IMO, whether or not Blazer fans would be on board with that (they should be) is irrelevant. The whole point of that initial tweet is to show how insufficient the Heat's offer for Dame is. There's no way they'd accept that for Jimmy, so there's no reason to think the Blazers should accept something comparable for Dame.
Yeah, I think Dame/Matisse/Jimmy/Grant/Nurk with Scoot/Sharpe/Nas would have a chance to contend. Would need to pick up some bench size (Brown/Butler/Badji won't cut it), but I'd love that wing rotation.
[Now at 274, crickets on the trade front, 275 by the end of the weekend, and 300 looks within range ... ]
Another reason for this to finally be done. If this goes to the trade deadline I can easily envision 1,000.
Love to see local sportswriters publishing books. Incredible that Fentress got his tome out so quickly.
I think it's obvious after Joe drafted and said he planned on keeping Scoot, why Dame would then think that Joe was "blowing smoke" the whole time. I think that's why we find ourselves here. It's why although it pisses me off that Dame is only putting one team as a desired destination, I'm not mad at Dame overall. If I was Dame I would feel like I was hoodwinked or bamboozled. So his aggressive and stubborn approach to this trade request, while annoying as a Blazers fan is entirely understandable as a logical person. Dame still would have had a better chance at already being on the Heat if he would have given Joe 3-5 teams and let Joe know that the Heat were by far his most desired destination. That being said when someone feels one day that he's on the same page as someone else and the next that he's been fooled by that same person, it's understandable that he would act aggressively even to his own detriment. People in this forum who continuously insist that none of this is personal don't have the same point of view that I do.
you would have to reel it back to that ^^ season, the early stages of the 2022 summer when Dame signed his contract extension, to begin piling a list of players that would help Portland "win". *Now we got Scoot, so it was a good move to make stinky Blazers. But I'll start things off with quote from Joe Cronin after he took over for Olshey, and traded half the team in the 2022 trade deadline. "The deal was important for us because it got us out of the luxury tax this year, which completely reset our repeater clock, meaning we won't go back in, even if we're in the tax in future seasons, until at least 2025. And the deal also gave us a bunch of leverage in the next deals that we needed to make, where teams would no longer hold getting us out of the luxury tax as part of the negotiation." So... start building your win now Blazers team around Lillard in the summer of 2022, without the worry of luxury tax. Nurkic 4 year deal ?? > no way, offer that same contract to Nic Claxton, pry him from the Nets. You got MLE's and TPE's, do it. Let Nurkic walk? Offer him a 2yr smaller deal. If he stays, cool, if not.. good luck Nurk. Cronin was bidding against himself signing Nurkic. Simons deal is fine, but make him a 6th man sniper. Grant deal, not bad, good job, keep it rolling. future 1st for Kevin Huerter? It's all it took to get him in Sacramento. .. get in in that action. Oh that's right, Chicago locked up Portland 1sts. But remember, we're in WIN NOW mode, buy Chicago out, cash makes the world go round. Bradley Beal free agent, trade Hart & s.t. Little, Winslow, picks for Beal, better then what Washington got from PHX after Bradley's no trade clause. Luxury tax off win now Blazers of 2022: Lillard Beal Hueter Grant Claxton _bench_ Ant (cheaper) Nurk Sharpe Eubanks Watford then go get a REAL backup PG, not Keon other possibilities include ... anyone but Gary Payton
It’s entertainment, just like a movie or a TV show. They’re no different than an actor. Coach is a director. The GM is a producer. They all play their part. And if the content isn’t entertaining, people don’t watch. Just like a movie or show. The last five or six years have been stale, and that’s usually when a show gets cancelled.
funny you say that, I've long felt that a TV show is the perfect analogy for this last phase of the blazers. entertaining at times but overall not great and worth cancelling and replacing with a different product. even the 18-19 year, which was a fun season—I was already sort of bored of the CJ/Dame show and kinda knew how that plotline would end in the playoffs.
I think this was the thread I jumped into to show Fentress one of the bigger flaws in his excessively-flawed viewpoint on this. That being that not letting Dame go to the Heat for peanuts would turn off current Blazers and they wouldn't re-sign. Obviously, the problem with that is Fentress is saying players like Shaedon and Scoot would be more turned off by the Blazers not helping a player who wasn't going to be on their team win somewhere else than be impressed by the Blazers trying to get at least a somewhat fair return to put better talent around them in Portland. Fentress somehow missed the very obvious point that he's advocating the Blazers help the Heat before their own players ... and that the players remaining with the Blazers would appreciate it. It's mind-numbingly dumb. Fentress made one kind of weak attempt to defend his tweet by saying Dame wasn't trying to screw over the Blazers on his way out (which is only a minor part of the problem with his assertion, although it is part of it). When I asked him if he thought hobbling the market for Dame by actually going around to every other team and telling them Dame wouldn't play for them if they traded for him wasn't a deliberate attempt to and would hurt the Blazers chance to get decent assets back in the trade, Fentress turned into the Invisible Man. He's a clown. I'm still trying to figure out what percentage of his clowndom is just a lack of an ability to reason and what percentage is out and out intellectual dishonesty to carry Dame's water, but I know elementary kids that make up more compelling false arguments than him.
Well, as usual, Dame is vague enough that you can't pin him down and point out what might be wrong with his position. Is he saying the tweet he's quoting is just dumb or is he saying the idea that professional sports are businesses is dumb. One would presume it's the latter, but Vague Tween Dame makes it that you can't be absolutely sure and he can wiggle out of criticism if he gets too much heat for actually taking and standing on a solid opinion.
