Stephen A has to be the biggest culprit. All summer he’s been tampering for big markets - especially with Dame. Ice cube yesterday and his son today lobbying for Lillard. Back to Stephen A — he very well could have compromised the KAT/Portland talks just by announcing it on National TV as he knows any move like that keeps Dame from NY/LA. It also doesn’t help if your own GM calls Portland “podunk.” What say you? Remedy?
It's an entertainment industry. There're more eyes in big markets than in small ones. It's annoying, but there's no fix to it. Well, there is. Don't watch Stephen A. Seriously the ONLY time I hear about him or Skip is people complaining about him or SKip. Because I don't watch or follow either of them. And if those people didn't, I'd NEVER have to hear them. It's actually a really easy fix.
Smith is gonna Smith Cube and his son can go elsewhere for players to help Lebron and AD. Shit LA just won a championship. They have won too fucking many of them. Fuck off with that. Lillard is a Blazer for life
A small amount of their listeners will get annoyed. A large amount of their listeners will get pumped.
It was a piece by...Abbott I think?, implying that Neil is trying to get fired and hates "Po Dunk" Portland.
Did Abbott simply write the adjective to describe Olshey, or did he actually quote Olshey as saying the word? I'm guessing the former. The reaction against Billups would make anyone think that Portland is small-town South. Also, Abbott is a nerd who quickly drove TrueHoop down the drain at ESPN. It was overlong and boring.
The biggest knock against Damian Lillard when he entered the league was the same one the sports media had against Greg Oden. They are in a small market. Their careers would do better if they went to a larger market team. The problem I see, is that NBA players now have more control over where they get traded to than they used to in the past. They can up and leave a team to go form a super team and screw the rest of the teams who have been working on building their team for several years. If a team can just leapfrog to the top of the pack like that, the rest of the league stands little to no chance at all.