I think he has three more seasons playing at the level he was at last season... possibly playing at an even higher level if you believe what his surgeon said about how much his movement will improve compared to the last four years. Then after those three seasons, I think much like Chris Paul or LeBron and some other guys who are fanatical about taking care of themselves, Dame will have a slow digression over those following four or five seasons where he goes from an all star level to a very high quality role playing starter level. I think Dame could be very good until he's 39 or 40.
How so? What would doing the opposite do? If you say keeping Dame will end up in us not getting to the finals in the next 5 years, I'd probably agree. If you said trading Dame would get us to the finals in the next 5 years, I'd strongly disagree.
Agreed, Ant will have lower production. But with the $22+ million dollar difference, can you make up for that difference, or even surpass it? Will it open a bigger, longer window? And that doesn't count the assets, players and draft picks Dame would bring back? Typically, you don't have a player that will plug into the position of the star leaving and be even 50% of what has left. I think we at least have that with Ant. When Clyde left, we had nothing to replace him. Same with Roy. We have a much better option with Ant. Add in the addition cap space and assets we would get back, and who knows how good that could be? Likely no worse than the often swept playoff series we have had, and we re-set the window from getting close to closing, to just opening up.
Ι don't trust at all the Blazers with cap space. We never really use that correctly. And it's a real possibility that removing 22M would just ease the tax and won't mean more cap space really.
I get where you're going with this, but some big assumptions have to happen for all this to work out. Why not trade Ant and the contract you see as far more valuable for someone better than Dame to combine with Dame? If you see Ant + Contract being more valuable than Dame + Contract, then it seems to be the safest and best move would be to trade Ant, not Dame. Now I don't actually think the league will value Ant + Contract more for the same reasons I wouldn't get rid of Dame in order to get Ant the keys.
Both excellent points. What the salary savings actually meants in terms of cap room and Portland's ability to land a top free agent, which we haven't done in decades is a big ask.
But we don't have Ant + contract to trade. The 'contract' is only available IF management were to make better use of the salary cap and take advantage of the cap space they would have with Dame (and CJ) gone. That is over $70,000,000 in salaries off the books with Ant's going from $3.9 to say ~$20M. That is a $50M difference with which to take advantage of. Plus the picks, and any other assets coming back....which would of course take up some of that cap room, but not nearly so much for just 2 players....who have shown that together, they don't produce very good team results.
LOL...could you be any more obvious? your two choices are Dame + rejects vs Ant + awesome. Nope, no agenda evident there! if Ant is so good, why couldn't trading him yield awesome? Then it would be Dame + Awesome. I'll take door #3
So you're suggesting we trade Dame/CJ for expiring contracts and basically let them walk for nothing outside of cap space and picks? This is making less sense to me now.
Didn't suggest that at all. In fact, it specifically reference "assets coming back....which would of course take up some of that cap room."
Ok. So it wouldn't be a $50m savings as you wrote? How much do you really think it would be? Trying to get a picture of how much cap room we would have. What type of player we could bring in for that cap space.
I’ve said repeatedly that I do not see a path to the finals with this roster and keeping Dame. Not enough capital in the other 13 or whatever guys to be able to obtain talent to overtake the teams ahead of them. Let’s say they get Simmons for CJ etc. They would have Dame and Ben and whoever is left. Not enough. And not enough leftovers to go get another guys. I just don’t see it. What I can see is getting enough assets back from Lillard and CJ etc to have a really nice start to a rebuild. Rebuild while the Warriors age.
If you could event get 3 quality players into those slots of the 2 salary amounts totaling $70,000,000, and then add in Ant's $20,000,000, it would seem like we would have a much more balance roster without so much duplicity. It's not that CJ (or certainly Dame) are bad players. But they eat up so much of the cap, it limits what other moves can be made. And for the types of players they are, you can't have multiples of those on your roster. (Neil...talking to you) John Collins - $25M Mikal Bridges - $22M Jeremi Grant - $20M OG Anunoby - $18M Jonathan Isaac - $17.4 (if he can ever stay healthy) Christian Wood - $13.6M Jae Crowder - $9.7M Those are all types of players on non-rookie contracts that I'd like to slot into $70,000,000 worth of cap space. And every player (just like those on our roster) can be nit picked. But they would give us more size, length, defense and non are nearly as ball dominant as Dame/CJ. More ball movement, more spread out shot dispersal.....equals a happier team.
Good grief.....another response from a poster who apparently isn't taking the time to read and shoots off a "Dafuq" response. Seriously? What part of, "Plus the picks, and any other assets coming back....which would of course take up some of that cap room" implies dumping Dame for picks? This is like the 4th time in the last couple days peole are attributing stuff to me that I didn't say, or completely missing something that is obviously right in the post. Some posters I get, but you're better than that.
