Notice Hassan Whiteside Trade Could Be Trail Blazers Hail Mary Move

KJ who's gonna offer $20 million a year? The money just isn't out there this summer.

 

Not certain? But i could see it happen. There are Five teams with money this year from what i can tell. Lakers, Hawks, Bulls, Magic and Pacers.
But a couple teams could shed a contract and get some. Brooklyn, Memphis, Sacramento, Phoenix and New York could get into the mix. But it's more work than i am willing to do to get the exact amount they can come up with.

 

How about Meyers for Harris straight up? That's a good fleecing!

 

Now you're in borderline area. Whoever gets him at that price is taking a big gamble.

 

True. Why doesn't Olshey keep doing that and what he did with his emergency post-Aldridge patch job. Instead he slumbers for 3 years.

I know, he overpaid the guards so he is paralyzed. Well, trade McCollum so he can use his proven evaluation skills on acquiring bargains.

Olshey is currently self-paralyzed with his 2 guard contracts. A trained seal could replace him in his paralyzed state.

 

See I keep going back to the summer of 2016. Not one other summer in Olshey's entire career as a GM has he just handed out a bunch of stupid contracts like that. In fact most years he's been very careful to not take on bad contracts or long term burdens. He even made every important contract lineup with Aldridge's just in case, which was smart in my opinion.

All that leads me to believe that the summer of 2016 was mostly (I can't put Turner on anyone but Olshey) Paul Allen's doing. I also think that is why Olshey still has a job because he was simply doing what Allen wanted. If not for the bad starts the last couple years I believe that the team would've gone into the tax.

They are now at a crossroads though. They can go all-in this summer, including getting some value specials using the TPE's and the tax-MLE or they can continue to try and skirt the tax which would lead to some hard decisions just to achieve that.

Allen doesn't want Dame to leave. He was worried when he requested a meeting that he was going to ask to be traded. That tells me this summer he'll let Olshey do what is necessary to add talent. Olshey even said Allen told him to "Get better!"

 

That rings true to me. I think Allen has a lot to do with those bloated contracts. Remember Darius Miles?

 

Agree that it was mostly Allen doing.
I remember when he gave Duck a 25m contract and was criticized for it.

 

Theo Ratliff's ridiculous (at the time) contract was all Allen. Same with Darius Miles. In both cases the contracts were based on a small sample size of play. Fans fall in love with players, I guess.

 

The way I feel is if you have an owner that could buy Ford GM & Chrysler with pocket change and he's involved and willing to spend, let him. I'm sure he gets the right kind of advise from his management but it don't mean he wants to go along with it. Rather have a guy like that than the guy at OKC that didn't want to pay Harden big money coming off the bench.
Its a game played on the court and by the wallets and decisions by owner/managers.
You've got to swing the bat if you want to hit the freaking ball.

 

Look at how badly this State is fiscally mis-managed and voters don't seem to give a shit!
But some of the same people are critical of Paul & Neil for throwing money around?

Yeah, that Tram came in way under budget...joke
And our roads and highways are in great shape? Oregon is out of money, Paul isn't!

 

At the time Allen could just open his wallet, until the bean counters at Vulcan told him to cut it out As for Theo, we then traded him in a package for the infamous RLEC, which netted us nothing. The league has since implemented salary cap rules to make it much more painful for Allen to repeatedly overpay.

 

Look what Cleveland has done to try and keep James there?

 

Actually, that trade gave us the 7th pick in the 2006 draft which we used with cash from Allen to move up to # 6.

That pick was Brandon Roy.

 

Oh yes, we'd be so much better with a bargain-basement player rather than CJ. If we're lucky we'd be looking at the Harkless or Plumlee of shooting guards.

 

This doesn't take into account all the near-misses of his Free Agency career as Blazers GM. The Spencer Hawes', the Chandler Parsons', the [I forget who else, but he's had a bad track record of targeting Free Agents, and has luckily been saved by those players choosing to play elsewheres'].

 

I don't care about things that didn't happen. There are so many complicated variables like driving up the prices for other teams and favors to agents. Then you have to factor in that there is no way of knowing how those players would've performed in the Blazers system. On top of that, making some of those moves likely would change future moves. For example, if we sign Parsons we don't have Turner and may have let Crabbe or Leonard go too. We may have missed the playoffs last year and gotten a higher pick or whatever. Playing the what if game is silly.

 

I'm another 1 of the MANY that doesn't want Whiteside here even IF it were possible (we need an awesome wing!). I ACTUALLY LIKE all the Whiteside rumor/smokescreen stuff gaining steam however bc these rumors make it a heavy deterrent/scares teams away from throwing out ~$20/high offers for Nurk bc they might be left "holding the bag;" so unless a team's REALLY IS serious about Nurk, all this should get rid of the fakers just trying hurt us/get us to pony up the most cabbage for him.

 

When it comes to determining a GM's ability to identify talent I find it VERY informative to know who he targets, and in what order. Whether he lands them is another story. To just ignore all the bad initial targets is turning a blind eye to a very important part of a GM's job. It's not a "what if" game.