I would cut Crabbe

No we are not yet committed to Leonard. He has one more year IMO to earn that. They gave Kaman a short deal in case Leonard does improve. But right now Joel has earned his minutes. He played quality minutes last year before he got hurt. Maybe Leonard can produce with minutes, but as of now I think we all feel better with Joel in the game over Myles. And like Nate said, Joel is a good utility guy. He can Play PF too. I would only trade him for good value.

 

Exactly. I just don't think we're going to dump Meyers anytime soon. He is a project, and I think we're going to take our time. Crabbe is a relatively low cost, so if he doesn't work out we didn't really lose that much. Myle was the 11th pick in the draft two years ago.

 

The Blazers should probably do a lot of things they don't do due to that word "Potential."

 

Shawn Marion is still available. Just sayin.

 

Maybe, but the Jermaine O'Neal thing still lingers on the minds of Blazer fans.

 

Forever and ever.

 

I don't think it's Jermaine O'Neal trauma. O'Neal was a top high school talent. Those had a pretty high hit rate. Claver, Leonard, Crabbe, Barton, etc, are pretty middling projects. I think they're kept around because it's not like Portland has a bunch of valuable, productive veterans being pushed away. The only one is maybe Mo Williams, depending on how Portland feels about him going forward. I'd be okay with ditching one of the projects for Williams.

 

Will Barton was actually highly touted coming out of high school.

I think he ranked 11th nationally by Rivals.

 

Yeah, but then he went to college. And was okay, but nothing amazing. I meant that top prep-to-pro players were generally pretty blue chip prospects.

 

And then Kwame Brown happened

 

Exception. Rule. Proved.

Something like that. There were a few exceptions. Leon Smith was the first first-round prep-to-pro kid I remember busting.

 

Yeah, but he had to go to college. Who is to say he wouldn't have been drafted if he could have came out right away?

BTW, DraftExpress has Will's RSCI (Recruiting Services Consensus Index) at number 9 of his recruiting class.

Actually, it's kind of interesting to see what players were ranked coming out of college. Here are some others.

LMA was 13th of his recruiting class.

RoLo was 20th

Lillard, Matthews, and Batum (b/c international) were all unranked.

Meyers was 29th

Crabbe was 72nd

Wright was 64th

Yeah, the Blazers don't have that many good "high school" recruits.

Oh yeah, Oden was 1st. ......

 

I don't know, I think there were quite a few busts towards the end of the prep-to-pro era.

Kwame (picked 1st)
Leon Smith (picked 29th)
Jonathan Bender (picked 5th)
Eddy Curry (picked 4th)
Robert Swift (picked 12th)

It's interesting though, because there's been way more international players taken in the first round who were busts.

 

It was at the start that they all seemed to pan out. My guess is that in the beginning, only the true cream of the crop dared bypass college entirely. As the first and second waves were successful, it emboldened more kids to try their luck and the quality of players taking the step dipped to the point that guys who really weren't good enough to do it were trying it and then the busts started to come.

 

Indeed.

 

So we are hanging on to Claver just because we are afraid of him going to San Antonio and doing well? Thats what it sounds like to me?

 

Yup. That's it.

 

I liked Crabbe coming out of college. I watched him a lot at Cal. He's been butt-shitty in the pro's so far. Maybe there was a reason Montgomery tried to light some fire in him. Take that passive shit overseas.

 

I would cut clavier if we need the roster spot. It's been two years and for a rookie in his mid twenties I don't see much upside

 

We're so low on big contracts that we might need Claver as filler if we ever decided to do a trade. Crabbe is only making like 900k.