Part II: Neil Olshey promises an 'aggressive' offseason

I think the only way this off season is unsuccessful is if they miss out on significant FA's and draft another project. Anything else will really be an upgrade.

 

OK City's salary dump this season certainly turned out to be a home run for the Rockets.

 

Noah is the absolute perfect fit. He's a younger Varejao without the long injury history. If we can get him in a salary dump, that would be an unbelievable off season.

 

Yes, but I'm not talking upgrade. Getting Noah would be the best player obtained for our need.

 

This

 

Would it? I know Noah and his coach have not seen eye to eye due to Noah's defense.

His defense is really solid by the numbers, but is that more Thibodeau than Noah?

Don't get me wrong, Noah would be light years better than Hickson or Leonard last year, but I'm not sure he is THE perfect guy. Might be one of those cases where numbers are a bit misleading

 

Here is a bit more of what I am referring to

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8595253/nba-kobe-bryant-joakim-noah-overrated-defenders

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...icago-bulls-joakim-noah-an-overrated-defender

 

I get that, but the 82.games has a sizable small sample size. Noah is usually the player facing the best offensive player.

 

I think all this discussion is probably futile. There is no way CHI is dumping Noah when they can amnesty Boozer and probably jettison Deng's albatross contract to get some financial flexibility. Noah is a huge part of their core.

 

I think we should be really aggressive this year if there are amnesties. Boozer, Gooden and Perkins probably all have a better than 50/50 shot of being let go.

I not high on Perkins like some (he has been a disaster the last two years. Look it up - His body is shot) but if he came for a 1.5 MIL bid then ok take a swing.

 

I'm very wary of Varejo, he's old and seems to be injured all the time. Noah would be amazing, if only we had gotten the second or third pick in 2007.

 

He seems to be injured a lot for sure. In fact looking back he has played

54
48
81
48
81
76
31
25
25

Only played a full season 3 times out of 9/ No thank you

 

I also think age is a factor and marital status. If you are a wealthy young single black male, who can pretty much sleep with super models every night of the week.........Portland is OK, but it ain't Miami, Chicago, New York, LA, or Houston.

But if you are interested in actually staying married.....Portland is a great city to raise your kids and just play ball.

 

Great point


Also consider where they were born and went to college

Small town
West coast
Weather there

 

On the flipside, there doesn't appear to be a perfect guy in the league that would be available. Noah at least ticks most of the boxes the Blazers would be looking for.

 

Not that I think Noah is a realistic target

 

I don't think we can get Noah (would love to be wrong on this) but why haggle over him not being perfect? WHO could we get that is perfect?

 

Run down the list of centers in the NBA and you'll find that perfection, or anything approximating it, is woefully absent. We're talking upgrade here, folks.

 

Greg Oden with two bionic legs?

 

Undersized? Larry Sanders is 7 feet tall.