Dunc'd On grades our offseason (and the rest of the west)

Stotts also must love the flexibility he has with his current roster depending on the game, opposition, and in-game match-up changes. We are a deeper team than we were the previous season.

 

in the words of the great modern theologians metallica "give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which i desire"

 

Classic.

 

I think this so-called flexibility is a bit of a mirage at this point. Certainly this team is young, and yes there's a some potential for growth, but because almost all of these guys are getting paid and there is only so much playing time to go around. That means too many bodies and not enough minutes which practically guarantees that some of these guys are going to stagnate or fail to develop, which in turn damages their value as trade assets - especially, without a rookie scale deal to make them more intriguing to a prospective trade partners.

In short, who are the players other GMs are going to want to trade their star for in a consolidation move? If you are blowing up your team because you have a star unhappy in his situation, then you are probably rebuilding and highly paid role-players or guys who are in year five or six of their career without much room left to grow, aren't usually targets for a rebuilding team. Those teams are going to prefer cheap rookie scale deals and expirings.

So I'm not unhappy -- This looks a perfectly competent roster on paper that can probably win 48-52 games next year, but it also looks pretty maxed out, short of some major revelations from Leonard, Vonleh or McCollum and whatever young players might be in the draft pipeline. I'd be very surprised if Portland ended up on the winning end of a big consolidation trade.

 

Losing Mike & Mike?

 

Yeah, not so much.

THIS is classic.

 

That wasn't Olshey's call. Chris McGowan gets the responsibility for that decision.

 

Yeah, I missed "Neil's."


Dammit.

 

Neil got tired of the Mike's jinxing his players all the time, so he engineered a coup and got them tossed out.

 

Here's a more positive podcast from Mike Richman of OLive.



Brings some insight from a guy who follows the team around every night, and clearly more knowledgeable and articulate than the Casey/Freeman pod. This needs to be in your regular rotation if you're a podcast kinda guy

 

Who will see Tim Frazier/Brian Roberts minutes - at best. Probably less, since we added a 3rd ball handler in Evan Turner who makes then need for a back up PG almost non-existent. We can feasibly play Dame, C.J. and Turner 36 MPG and have two of the three on the court at all times. Of course, they won't all average 36 MPG, but they won't have to Napier (and others) will get occasional spot minutes, and of course, the usual garbage time minutes, but when the games matter, it will be Dame, C.J. and Turner manning the ball handling duties.

BNM

 

In hindsight, since CHO signed Roberts for the minimum, that would have been preferable. However, at the time Neil renounced his rights, his cap hold of $3,711,422 was almost 3x what Napier will make in the coming season. That was back when Neil was still chasing free agents, so that additional two and a half million in cap space was needed for flexibility. Robert signed with CHO on July 7, before we signed Ezeli. So, even though getting his cap hold off the books wasn't required, in hindsight, it wasn't a given at the time that we wouldn't need the extra space.

BNM