Trade Hart/Winslow/Didi/Keon/pick or CJ/Norm/Nance/Roco?

No shit! ha ha.
I'm looking at the overall big picture.
Why in the world would we want/need both? We have other needs.

 

Yes the Blazers did have other more urgent needs than duplicate guards, so the goal in getting rid of one of these players should be to address one of those needs.

Just getting rid of guard talent with no benefit is the same as giving away a $20k car because you had two of them and need to pay for a $20k remodel. Well now you have one car but still need to buy a $20k remodel.

The Blazers went from very deep at guards with starting talents to trade for other positions; to now having shallow guard depth with no talent on the roster to trade.

"Flexibility" and "Cap Space" and Raef LaFrentz golden ticket all are worth close to nothing in solving needs in Portland as history has shown. The ability to solve the teams many other needs has now been reduced as a result of the February trades.

 

I know what you're saying and I know what Bones may have meant but didn't directly say

it's the same thing I said in February when the details of the trade came out. That Lakers' pick would have been some insurance. And that insurance could have been backed up by the top-4 protected Lakers' pick in 2024, and if none of those 3 picks are conveyed, then that Milwaukee pick; and after that, a couple of 2nds. I'm thinking the Pels would probably, maybe, have agreed to most of that, and that Cronin settled. I don't know that for sure though, and I don't know if Cronin asked for more and was refused. But with the addition of Nance that certainly seems reasonable

in other words, you guys aren't plowing new ground. But that ask looks a hell of a lot more attractive now that the Pels 'own' that pick (if in the top-10) then back at the deadline when the Lakers pick was 12th in the lottery. To not come out of the deal with that 2022 Laker's pick did not look like such a failure in February (and again, the other side of that coin is that asking for that pick wouldn't have been a big ask). Sometimes, teams just have bad luck. It happens. The Lakers were 2 games under .500 at 54 games just before the trade deadline; in the remaining 28 games, they went from 2 games under .500 to 16 games under .500. And of course, PG13 gets covid the day of the play-in game while Kennard gets hurt in the last regular season game. That's all great luck for the Pels and bad luck for the Blazers

so yeah, Cronin was probably snookered some on that deal. But, IMO, he was not snookered enough to justify the two-month tantrum many of you are throwing

 

Not sure what you're getting at. But if 3 of the guys I listed play most of the season we're going to make the playoffs. If Little also plays most of the season we could be top 5 or 6.

If we get another legit starting forward with our pick we could compete for HCA.

Dame and Ant are freaking good. Their defense just isn't good enough to make us elite. That'll hurt in the playoffs.

We can trade Dame at any point and be right in the midst of a youth movement. And I think if things aren't looking great next season Dame might just agree to that...

 

Having Dame, CJ, Ant, Norm and Hart on their contracts would be incredibly stupid.

Teams knew that, and that impacted the value they were willing to offer.

 

Those undersized guards and their contracts weren't worth the players we'd need in return to shore up our needs. Or we would have just traded one or more for a player like Jeremy Grant.

Nobody that had what we needed wanted those guys on those contracts.

 

I won't speak for others, but I wasn't fond of their contracts and I was OK with trading them. What I don't agree with is the addition-by-subtraction argument that we had to dump them so urgently that it was OK to get little or no value in return. IMHO that argument only applies to players who are poison in the locker-room, not players who are good guys and good players but a flawed fit. YMMV.

 

"so little value" assumes there was a lot more value to be had

but I have NOT seen a shred of evidence that is true....just a lot of assumption it had to be true because, well, just because some want it to be true. What if it wasn't true? Should the Blazers have just rebooted the same type of roster for an 8th year that had failed for 7 straight years?

 

"Long Run" & "Only time will tell" are 2 terms we can't afford to use with Dame and his window..... if we are in that mode, let's just ship him out now while we can.

 

Exactly!

 

WHAT!!!??? You think we have talent on this roster to be a 5 seed!!! Wow!

 

This summer/offseason. Pay attention dummy. Love you.

 

No offense, but I think you missed my point. Even if this was the best deal possible, CJ was the best player involved and we suffered a downgrade in talent. Calling it addition-by-subtraction is a needless insult to a good player who by all accounts was also a good citizen.

Call it what it was - a deal motivated primarily by financial issues.

 

"motivated primarily"....if that's true then it shouldn't be Cronin getting all the blame; it should be the Vulcans...and it should be the CBA. The only way Portland was going to keep the 4 players the dumb poll in this thread talks about was if Olshey was still the GM. Anybody who would have taken over that duty once Olshey was fired would have almost certainly dismantled the roster like Cronin did. There was never going to be an 8th reboot.

finance may have been the #1 priority. But I think it's clear there was an institutional awareness that the Dame/CJ experiment needed to be ended, and the Blazers chose Dame and moved on from CJ. Easy choice, right choice

 

Sure financial issues were a factor. The league rewards teams that are within the Cap. The only reason you should be way over the cap is if you are rewarding your players for winning. Paying both Dame and CJ big contracts was worth it. Paying Dame, CJ and Simons did not make sense when you have other positions to pay.

Yes CJ was the best player involved. I wish more fans gave him this respect when he was still on the team. But that is moot at this point.
The question is did we suffer a downgrade in talent when you have Simons and Hart to replace him? I don't think so.

As for Norm, did we suffer a downgrade at SF if it opens more minutes for Little and Winslow? I say no

PF is yet to be determined but I would be shocked if we didn't end up with at least equal value to what we had to start the season.

You can certainly make a case that we should have gotten more for CJ, but I would argue that there wasn't any drop-off in overall talent. But we do need to see what happens in the next few months to confirm that.

 

As good as Minnesota? Once we fill in the rest of the roster. Sure. That's 45-49 wins. Absolutely, if Dame is back at 100%, with Ant who hits 3s off the catch at over 40% and Hart can as well... Absolutely there is enough there if we fill out the roster with good defenders.

*Edit*
To clarify, that isn't a prediction, I'm simply saying it's possible. But they will make the playoffs unless they are saddled by injuries or Dame isn't 100%.

 

I agree that the problem starts at the top. We don't know for sure if Cronin was unable to come up with a better plan, was unable to sell a different plan to Jody, actually embraced the plan, or just shrugged and blindly followed orders. None of those scenarios convinces me Cronin should be in charge of what is indoubtably a tough rebuild.

 

It was a deal motivated by poor fit and financial issues. We couldn't get better and keep CJ.

The reality is that his contract was addition by subtraction.

It's not a dis on CJ to admit that he is duplication with Dame and Ant, and that he isn't as good as Dame, but makes too much to keep.

 

I don't think these were options. Nobody wanted Norm on that contract for 5 years.

Far better off to just keep your first rounder and get a guy that good on a rookie deal.

 

Yep, health is hard to predict for everyone. Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, Pelicans (Zion)
When you look at Utah on paper, they are not that impressive. It will be interesting to see what they do in the off-season.