usually what happens when you blow things up. They get blown apart and it takes a long time to put the pieces back together. So, yeah, whoopee. Let's blow this team up. Sounds like a blast...pun intended.
I like a picks and cap space type rebuild, not a "let's suck and do so for a few years" This should mean something like: -Trading Plumlee at the deadline for a mid-late 1st (17th?) -Trading CJ and Crabbe to PHI for theirs (5th?), and LALs pick (7th?) -Trading Turner and Leonard to Brooklyn (as a salary dump) -Trading Aminu and Davis to a contender and get back maybe one late first (TOR, 26th?) So in the end we'd have the 5th, 7th, 15th, 17th, 26th, and 29th picks. What a connection of picks. I think you then try to trade 7th, 15th, 26th, (and 29th if needed) to get up to 3 or 4 to take Josh Jackson Then, we'd be able to take Jayson Tatum 5th DX has Giles available at 17, and I'd take a chance there. If not, Ivan Rabb or Tyler Lydon. So then we'd have: Lillard, Noel, Harkless, and pieces, counting for about $60M. Then, we could try to land someone in free agency. Maybe Jrue Holiday to be our starting SG and take some pressure off the rookies? Maybe Serge Ibaka to be our PF? If we could land both we'd be very competitive, and a good defensive team. Lillard / Holiday Holiday / Jackson Harkless / Tatum Ibaka / Giles Noel / Vonleh?? If not, we could help teams clear cap space by taking on salary with draft picks to add to our stash (ex. T. Chandler) Lillard / ? Jackson / ? Harkless / Tatum Giles / Vonleh Noel / Chandler That's certainly not a bad route to go IMO.
If we can trade for established young talent (Noel) and trade for multiple lottery picks this year (ex. CJ for PHIs picks) them I don't think it'd be a 4-5 year window. NOs a good drafter and this is a deep class.
Do we have to have a minimum salary at the end of the season? If so, and if we traded all those players, would we?
Have you looked at the Timberwolves collection of draft picks and their record? Or Philadelphia? If you're going the route you suggest, you may as well trade Lillard too because it would be cruel and unusual punishment to subject him to wasting his prime years nurse-maiding a bunch of newbies that you hope may one day be able to play basketball at an NBA level.
The punishment for not reaching the minimum salary is just paying up to the minimum salary divided by the players. So it's not really a punishment.
Philadelphia got maybe one star from the process that has played (Embiid). They took Okafor over many better players, and Noel was a defensive center surrounded by a trash offense. Minnesota drafted a very overrated Andrew Wiggins (Rudy Gay 2.0), drafted Johnny Flynn over Steph Curry, reached for Rubio at 5. Lavine is a solid scorer but nothing else, and Towns is a star We already a seasoned star, so we're already ahead. Jackson and Tatum's floor is of a good starting NBA player. I guess maybe you haven't watched them play, but they're studs. Make the right draft selections and you can have borderline all-star players a couple years into their career (ex. D. Lillard, C.J. McCollum) We'd also have cap space to try and sign roll players that fit with Lillard and the group. If we don't land anyone, we could try again for the next couple years, or take on bad contracts with the reward if extra picks which we could use in a trade down the line.
To me, being willing to blow it up means no sacred cows--if a good opportunity comes along that involves dealing Lillard or McCollum, you have to be willing to pull the trigger because neither player is a transcendent player that can drag a team to mediocrity single-handedly or to championship contention with just a little bit of help. That's not a slight on either guy--that's a massive standard and not many players meet it. Which is why not many players are, or should be, untouchable. You don't trade either guy just to do it--only if the looting is good and has a reasonable chance to set the team up to be stronger in the future.
I think the fact that this thread 4 years ago could have been written in any of the years since, and still have been relevant, shows we need to FINALLY, BLOW THIS SHIT UP.
We're a bit fecked in terms of cap space. $50M will be going to Lillard and McCollum next season, additional $35M to Crabbe and Turner. The only player who we shouldn't be looking to trade because his contract makes it pointless is Harkless. Well, maybe also Aminu as $7M is fine for him even as a bench player, would have said the same about Ed Davis but he hasn't even been a $7M player this year. In order of players we ought to be looking to trade I'd say it's Crabbe first, then Turner, then CJ. I love CJ but if we can get a good return for him and have someone else pay $25M a year to him, it might be worth a shot. The way our salaries are currently structured we will not be able to resign Plumlee in the Summer and that leaves us WITHOUT center. Ezeli will still be injured, Meyers will still be terrible and we'll be playing Davis or Vonleh there which is basically calling for a disaster. Not to mention we don't actually have a decent power forward and prospects of getting one do not look good. We must move salaries from backcourt to frontcourt. Actually having multiple picks in the draft might be worth a hassle. Would certainly be more exciting to have some young players with potential than a lot of average players without that much of an upside. I know our team is young but can anyone seriously see any of these players, CJ and Dame aside, becoming proper championship material rather than just solid rotation players? You need the latter too but you need to have a few of the former to contend.
