Not disagreeing. Did you actually read the article? This board or another, this article was in the OT forum..... It was considered controversial. I thought the article was kinda silly, personally. Just another way we're supposed to be PC.
See, I get where you're coming from with the low expectations. However, with me saying he was 100% going to stay... if he left, I still am not hurt. I just believed he was going to stay. I didn't wrap up my feelings in it. I don't know, I felt like clearing that up.
I have no problem with you or any other fan taking that stance. What I have issue with is I believe that LA was clearly leaving you could see the tension built up in Quick's article Olshey might have been cocky enough to thank that swinging a deal for Afflalo would have been enough to keep us competitive and by extension keep LA but he was wrong and now we are without 4 starters and in a rebuild. Do we have some decent pieces, yes, but I believe we would be closer had we accumulated assets. Shit happens we gambled and we lost had LA stayed I would be the one eating crow. Anyways I hope the new team is fun and exciting.
I'll always be on the stance that if Wes' achilles doesn't get injured, this would all be different. AAA was not brought here to be a starter... Had he been a bench guy like he was supposed to, everything changes.
It is possible Matthews was such a key cog but I feel like LA was longing to return to Texas either way but had we been more competitive it might have been a harder decision
someone is using convoluted pretzel logic trying to rationalize why no one likes them. Trust me, people are perfectly capable of hating the one's they hate and then expressing that. STOMP
Cmeese, would you advocate for OKC to trade Durant for draft picks right now? They are in a similar situation, and there's certainly been a number of rumors of him walking at the end of his contract to go home to DC. I think it would be insane for them to do that, but they are risking letting him walk for nothing if they don't. For the record I was never 100% sure on what LMA would do, but I will eat crow because I have strongly disagreed with trading him in the last two years. It was more of a calculated risk as to why I disagreed with trading him. I think it's extraordinarily difficult to pull yourself up from oblivion once you get there. A lot of it is luck, but a lot of it is by building a strong culture of hard work and dedication. Failing organizations rarely have either of those things, so it's concerning to me to risk it all because the alternative can just as easily be a return to the 2003-2006 blazer nightmare.
Can I turn it around a bit, Voodoo? IF OKC said right now..."we're not sure we can keep Durant, so what's the offer going to be?" I would imagine that teams would be flying out of the woodwork to trade for him. Heck, look what CLE gave up for Love last year. You don't think OKC could command at least that for Durant? We were willing to give up a lot for Greg Monroe last year (not enough for DET, as it turns out). You don't think that Durant could bring back something more than 20M off the cap next year? I agree that it's difficult to pull yourself out of the hole, and that it takes dedication and (usually) a long time. But to put in all that work and dedication and then see something you've sunk time, energy, other assets--maybe even sacrificing wins or roster improvement--walk away from with nothing in return seems the antithesis of logical.
Honestly I would trade him for two reasons. One the team is in a terrible market so outside of them winning a title which they are not built for IMO Durant has no reason to stay. The second is by trading Durant your giving the team to Westbrook. That might not make him stay either but at least you can gauge how he reacts and go from there. A healthy Durant is similar to Lebron he gives almost any team a chance to contend. Is there fair value for him no but if you can swing him for 1 young stud and several picks it's something you have to consider. A deal with Washington could net 3 1sts and 5 years of Bradley Beal that won't be equal value but Beal is a young stud and you get 3 chances to find gold through the draft. You can essentially do the same thing next season with Westbrook if it looks like he is leaving. Move him for Russel, Randle and picks. You won't be close to contention for a while but you will have a few good young players you control for several years. It is essentially the Oakland A's model for running a small market basketball team. Additionally, making those moves allows you to make more. Serge Ibaka could be dealt as well bringing in more assets. Now you are looking at 7 or 8 extra picks plus going so young the team is likely to get a high lottery pick, they got Harden, Durant and Westbrook from the draft it is not a stretch that within the 5 year window you control Beal for that they could find another all-star level talent with 12-13 first round picks. Basically this is the Thunders window to win a title I would suggest that anything less that a competitive loss in the NBA finals and Durant leaves. That is a massive gamble for a team like OKC to take. I bet they roll the dice though and Durant leaves for nothing and then next season they deal Westbrook before he leaves.
There were a ton of rumors that Aldridge wanted out two years ago. So if suddenly there was a bunch of rumors that Durant wanted out of OKC, and someone came along with a solid offer, I would do it.
Not going to read this whole thread. Just want to say, Brian and Nate put forth cogent arguments two years ago as to why the Blazers should consider trading Aldridge before he left us for nothing. They were often flamed for it. There were probably a few others who agreed for the same reasons. But most of the Aldridge haters who wanted to run him out of town on a rail don't deserve any props or kudos, because their arguments were mostly irrational illogical hate. You don't get props for being accidentally right.
