But we have Snell! But seriously, no one should take for granted the opportunity to watch the best Blazer ever live. He won’t be here forever even if he plays his whole career in Portland.
Oo, Oo. I know this one. New York, that's where everyone is rumored to go, so they MUST have the friendliest media market.
I'm convinced that Paul dying is the driving force behind wasting Dame's career. The current ownership is perfectly happy just treading water.
I think the attitude with The Vulcan Mothership is a small market fan base with one of the big three happy to make the playoffs every year and as long as attendance is good, let it ride. Yeah, they'll try and keep Dame here through his contract and try and appease him, but they wont blink to trade him if he ask and rebuild. Small market team and city that covet their one big pro team.
I do not think it was his intention but choosing to not rebuild when they knew LA was leaving and doing it again once he left essentially did it. We would have had to have connected on many gambles to truly have been a contender. Lillard has almost a billion reasons to be happy though.
I agree with the first part. They should have dealt LMA and I was screaming for them to do it. However I disagree with the second part. I don't think Neil thought this team would make the playoffs that year. In fact, I think he thought we would be one of the worst teams in the league. I think he was counting on a high lotto pick. Dame (and CJ) ruined that
If his intention was to tank, it was a horrible job. Remember, he put on the charade by keeping enough cap space for LA by upgrading the roster if he decided to stay. He also drafted CJ and had access to practices. His breakout should not have been a surprise. That team definitely exceeded expectations but at worst they were drafting low lottery. A truly rebuilding team plays rookies with high upside.
We didn't have any rookies with high upside to play. We started VOnleh most of the season. We had a starting 5 all 25 and younger. Crabbe, Meyers and Harkless at 23, 23 and 22 were our top 3 guys off the bench.
I remember Neil coining the phrase..."retool" instead of rebuild because Dame was that good...he then went out bargain shopping for second year rookies buried on benches with an upside...enter Mo Harkless...etc..he missed big time with Meyers Leonard, TRob and some others but in the end after the Bosnian beast deal...Zach and Nurk get injured and our core never sees the floor...plug and play 19 different starting lineups a season looking for chemistry....it was a few bad signings and a few horribly timed injuries that brought us to where we are today
...he looks like he attends Light of the Spirit church with Pastor Dave Deckard https://lightofthespirit.church/
I bought season tickets with Maurice Cheeks coaching the team - which means there's no situation too dire to scare me away.
Possibly the dumbest thread that i have ever seen, As soon as the inmates start running the asylum you know that it's over. Good Luck Seattle Trailblazers
He's a season ticket holder with an opinion that many people seem to have. Some are not happy with the lack of improvement with the roster and they don't want to miss out on what might be Damian Lillard's last season with the team. He is pretty active on Twitter and he gets in some pretty decent conversations with some fairly successful people. I follow him and he follows me as well.
There's no way that there will be an NBA team in Seattle that isn't called the Super Sonics or just Sonics. So it would just be good bye Blazers. That being said, I don't think the team could get the board of governors to sign off on a move. We have an arena that is considered in the top half of the league in quality. We have a lot of history. Most importantly according to forbes we turn a profit. Our income after expenses as a franchise has been over 200M over the last decade and while that is only an average of around 20M a year... that doesn't count that the valuation for the franchise has gone up by over 1.5B during that time. So the team would have a helluva time convincing the league that there's a pressing need to relocate. It's not like Seattle where the team was losing money at the time because it was before the big TV deals, wasn't selling out games and had the worst arena in the league. So you don't have to say Good Luck to the Seattle Trailblazers... we might get new owners but he Blazers will be here.
I don't quite see why? An expansion team would be free to start with a new name; relocating teams often keep theirs, even when it makes no sense at all (Lakers, Jazz). The Sonic name refers to an airplane than never actually got built - surely there is some other name that would work. Seattle Dreamliners, if you want an airplane name? barfo
From what i gather he lives in Lake O and runs a successful Insurance agency but that is just from his Twitter handle. Who knows really?
The NBA has just put out a lot of statements about wanting specifically the Sonics and the team's history back in Seattle. I don't know if that's an NBA branding thing or more likely because of market research they've done but that's what I've heard out of Adam Silver's mouth and read. So of course they could get a team with a new name but I also have a bunch of family up there and they want their Sonics back.
