dame lillard retweeted this post and we all agree that this man will get a statue if he plays his entire career with the portland trail blazers (maybe even if he gets traded), so id like to see how would you want a statue to look like, is it a jump shot, layup, dunk, celebration (dame time, but he had other celebrations too) put a picture inside, so we get the clear idea
Coffee (aka statues) is for closers (aka championship winners) ... until he wins a championship in Portland there should be no talk of statues!
Effort and loyalty is just as important as a ring. The reality is Portland may NEVER win it all again, but if this guy retires here? Give the man a statue!!!
Disagree quite a bit ... loyalty maybe just as important ... effort is what should be given every night for any job/career and it's sad that a guy could get paid 100's of millions of dollars and gets praised for 'effort!' Portland may never win another championship but I don't want my favorite team to settle for 'effort and loyalty.'
Ahh so you are in the camp of, “ if you are not first, you are last”, “if you are not a winner, you are a loser” mentality. We will have to agree to disagree on this. Pay has nothing to do with it. If it did, all people in all facets of the workplace would all have equal effort and output, because we all accepted said payment for employment. Reality is, effort varies even among those paid equally to do the same tasks. Dame has elite effort in the nba. Reward it.
some things are bigger than a chip and dame embodies all these things (will become greatest & most beloved blazer in history, franchise scoring leader, will become franchise assist leader, loyal as it gets, has special connection with our fans & city of portland/oregon, great human being and will continue to live in portland once he retires), literally the only things that he misses is the chip, but no-one will hold that against dame lillard
Put Parsons and the ball in it too. Hope also that the moment to enshrine as his statue has yet to happen (him holding a trophy in Moda in a Blazer jersey).
That would be epic!! Id be down for replacing the flames with this! Need the shot clock in there too though.
This is his signature shot...and what Dame Lillard is known for as a player. Any statue that's doesn't present him in game motion should not happen.
I want to see this franchise win a championship, having a guy like Dame is great, but every team at the start of the season is striving for one thing, and it's not to have a great player play their entire career with one franchise. This idea that 'effort' has to be rewarded is a sad state of the NBA and people's work ethics in general. Being praised for not being lazy is sad but that's more a statement of where we are as a people than on Dame specifically.
It will be held against him though, not by the majority of Blazer fans but in the general sense of his standing in the NBA. What is always the first criticism of Barkley? Of Malone/Stockton? All great players but they could never win when it mattered the most and that is held against them. Let's also gloss over the fact that this is a man that has made over $200 million dollars in his career already and yet he jumped at the chance to sign the super max, making it that much more difficult for the franchise to go out and bring in the 2nd all star or role players that could help him win on the court. I don't begrudge him for getting his money, but this thought that "he did all he could to bring the Blazers a championship" rings a little hollow to me as well.
The only people who are critical of those guys are either doing it for fun (Shaq and Jet to Charles) or have no real concept of what makes a player a better player than another. No one on this or any other planet would take Horace Grant over Charles Barkley. The only people who use titles as a "standing" in the NBA are people who never played in the NBA and don't have a clue.
Championships matter when ranking 'greatness' in every sport. Brady, Montana, Jordan, LeBron, Jeter, etc. A player like Biggio or Marino put up amazing cumulative stats, but they don't fall in the the 'great' category as some of their contemporaries because they weren't able to win at the highest level. Some of those players were willing to do things others weren't. Jordan could come off as a jerk. Brady would take less money. Kobe pushed and caused waves. But they had a 'win no matter what' mentality. That doesn't seem like it is nearly as much of a Portland thing.
But no one in their right mind is comparing Horace Grant with Charles Barkley. They are talking about the 'greats'. Robert Horry has a ridiculous amount of rings, but is not in any of those conversations.
You go back and look at the list of the greatest players of all time, and all the guys at the top have one thing in common, they won titles. You might not like that and yes a lot of time it's used for poking fun, but like it or not, it's A metric used to define greatness.