You keep Ant if Dame brings back a huge package of young upstarts, a pile of picks and a couple draft pick swaps - even if we trade Dame to Philly for Simmons, the tables must be turned and we must milk Morey for all he’s got. We simply don’t have enough assets to build a decent team around Dame. Further, paying Dame over $50 million per isn’t gonna help. Just start over and build a team of young players that can be trained to play excellent defense under Billups. Say so long to CJ, RoCo, Nurkic, and offer a heartfelt send off of Dame. Retire the guys number right away as he’s one of our franchise best players of all time. If we don’t do this now, we won’t be able to build a team around Dame fast enough and/or Dame could decide he wants out, vastly diminishing his trade value! It’s business and the franchise will be better off in three years if the trade is made! Little / Simons / Simmons / Watford / Smith / Brown are a really good bunch to begin a rebuild. And if other chips are part of our acquisitions from trading CJ, RoCo and Nurkic, the rebuilding process will be fun! Guys, we’ve won 1 championship and that was done following the ABA dispersal draft. We only won ONE! No real stars at the time, just a great coach assembling a “team” led by a newly motivated Walton. Had we been able to keep Moses Malone, maybe we win back-to-back? It takes a certain magic and luck to win a ring. I love Dame Lillard! But unfortunately our GM was not equally talented and he surrounded Dame with the wrong pieces. Don’t build around one guy - you have to build a “team” and Dame eats up way too much of the cap for our owner and market to absorb. Boom
Dame is one of, if not the best, closer in the league. You can't teach it. Dame was special at that from the get go. Dame's injury has made some forget just how special a talent he is.. I foresee him regaining that patented form again once healthy. He's 31, not 36. Some need to stop making him out to be a senior citizen. Ant's future is bright, no doubt about it. But Dame is a generational talent. A healthy Dame is a lethal weapon. And bigtime scary for opponents. Dame all day, and every day going forward.
Disagree. Can we actually build a contender around Dame at this point? If the answer is no, then you keep Ant and build around Ant and our young guys. We traded a young talented player to try to solidify a much better team 20 years ago, and that blew up in our face. Don't make this another Jermaine for Davis.
that's a strange analogy because contrary to this dingbat thread, the Blazers do not have to pick one or the other. Trading Dame to make way for Ant is dumb besides that, it isn't going to happen
If the right offer is there, it's anything but nonsensical to trade Ant. We've spent 6 seasons seeing what your number one and two options being undersized guards, who need the ball to be most effective on O and don't play well on D gets us. Keeping both given what we've seen might actually be nonsensical. When to trade Ant depends on if you project that he'll have higher trade value before re-signing (over the next ten days) or after he has a bigger salary that would be easier to match with the level of talent that we would target in a trade for him.
I also don't think we should forget about his leadership ability. Near impossible to replace. You can rebuild without tearing it down. You keep Dame, Ant, and Little. Nurk as well if he wants to stay for a reasonable contract. But I doubt he would if Dame was gone. As I said above, find an excellent PF, an excellent defensive guard to rotate in with Dame and Ant. You get a scoring PF and you don't have to rely on just your guards to be the only scoring options. The problem was never the guards it has always been who was surrounding them.
Dame is special....and no one forgot how special he is. However, no one has forgotten not a single conference finals win yet either. Is that something that is changing in the next couple of years? Would love to see it, but haven't seen anything close to it yet, and don't know if Cronin can, or has the resources to pull that off. If so, awesome. But the odds aren't exactly in our favor. It's not an anti-Dame thing, It's that you can get more for him than any other player. If DSJ was who was coming in to 'replace' Dame, that would be one thing, but we have a much better option, who is putting up numbers at age 22 that even Dame didn't. Who knows what percentage that 'replacement' would be at, but we have no PF what so ever. Say 75% of Dame plus an actual wing up front, plus whatever else he brings, plus picks we don't have to help make other moves, is at least a conversation point.
This thing your going for with putting our lack of success on Dame is so flimsy. We haven't won with Dame because Neil wouldn't trade CJ and wouldn't make any bold moves. Just season after season of shuffling the deck of role players around a very flawed back court who our GM thought was the perfect two man combo to lead the team to a championship. We might want to give Dame a chance with a roster that makes sense around him before we put Neil's failure on Dame.
I didn't put it on Dame. In fact, didn't even put his name or reference 'him' in the sentence about 'not a single conference finals win'. And Neil's infatuation with CJ has been frustrating to me longer than most....but CJ has also been Dame's guy for much of that time when anyone with any basketball IQ knew 2 smallish, score first, little-D guards, wasn't going to work. I do enjoy the constant attempt by people to attribute things to me I didn't say though. It is entertaining.
That's pretty obviously you saying that we're not forgetting that Dame is special but we're also not forgetting that he doesn't have a single conference win either... I mean come on. I think you understand how context works, so if you don't want people to attribute things to you then be clearer. I really don't believe for a second that you weren't inferring that Dame is special but he hasn't got it done but again maybe you just weren't writing clearly.
One reference Dame specifically. One is more general about what has happened as a team, but of course while he was here and the leader of the team. But there wasn't blame. In fact, led with "Dame is special..." I'll stick with what I specifically posted. Fell free to interpret however you like. It happens here all the time. Isn't the first time, won't be the last. Longer, more detailed specifics are for when I'm not watching football. But if it helps, the team hasn't won a conference finals game while Dame has been the leader. Much of that I put at Neil's feet, some at Terry's, but Dame is not 100% devoid of any relation to that. Fair enough? He didn't put pressure on Neil until this summer.....and look what finally happened. He wanted his guy CJ until finally this summer, he made intonations about making the necessary changes. That's great, but where was that earlier? Now he is older, more susceptible to injury, age, etc. The leader/superstar is at least somewhat responsible for the results and direction of the team, other wise, I would submit they aren't that great of a superstar.
I'll be sad if we trade Dame and build around Ant and what we get for Dame but I'll be more frustrated and sad if we don't do anything significant. Your train of thought about Ant isn't without merit but there is also merit to finally trying to build around Dame with players that complement his skill set. I know that Ant has like a dozen year window where he could be something special but Dame is almost a guarantee to be a dominant force for three seasons after this one. I want to try to win one either during that remainder of his prime or while he's still great during what I'm betting will be a slow decline.
Absolutely Dame winning one here is preferable. Do you believe we have the Ownership, GM, and assets to trade without moving Dame to do that? I'm not saying they don't, but if we keep Dame, 2 of the 3 main things will be the same....Dame, and Ownership.
I don't know about the GM or ownership but I do think we have the assets. I don't think my trade ideas of using RoCo to get our pick back from the Bulls and then sending CJ and whatever picks we have to in order to get Simmons is unrealistic and obviously there are permutations of that deal but the base of it is very doable. I also think that the Celtics would trade Jaylen Brown and filler for Ant, Norm and Larry. I also think we could trade Nurk for a solid three and D big who is a better fit for the roster we would be building. I don't know if Cronin sees those options or sees them as appealing, I don't know if he's ambitious about winning a title as soon as possible but I do know that we have the assets to put a contender together... it would take mortgaging a good amount of our future but Brown and Simmons have a lot of future ahead of them. Dame, Nas, Brown, Simmons and let's just say Bamba or Wood is a championship caliber starting lineup even if we're only bringing guys like DSJ, BennyMac, Elleby, Watford and a serviceable backup C off the bench.
