....if we went forward with Harkless and Leonard as starters, would we be in better or worse shape than we are now? Bonus question: where would Miami be in the standings?
Tough question. Especially about Harkless. You gotta wonder because it would have changed the Hood situation?
Uh, Miami made that trade so they could get Jimmy Butler... So Miami probably wouldn't be up where they are. Us? Meh. Same area. But mostly because we've been playing shitty forwards all year.
Miami would've found a way to make a trade work with another team. As for the Blazers, I don't think we would've been much worse at all. Maybe even a tad better. Plus the luxury tax situation would've been much easier to clear the line. There also would've been more urgency to trade expirings at the deadline.
the pivot point of the off-season wasn't the Whiteside trade, it was when Kanter 'refused the MLE. If Kanter had signed, Portland would have 'needed' Harkless. A Kanter/Meyers rotation would have been a defensive problem, but they could have replaced most of Whiteside's rebounding, and have been better offensively. All in all, Portland would not likely have been much better...or worse what's crazy about that week, is that Olshey, for some inexplicable reason, had actually signed Tolliver and Hezonja BEFORE the Kanter/Hood and Whiteside decisions. I've never understood what Olshey's rush was, and the fact he signed those two scrubs before higher rotation slots was settled (including two starters) is just dumb
IIRC, the Whiteside and Hood decisions were made before/concurrently with Tolliver and Hezonja. They may not have been able to be officially consummated until after Tolliver and Hezonja signed, but the agreements were already in place. You're letting your hatred of Olshey cloud your fact checking. The actual timeline was: Hood Hezonja Whiteside ^ All three deals happened at roughly the same time. Tolliver.
Playing time. Injury yes. You have to figure Hark would have taken some minutes. But i didn't get the feeling Hood was playing too many minutes? Just wonder if it would have been different?
Miami would be better and we would be worse. For some reason people seem to think Leonard has really improved this year where as in reality, he had better years in Portland.
maybe I was going by this: http://www.prosportstransactions.co...ndDate=&PlayerMovementChkBx=yes&Submit=Search and: http://www.prosportstransactions.co...ndDate=&PlayerMovementChkBx=yes&Submit=Search and, for Hood: http://www.prosportstransactions.co...ndDate=&PlayerMovementChkBx=yes&Submit=Search that said Tolliver/Hezonja July 3, Hood July 6. And that's the same thing that bbref says here: https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2020_transactions.html and here: https://hoopshype.com/2019/07/02/nba-transactions-all-the-moves-of-the-2019-20-season/ and here: https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/transactions ************************************************************ Doing a full google search, it looks like it all happened June 30, so I'll stand corrected....but I wasn't just spitballing the timeline because of "Olshey hate"; I was relying on websites who track transactions still...what was the frigging rush with Tolliver and Hezonja? Teams weren't lining up to offer them minimum deals and: pretty sure the Whiteside trade came on July 6, well after the other deals
I can confirm that the whiteside trade was announced June30th or July1st, this one is easy for me to remember as I was in the hospital with my newborn when it I was told they announced the trade.
googled and the reports of Whiteside being traded show up on July 1. It didn't happen till the 6th because, IIRC, the Heat were looking for another team to take Harkless which they finally found in the Clippers. Miami sent a future 1st to LAC for taking Harkless. But I believe that gave the Heat the flexibility to sign Butler
Everyone involved here is simply not taking into account the moratorium. Deals and trades are announced as they are agreed upon but the official transaction date will be the 6th according to the NBA logs. Soooooooo this is the actual order: June 30th: Hood agrees to sign for the Tax-MLE. Hezonja a short time later agrees to sign for the minimum. July 1st (Morning): Portland and Miami agree to a trade sending Harkless and Leonard to Miami for Whiteside. Afterwords the Heat rework the deal into a 4 team trade to acquire Butler and send Harkless to LAC but this doesn't change anything for Portland's end of the deal. July 1st (Evening): Tolliver signs with Portland for the minimum.
The Tolliver signing that early in FA period definitely made no sense. Still a head scratcher, when he, or guys just like him, would have been available for the minimum still well after dust settled on bigger moves.
I kept a log that week. 6/24 111pm trade Turner for Bazemore 6/25 1014am re-sign Layman 6/30 1225pm re-sign Lillard 300pm free agency opens 319pm lose Aminu 342pm re-sign Hood 746pm sign Hezonja 7/1 930am lose Curry 945am trade Harkless & Leonard for Whiteside 1140am lose Kanter 946pm sign Tolliver 7/3 535pm lose Layman ------------ Interesting to check my memory. First I wrote the following post, then I decided to dig up my summer log. I was only an hour or so off. Olshey lost Kanter at about 11am (he took him for granted and focused on Hood, who is just a tall Seth Curry, not a game changer). Olshey then looked at his emergency list of supposed shooters, and got Tolliver about 8 hours later.
A couple of corrections: The 6/25 "re-signing" of Layman was giving him the Qualifying Offer, making him a restricted free agent, not re-signing him. Once we signed Hood to the Tax-MLE it was basically impossibly to sign Kanter or Curry, so Olshey didn't lose them he chose Hood after initially choosing Kanter for that one spot but Kanter was being non-committal so he moved on.
I wasn't precise on verbs like re-signed. Just used slang, notes to myself, thought I was the only one who'd ever read it. No, Olshey was surprised that he didn't get both Hood and Kanter. My source was an ESPN blog of events, which recorded events, linked to the source tweet (like Woj, Shams, or Amico). For Blazer transactions only, I clicked on each original tweet and recorded its time.
I made that list so that I could see causal relationships...the cause and effect of each decision by the player or Olshey. My little diary provided my with a few board complaints about Olshey since then, though I didn't bother saying that one of my sources was simply his hour-by-hour timing. Note that related events are close in time. Sign Hood-->lose Curry Get Whiteside-->lose Kanter lose Kanter-->add Tolliver etc. Kanter waffled until we got Whiteside, then took one of his options, Boston. He probably waffled because he knew Olshey was looking at Whiteside. Later, Olshey said he hadn't been sure Hood would sign low, which explains his inattention to Kanter.
