Exclusive I'm not sold on Dame/Ant

I think the comparison is based on the past and weee at the same point they were right after the trade. If we follow the same winning path remains to be seen for sure, but how GSW put themselves in that position is comparable in my opinion.

 

I'm still not sold on Dame and Ant, the jury is still out but I'm definitely not in a place right now where I'm trying to sell either one of them. The good news is neither can be traded until January so there's a lot of time to evaluate how well they work together.

 

Well, we know that @THE HCP is sold on Dame at least, and looks like Dame is sold on the HCP as well.

 

He’s too much of an offensive talent that I don’t want to even consider trading him until next summer. If the Blazers keep this up and Ant finds his shooting touch again, Ant is going to be in the ASG, and someone better be giving up a lot for a 23yo AS PG/SG on a non-max contract, either multiple multiple 1sts or a star SF/PF.

 

It might be the case that Dame can't be traded till next season (July) if he's a designated contract

 

The amazing thing about this roster is that the third string is stacked with some awesome talent...we never have a third string like this ...this team is deep...if they need to trade at the deadline it will most certainly be Josh Hart...he has the most trade value and Payton is right behind him in the rotation. I can totally see Jody paying into the luxury tax to keep a contender together if by the deadline it looks like a contender. We have some other easy contracts to move if we need to...Nas is a friendly contract..Ant is not a toxic contract either nor is Nurk. I can see us paying Hart to be here long term and giving Winslow some security as well. Jody is worth over 20 billion dollars....she can easily pay for a roster.

 

Sure, but it's an unreasonable position to tell those who still hold your previous opinion that there is no reason to hold that view especially when reasons were laid out. Us nobodies disagree, whatever, it's okay. With additional information (like games) you might change your mind again and again

For GMs and Coaches, player contracts aren't as important as winning. It's not their money on the line, it's their careers. Great start, lots of season left.

STOMP

 

Yessir. Dame knows where his bread is buttered. He ain’t getting those contracts without my highlights!

 

CJ is best when the ball is in his hands. Dame and Ant can contribute more without the ball. CJ and Dame just duplicated a lot of the advantages. This isn't a knock on CJ, he's been awesome in NO. For years it might have held back CJs career having him in Dames shadow.

Ants defense has looked better than Dame or CJ ever has. Sharpe looks more like a SF than a guard. I think we need to see 10-20 more games to better understand if these guys can excel long term, but the early results are promising.

The ages for.Damr and Ant as a duo make more sense too. Dame will have a number of stretches the next few years where he either can't or won't want to shoulder the load he did in his mid 20s. 82 games is a lot, and Ant can take on more of that load.

 

There are only two ways that it's Dame that gets moved if the two don't complement each other: the team gets sold and there's a total regime change in the FO or Dame asks to traded. To be honest it might even be too big of a PR nightmare for a new owner unless Dame asks out. That's not to mention that Dame is playing great ball right now.

 

I'm the exact opposite, we've known this kid could fill up the basket since his 2nd year when he first started showing flashes of it. I don't think he's progressed by leaps and bounds, just getting a much bigger opportunity. Now it's time to prove he can be a consistent scoring force, not once out of every 4 games.

 

I'll say again: I think both the Blazers and Dame knew that extension was going to make him almost impossible to trade, especially for any decent return. I don't believe for a second that any team besides Portland would agree to pay Dame 58M when he's 36 and 63M when he's 37. That's too much money for too old a player, too far in the future. My hunch is that Dame signed that deal believing he was in Portland for good

 

Counterpoints;

If Dame is playing at an elite level those extra years are worth much more than the possibility of him opting out of a contract and leaving.

If Dame looks great individually but the Blazers are a mess and pivots to tank there will be a huge trade market for Dame. Right now thats not the situation, but what parties think when signing doesn't mean the direction of the team or player will stay that way. These directions can change in weeks as evident by our roster blowup last year.

CP3/LeBron played great in later years. Dame is skilled like them more so than he is a Westbrook athlete.

Salary cap could go way up to where others players are making ~$80+ million... then Dame's $58million doesn't look so high.

Contending teams don't usually care about payroll multiple years down the line; if a team thinks Dame can get them a title they'd make the move now and worry about 2027 when it comes.

 

Well the Lakers are paying Russ 44 million now so it's safe to say they'd jump at signing Dame in a heartbeat given a chance. Knicks will overpay for a franchise player...same with the Nets. Mark Cuban would break the bank to put Dame next to Luka.....Dame isn't Lebron and Melo's age and won't be when this contract is up even.

 

Don't agree. To start with, the Lakers can't sign Dame; he's already signed. And why would Portland trade Dame for Westbrook? Even if Portland wanted to I don't believe they could because I think Dame can't be traded till next July anyway, and Westbrook won't have a contract then

which brings up the point that all of these trade scenarios might need to be booted to next season if Dame can't be traded till then.

I started to write about 2025 in the post I made but decided to not clutter it up. I believe 2025 is the year the NBA will be signing new media rights deals, including international streaming rights contracts. I know Amazon wants to get into NBA content real bad. And of course, Dame's extension begins at the same time the new media rights deals kick in

and you're right, if the salary cap jumps from 135-140M to 185-190M, a 58M salary wouldn't be 35% of the cap anymore. But it would be 31%. An 80M salary would require a cap of 228M, so that seems wildly unrealistic

besides that we don't know if those 58M and 63M salaries are locked amounts or if they are simply estimates of what 35% of the cap will be. That happens all the time with projected salaries. Whatever the cap, Dame will probably be making 35% of it

which goes directly to what I've been arguing for a long time: that is if Dame is traded it would be to a contender, and the return is going to be pretty shitty because contenders almost never have high draft picks and fine young players to trade.

besides all that, both of you guys ignored my basic point: Portland won't trade Dame unless he asks to be traded, and I don't believe he'll do that. I am assuming him signing that extension is a sign of that because it essentially destroyed any leverage he might exert in a trade demand.

 

There is something damn ridiculous about a system where rewarding Dame for his career contributions to the franchise means sacrificing the present and future to cap hell.

 

it's not "cap hell"...that's a subjective and biased perspective

I think it's even further from being hell because Portland is not a free agent destination

 

Dame's contract looks so untradeable because he's one of the first to sign such a deal. With the new tv deal and as more guys age into being available for these kind of huge contracts, it becomes more tradeable (if we want to go that route).

I don't think we'll ever trade him because he "demands" it or because we just ship him out. But it's not hard to imagine where Dame says something like, "The GM approached me and asked me how I felt about moving to [insert potential contender team here]. I wasn't seeking it out, but sometimes it's good for both sides to consider what's in everybody's best interest. I said I liked it. etc."

If Dame endorses a trade, the fans of Portland would fall in line. It'd be very similar to KG in Minnesota. We'd all shake our heads that we wasted such a great opportunity over so many years, but everybody would move on pretty quickly.

I don't think it's likely given our start this year, but who knows where we'll be a year from now.

 

Because of the super-max provision, Dame can't be traded until July '23 at the earliest.

 

Can we lock this thread now?