Really? OK, on second thought you're probably right. No matter how well the team is doing, there are some posters who just can't seem to ever enjoy their success. I'm sure that even when the team exceeded all expectations and won 54 games, beat HOU on Lillard's buzzer beater and went to the second round for the first time in 14 years there was someone on this board bitching and whining about something. The following season, the team was 41-19 and the 2nd seed in the West when Wes got injured. Only a fool would want to "blow up" the second best team in the conference five weeks before the playoffs. And didn't we actually "BLOW THIS SHIT UP" a year and a half ago when we lost 4 starters? In spite of last year's surprising success, maybe Olshey should have tried harder to keep that team together. For all the bitching about Aldridge and Batum, do you think this would not be a 50+ win team if we still had Lopez, Aldridge, Batum, Matthews, Lillard and McCollum? We'd be light years better defensively, and C.J.'s scoring would more than make up for Wesley's post injury offensive decline. If anything, the one time we did "BLOW THIS SHIT UP" led to all our current problems. That's why I've never been a fan of tanking, or getting worse to get better. The only think getting worse to get better guarantees is that you WILL get worse. BNM
Team is not doing well. Since Drexler era we never been close to be contender. So, you know, people have enough. There was enough of Batum doin the same thing over and over again for expl. But that shit they showed in last game in DC made me actually think 20 years of it is just too much. So I say blow it or make a big trade or let it bake and I swich to NFL.
The 2000 Blazers were not only "contenders," they were very close to winning it all. The 2014-15 team was in contention, too. Second in the West with a great record until Wes Matthews was injured. The current team is not doing well, that's certainly true. And yeah, that's not a ton of success over the past 20-30 years, though a potential golden era was taken away by injuries to Roy and Oden.
Only 1 team a year wins a championship. Only around 4 a year are what I would qualify as true contenders. So being the top 4 out of 30 teams each year is not easy. Not saying we should settle for what we are now but just know that there are many other teams and many other fans who have it much worse than us on a year to year basis.
It hasn't been THAT long. We we're a contender in 1999 and especially 2000 when we were one quarter away from advancing to the finals against an inferior opponent. MIN blew it up when they traded KG for young players and draft picks. They have been in the lottery for 13 straight years and at 14-28 and in 13th place in the West, well on their way to their 14th straight trip to the lottery. In those 13 years, they had 9 picks in the top half of the lottery, and that doesn't even include Andrew Wiggins, a No. 1 overall pick they got in a trade. So, 13 straight years in the lottery, 9 top 7 picks, two No. 1 picks in a row who both won ROY and they are still losing twice as many games as they are winning. We may not have been serious contenders since 2000, but we've made the playoffs 6 times in the last 8 years and advanced to the second round twice. I'll take that over MIN's 14 straight trips to the lottery. I'm of the opinion you have to be good before you can become great. So many people around here view the lottery as some sort of panacea that will solve all of our problems. I disagree. Sure their are exceptions, but the LeBrons and Duncans only come long about once every decade. Tim Duncam was drafted 20 years ago. In the 20 years since, LeBron James is the only top 4 pick to lead the team that drafted him to n NBA title - and even that took a special circumstance of him leaving for 4 years so they could get 5 more top 4 picks, and then coming back so they could win a title. So, even if you have the worst record in the league and are guaranteed a top 4 pick, there are no guarantees that top 4 pick will make you a contender. In fact, historic evidence shows you're much more likely to be right back in the lottery. You mention that Drexler team. That team was built without a single lottery pick. Clyde, picked at 14 was the only player on those teams that POR drafted in the top 20. Duck, Jerome, Terry, Uncle Cliffy, and second round picks. That was a good, but not great team. Basically, first round fodder. The year before they went to the finals, they fell to 39 wins, but still made the playoffs. Did they blow it uo? No, the move that took them from good to great wasn't even a block buster trade. They traded Sam Bowie for Buck Williams and Buck proved to be the missing piece. Lightning in a bottle? Perhaps, but no more so than winning the lottery in a LeBron or Duncan draft. If Bucky Buckwalter would have panicked and blown it up after that 39 win season, we would have never had those great Drexler era teams. BNM
Yep, and in the first 30 years of the draft lottery, only 8 franchises won an NBA title, and none of them were perennial cellar dwellers. BNM
