Cronin was in a panic to get below the tax threshold. (no doubt under pressure from Seattle) As a bonus, it convinced some people that the shit and shinola he got for CJ wasn't that bad.
If the pick relays then we got solid value if you just consider the trade for CJ... but when you add in that they get Larry next season, they got over on us. CJ for Hart and a top 10 pick is pretty solid.
The truth is that teams trade far superior players for players that are a better fit all of the time... they just come away from the deal with first round picks to make up for the difference in talent, production and just overall value. If the Clippers decide they want to flip Norm at the trade deadline next season and we decide we want to trade Justise at the same time, the Clips are going to get a fuck ton more than we do. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. That being said, if the Pelicans pick conveys, we're in good shape to build a contending team next season.
Its been said before, but ill say it again. Most here are looking at it in reverse. Teams find the players they want to target and then work out a trade. If Winslow was a target and the goal was to shed salary as well, why shop elsewhere if the target is able to be had? everyone seems to think there were better deals out there. Possibly, but the return players may not fit the system the Blazers are building. Anyone here saying there were many different trades is not being realistic about how it works. You don't trade for the best package when it doesn't fit the system moving forward. Sometimes addition by subtraction works and so far, to me, its pretty evident it has. Blazer fans are hilarious!!! “x player sucks. Trade him. Not part of a championship team!!” “How come we didnt get durant and multiple picks for our guys????!!!!????” (hyperbole i know, but not THAT far off the mark.)
Scratch that last part. No hyperbole needed. No one believes that. And this fails to take into account that it isn't just "better players or better fit" it's waiting to see if there's "better players that also are a better fit" and we put all our eggs into Winslow and Johnson. When you look at it from a macro OR a micro sense, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Again, Winslow may turn out to be the better player that was also a better fit, but to trade 2 serviceable players for a chance of someone being the better player + better fit without letting teams get desperate towards the end of the trade deadline.... I don't know, it just doesn't sit well. Again, if we end up having a solid rotational player out of this then I can change my tune to this trade, until then - just selling hope that this trade is good, given what we gave up... People have a right to dismiss this trade. And remember, people are saying this is a good trade for us. It's been 5-6 games. Winslow has been more than serviceable. But it's still a risk. He is a better fit no doubt, but there's still a long way to go to sway a lot of people's minds from this trade, and rightfully so.
My point being, just because Blazer fans assess value to players on our roster doesn't mean its the same value our FO or the rest of the league views them. There is also the risk of losing Winslow to another trade and then walking away with a player of lesser fit. hindsight is 20/20. There is always a risk in making a trade involving starters.
Great, let's have any other team make a "great trade" where we trade them 2 players who aren't playing and $5 mil cap space for 2 of their starters.
This is a very good post with some solid speculation. However, the part in bold still doesn't make any sense. I still have one small connection into an NBA front office and I've never heard anything that comes close to suggesting that a team isn't in communication with the entire league on a very regular basis. Its not GM to GM, but feelers are out there all the time. There is basically no way the Blazers started to figure out the interest in Norm a week before the deadline. There is probably no way it started just a monht before the deadline. Having said that, this gets back to why they would leave better options on the table, it just doesn't make sense. If someone wants to make the case that they would've been better off holding onto Norm and not having as much cap flexibility heading into the draft/FA, that's a different discussion. If someone wants to say the Norm trade was a bummer, I can understand that as well. But the story that the Blazers first call about trading Norm was to the Clippers and they got so excited they took the deal without seeing what else was out there; that doesn't hold water to me at all. Your post was still fantastic overall though.
Cronin being under pressure to get under the tax totally checks out. Panic, not so much. The second part makes no sense for a guy on audition for a full time GM job in the NBA. Zero.
And then half those dudes will leave for the big city and the Blazers go back to step 1. The only team that benefits from trading a generational talent, is the team that receives the generational talent. And yes, Ant is off to a nice start with starters minutes. But he hasn't done JACK! in the playoffs. He's young, we can build around him in a half dozen years, if we don't get it done with Dame.
Simply put, I believe that trading for a heavily conditional pick is like a game of 3 card monte. In theory we could come out OK...but I wouldn't bet 2 cents on it happening.
Isn't Cronin's background as a bean-counter? What background does he have in talent evaluation that would even qualify him as a GM? Maybe I am out-of-step with the current NBA, but I would rather see a basketball guy as GM and let him hire an accountant to advise on cap issues.
Portland wasn't 10M over the tax line. They were 1.3M over the line scheduled to pay a grand total of 2M in tax. Cronin's argument that teams were blackmailing Portland because they were 1.3M over the line is simply not credible. Obviously, deleting 2M in tax wasn't the priority, it was re-setting the repeater tax calendar. Still there were almost certainly options for doing that without the Clips trade more than that though is there is nothing about the Blazer/Pels trade that pivoted on the Blazer/Clips trade being completed first. Nothing from Portland's POV and nothing from the Pels POV. Nance was traded for a TPE. The Pelicans trade could have been completed first and then, according to Cronin's excuse, the Blazers could have entered the Clippers trade talks as a non-tax team with more leverage
Cronin was a basketball player and actually played against Billups in the state championship in highschool.
It doesn't hold water to me either. I think we're looking at the same coin differently. I don't think "they got excited" I also don't think, even given that they talk weeks and months prior, that there wasn't "feelers" still out there that weren't then, for lack of a better term, fully felt out. At this point, it's perspective based. I'd also like to know what other trades were made 5-7 days before the deadline and get into the situations based on that. That'd at least guage what the "norm" (HA!) is.
I think you might be out-of-step. Numbers and analytics guys are more and more of the norm in NBA front offices. Also, Cronin doesn't work in a silo, he has a team of people around him with various backgrounds. Any or all of which could've and most likely did provide input on all potential moves as well as the strength of the current more given ownerships directive. We'll never know for sure since we're not giving full transparency.
So what is your opinion for Cronin's motive to either reject better offers and/or not even reach out to other teams for offers many weeks in advance?
All valid and I totally agree its perspective based. I wasn't jumping up and down thinking this was a great trade either. It wasn't. For years, I expressed that I felt the majority of our contracts would not be valued around the league because the years or amt/year were above market value. I think the trade market proved that to be true. None of our players were traded and then flipped for something significantly better either, which some people (Dwight Jaynes) were speculating would surely happen. For the last 3-4 years, we've been swapping around bad deals for another bad deal. At some point, we were going to have to look in the mirror and take the talent hit to get out of all these bad or useless contracts.
