Game Thread NBA PLAY-IN - PELICANS @ CLIPPERS - APRIL 15, 2022 - FRIDAY - 7:00 PM (PDT) TNT

We were tearing it down this season. Ro tank and get a top pick. And look at that, we're primed for a top 6 pick. He wants to build around lillard, he said it could take more than 1 year

 

That's fair, "but he eventually has to go" is how you ended your point. I guess you believe that CJ is worth more now than he was when he was traded? I'd much rather have the 6th pick in this draft and the New Orleans return no matter what happens with this NOP pick than the 13th pick and a NOP-level CJ for whom we still have no trade leverage for this summer. If you believe that Portland would have gotten more in return for CJ this summer when gets a year older, I guess I'm just going to have to disagree.

We may not like it, but this was and is CJ's market.

 

agree to disagree. let's see what happens this summer.

maybe it's the doomsday culture i've been harboring, but i can see our entire summer plans toppling over (as well as Dame's disinterest in rebuilding) just because of this one game tonight.

 

I don't think there's any ambiguity in that point.

 

I can as well. But we still have our pick. A high pick. That's way better to me than a 1st round exit and desperate to move CJ.

 

Right. He made the RoCo deal in order to have more leverage in CJ negotiations. That's exactly what I said in the previous posts. We can argue that the Clippers deal was bad, but it didn't lower CJ offers, and according to Cronin, it gave them more leverage.

 

We probably will never know as he won't leave New Orleans, but I'll admit to not understanding that line of thought.

 

And we have no clue why you are retroactively bashing him for a trade that seemed by most objective observers at least market value, and that many of us would argue even with the Milwaukee pick instead, is still market value. No one is saying he should definitely be hired longterm, but to bash him for the CJ trade now is silly.

 

Don't let anyone sell you on what we already had being something we gained in a trade. That's how a loser thinks. We have to be competitive with the other teams in this league so we can't give them a ton more so that we can access shit that we already have. A 2025 first and a couple of second rounders are not going to get us good value on the TPE. Hart is a good piece but this shit doesn't come close to adding up to the value of CJ and Larry. If the pick conveys sure it's just a small loss and it can be sold as a small step back to take a bigger step forward. You can't work the same magic with that first trade though.

I just don't know why you'd want to keep Joe. There are literally hundreds of candidates out there that we could have and I'm quite sure most of them are going to be better than Cronin and less sentimental about the way they go about building an instant contender or rebuilding this roster.

 

There is no retroactive bashing. A lot of us were trashing these deals from the beginning.

 

I didn't like it when it happened and said the whole time that if the pick conveyed it was a small loss and if the pick didn't, that it was disastrous. Just look at how CJ is playing unencumbered by how bad of a fit him and Dame were together. The proof that it wasn't a great deal is right there and everyone was shitting on the Norm/RoCo deal. Also, the choice with an interim GM is to either let him go, put him back in his old position if he'd accept that or take him out of the pool of candidates. You don't get to kick the can down the road on this one, we either hire him and expect it to be long term or we do not.

 

We didn't "already have" a top 6 pick this offseason if we kept CJ, Powell and roco around.

 

1) You can absolutely kick the can down the road as long as you want. Jody can maintain the interim GM title for Cronin as long as they both are agreed to the position. I'm not saying we should do that or hire him longterm, but the "Cronin is a disaster!" talk is hyperbole at its worst.
2) I can't say that it was a great deal, but I disagree that it wasn't a fine deal, even now. I maintain that even if New Orleans were to trade CJ today, they would not get substantially more than the Blazers got, even considering the fact the NOP might have substantially more leverage than the Blazers in their Dame timeline. It's clear that you disagree, but frankly, I haven't seen any report from any NBA insider saying his value was or is higher than the NOP return in February. Again, I'll happily concede that point if you can cite otherwise.

 

It also wasn't an asset we acquired from the team we made the trades with. Honestly, that's such bad logic. We can't let teams fuck us over so we can further access existing assets. We should be able to get further access to those assets while getting something close to equal value coming back for outgoing assets. If you think CJ (even on his contract) and Norm (who I think has a great contract) were leveraged correctly when the return on them was Hart, Winslow, Johnson, a potential late lotto pick or future first, and second rounders then we're at a huge impasse.

That's not even taking into consideration the value of Larry and RoCo which despite what so many in here think, they did have positive value not negative value RoCo was reportedly sought after by a lot of teams heading into the deadline. The trades made were weak and lazy, instead of getting third teams involved or finding different destinations for all of the players Cronin was willing to take big Ls to get under the cap and free up cap space that he fully intended to use on players already on the roster. Just for reference the Pels deal doesn't have to be a big L it will be if the pick end up as the 2025 Bucks pick which means Joe was willing to take a big L on it. The Clippers deal was and is a big L. The moves lacked creativity and foresight. Just took what we could get in big chunks recklessly.

I don't know why people want to give this guy a chance this off season to make more simple, desperate and reckless deals.

 

They put contingencies on every possible 1st round pick Portland might get out of the trade. Their pick and the future Bucks pick. They covered every base at least partially until they turn into 2nds. Well done on their part. Fail on Cronin's part.

 

I know it's not an asset we acquired. I said it is an asset we have to work with this offseason. One we would not have had had we kept everyone around. And that my preference this offseason is to have a high lotto pick and some financial flexibility over the desperate need to move cj after another first round exit and no high lotto pick.

 

Yeah, I'm not going to go back and site all of the people that said we lost in that deal but there were a lot of them and they didn't have the experience with CJ which should have made Cronin know the kind of positive impact he would have on the Pels that made the pick far more precarious.

I disagree that you can keep an interim tag on a GM going into a second season or even going into an off season after having him since before the trade deadline... we would look incredibly unstable and if you don't think other GMs took advantage of someone in the middle of a job interview before just wait for how many of them smell the desperation that Joe will have to have if they do something unprecedented like leaving an interim tag on for that long.

 

Lol

 

If Clippers lose tonight do you think their will be another GM or Pres before draft?
I got to be honest, Joe sees like a nice guy and all but he doesn't come across as one who can be persuasive and proactive. He's comes across as a golly gee smilie be nice to everyone and don't ruffle feathers.
When He and Chauncey speak for any length of time especially together I start yawning and boredom sits in. Nicest dudes you will ever meet though, I bet.