I like Josh a lot but I really don’t see the point of paying him that much to be on the blazers. I think it was a good trade.
If we had been willing to have Simons come off the bench and deal Sharpe for a legit starting 3, then Hart staying and starting at SG would have given us arguably our best and most talented roster since LMA left. But since that wasn't going to happen, trading him away was the only responsible move.
Yeah.... unfortunately there's a lot of "ifs" in that scenario. If Hart didn't (reportedly) actually want to go back east. If Simons would come off the bench (still I think his best fit on this team). If we were willing to trade Sharpe (presumably for someone like OG). The funny thing is that I still think, despite it being arguably our most talented lineup since LMA, that a starting lineup of Dame/Hart/OG/Grant/Nurk is not a contender and at best maybe a second round exit.
A terrific rotational player who can defend and rebound at a starting salary around 18 mil is a bargain. I'd rather have Josh at 20 mil AAV than Grant at 32.
I don't think either player fits the window of this team, and I suspect Grant will be gone either at the deadline or next summer. I guess we'll see if we get more value for Grant than we got for Hart.
Josh, in my eyes, was closest thing to Iron Wes, that ever played for Blazers since Wes went down. He was the only guy, that played professional basketball in last years sorry ass Blazers team. ONLY guy to play defense every single night. He was the piece Lillard should fought for if he wanted to "have a shot". I don't get people here. For 5 years talking about ballhogs with tunnel vision and you hating on a guy, because he wouldn't hit 3s like CJ.
Hes 28 though. He couldn’t shoot and I really don’t think we need another ball handler. I don’t think we need to be handing out large contracts to role players right now. This is all assuming that he wanted to be here.
Some people crying over Grant’s deal and Hart getting that money? For that, I’m okay being Hart-less.
I wanted both Grant and Hart. I also want Lillard and another Powerful power forward. Then I want a better Center than Nurk. I want to keep Sharpe and I want to keep Scoot. I guess I just want a good team?
People talk about rebounding but actually after Hart was traded as our best rebounder...both Grant and Lillard's rebounding got much, much better. I remember the radio broadcast crew talking about it after Dame had a triple double game...Charles Barkley used to say that if you played against Rodman, he was going to get your rebounds. Hart got everybody's rebounds but was not a willing shooter. Playing with Hart in the paint would be like playing with Kanter in the paint...they just have great rebounding instincts.
I was skeptical about this - so I pulled the game logs. With Hart: Grant averaged 4.3 boards in 53 games. Without Hart: Grant averaged 5.3 boards in 10 games. He did increase them by ~25%.... However, either way, he is way below average for a PF.
Aaaand that's why we traded him. Good player. Worth the price for the Knicks, not worth the price for us.
