I have to think that in today's NBA, the Jail Blazer team would barley register on the national meter. I would prefer a contender than a very average middle of the road to sub par blah team with arguably the most broken roster at the cost of one of highest payrolls in the NBA
It barely would have registered even back then, if the Oregonian hadn't been on a moral crusade to sell papers.
The Blazers won 65% of their games during the 9 years Whitsitt was GM. Championship-hope-wise, there's been none since he left town.
I had no problem with the Jail Blazers, and most of the “crime” was pretty “who cares type stuff”, but after the 2000 wcf, that team self-destructed. It wasn’t the Oregonians fault, they only won one game the next year to the lakers. Or that the moves became very short sighted. Sure the Oregonian and the media made things a story that's what they do. Lets keep it to basketball though, and I’d argue Whitsitt like most GM’s was hit or miss in the draft (likely would’ve won a title or two if Sabas comes over earlier). His trades were infamous, you can’t blame a coach for a teams “chemistry”, if the parts are always changing, and everyone on the roster is looking over there shoulder all the time because they know they could be next. All in all Whitsitt did well until the summer of 2000 and then it wasn’t just Whitsitt it was a franchise wide meltdown. Sure there were some ok draft picks sprinkled in, but it took the franchise years to recover from that. Olshey is kind of the opposite, where at least we can say Whitsitt had the work ethic and balls to go make stuff happen even if it was questionable if it was good or not. Olshey is constantly in sale the fans fluff mode. He almost never makes any real splashes. He is predictable, and almost never really takes a risk. He falls in love with his players and over values them. I’d like maybe something somewhere in the middle... Whitsitts mindset get better at all costs, no patience whatsoever. NO’s mindset is well we’re gonna massage this thing year after year as slowly as a possible and not take a risk. There are pro’s and cons to both I guess, but thinking about it, while Whitsitt had his issues they did at least compete for a championship, even if it did turn into a dumpster fire in the early to mid 2000’s, and I’m not talking about the “jail Blazers" either. By like 2004/5 that team sucked, Whitsitt sure didn't leave them with much left. Has Neil ever done anything as the Blazers GM that was "Sexy?" He always talks about, "sexy" moves and I can't think of a single one he's accomplished. I'll give ol Trader Bob this, our summers would be a heck of a lot more interesting as blazer fans if he was behind the wheel then they have been the last few years...
This is a dumb comment that uses hindsight as 20/20. It's been refuted so many times that I won't anymore. You're a rookie.
If I remember right at the time the Afflalo trade made sense, they were like 2nd in the west Barton didn’t play much, they wanted another perimeter player who they could plug in off the bench. The Injury to Aldridge’s thumb and Matthews Achilles pretty much wrecked them. Afflalo ended up kind of starting which was t the role he was brought here for. Also Matthews was the heart and leadership of the team, once he went down it doomed them. So while hindsight says that Afflalo trade was a bad one it at least made some sense at time.
Afflalo had a bum shoulder after Wes went down...played hurt...lot of folks thought he mailed it in but he was not healthy then....turns out he's kind of a jerk..glad he's gone
We've hashed this out several times on this board. There were good reasons for the trade.... but Afflalo wasn't a good enough player for what we needed. I didn't like the trade at the time it was made. No hindsight needed.
The year he was traded to the Blazers in Denver he was averaging 14.5ppg, with a %49 effective fg (good for a guard), and he was supposedly a decent defender. He was playing pretty well, even in portland until his shoulder bummed out. Barton didn't actually surpass those numbers for Denver until this year. I haven't been a part of the rehashing of the trade, and I don't know what you're opinions of it were when it happened. However, most people seemed to understand the reasoning of it, 3 guys that never played for a guy who would play. The only thing I wish they hadn't given up was the 1st round pick. Barton has turned into a pretty good scorer, and sure it'd be nice to see him as a Blazer again. Afflalo may have been a good enough player if health had of been on their side. The downfall of that team had basically nothing to do with Afflalo and having kept Barton wouldn't have changed a thing about how that year played out.
You realize you started this hindsight shit with your dig at trader bob for kemp. So we can only talk about his bad trades and not NOs? Sounds about right. Calling people rookies on message boards is about the dumbest shit possible, I have over 10k posts on my Raiders board so instead of jumping to “ur a rookie” why don’t you explain to me why you can bring up bad trades to try and rip down bob but I can’t bring one up to rip down Neil? Bottom line his track record is very unimpressive to say the least.
Um no, I HATED the Dale Davis trade when it happened! I saw his body shape and his tweaker mannerisms at the free throw line before we traded for him and I KNEW he was on coke and that we were NOT getting the Reign Man... Neil drafting a 4 Year small college G who becomes first team all NBA is better than anything Whitsitt has ever done.
Constructing a team that got us 12 min from reaching the finals is a little better than reaching the second round ONE time in between a bunch of first round curb stompings imo, but keep drinking the kool aid. (we would of won that finals too, it was gonna be us or the lakers winning it all that year)
I remember that team. I rooted for them and watched every game. I also didn't really like many of them personally. I also remember the NBA screwing us out of those finals.