Yah you have to make the deal regardless of how the fans react IMO cause I just flat out do not see Durant returning to OKC after next year.
I can understand your reasoning, and I appreciate that you're at least being consistent; but I have a different take. Your entire assessment is based on the assumption that the player is always going to leave for greener pastures no matter what, and IMO that reasoning is flawed. My take is that Durant probably really will only consider winning, and whether he is on a team that feels like it is giving him his best chance to win or not. If he feels OKC provides him a better opportunity to win a championship than anywhere else, he will choose to stay in OKC. If not, he will go to another team that presents him an opportunity that he feels gives him a better chance to win. Certainly it's the ultimate gamble for OKC, but if not now, when should they gamble? They have a legitimate shot at winning it all, and they also certainly have some scary odds that they lose the second best player in the NBA for nothing. Certainly it's risky, but c'mon, you're seriously going to trade a pretty solid chance of winning a title next season simply because you're afraid you may lose him at the end of the season? I thought the goal was to win a championship, and in order to do that you have to take some risk. Pat Riley has shown he's willing to do this time and time again, and in his case it has resulted in multiple championships. Multiple times it has come crumbling down around him too, but he rebuilds, reloads, takes risks, and sometimes it blows up in his face, but other times it results in something pretty spectacular. The one consistent thing Riley does is he always leaves his rosters with a lot of salary flexibility, and guess what Olshey has done? Exactly that. Personally I felt the same way with LMA's situation as I do with Durant's, and I am still of the opinion that if the Blazers had been able to be more successful last season he would have stayed. Unfortunately I think LMA's lack of killer instinct became a self fulfilling prophecy, as instead of hunkering down and fighting harder he instead became more and more dispirited with the team as a result of their lack of success. I could see the chemistry from the 2014 team was unraveling on the 2015 team due to their lack of success after Wes went down. It's kind of sad but I think he, just as I, had thought that the team was legitimately only a few pieces away from really competing which is why he infamously stated he wanted to be the best Blazer of all time. But as many other posters have pointed out, the season disintegrated due to injuries to Lopez, Wes, AA, Batum, and even himself, and as a result everything came crumbling down. The strongest bit of evidence I have to support my opinion is simply that LMA could have simply chosen to quit on the team with his wrist injury and no one would have blamed him. He could have quit on the team, got the surgery, then bailed for the Spurs just the same. Instead he opted not to do that, and in fact said he was doing so because he believed the team had the potential to make a big run this year. The fact that it didn't, and that we got so humiliated in the playoffs I think was really the deciding factor for him. Sucks to be sure, but I personally don't hold it against Olshey at all. In fact I look at it the completely other way around and I admire his courage to stick to his guns and ride out the wave to completion. Certainly it blew up in his face, but much like Riley he will rebuild, create a lot of flexibility, and continue on with a new vision and strike when the opportunity presents itself. Plus with PA constantly stating he is looking for that GM with "the iron gut", I am pretty sure he agrees with me.
I'm trying to see your case, voodoo, but I wonder (for all the people talking about "taking a risk") why you're willing to accept someone betting the farm on a longshot (a, that POR would be a championship-caliber team and b, that LMA would stay regardless) and losing, but not willing to accept that the lesser risk/higher reward was trading him at some point in the last 2 years. I don't get how "keeping LMA hoping we win enough to change his mind" is a risk worth taking, but "let's see if Andrew Wiggins or Oladipo/Thompson/1sts get us to higher levels of contention for a longer period and much more cheaply, even if the fans talk about revolting" is not a risk worth taking. As far as the "iron gut", I'm would imagine that he's looking for the "iron gut" that ends up being right.
BrianFromWA I am struggling thinking of other ways of explaining it, but let me try. In 2014 LeBron James left the Miami Heat as an UFA - Pat Riley the GM made the calculated risk to not trade him in 2013 as he had an agenda to win an NBA championship in 2014. Unfortunately for Pat Riley, the Heat did not win the championship that year, and as a result LeBron James left the team and they got nothing in return as a result. Call it odd, but considering Pat Riley wanted to risk it all to win a championship rather than simply "compete" for years to come, that was not good enough for him. Now here is I think the major difference in how we're interpreting the situation and "risk" - the big difference here is I honestly did not believe the latest incarnation of the Blazers were that far off from winning the title. In fact GSW's winning this year really further reinforced my opinion on that matter, and in here I think lies the major disagreement. You and the other "should have traded him in 2013, tsk tsk Olshey" crowd don't think that is even in the realm of feasibility. Never mind the fact that the makeup of the Blazers and GSW's were strikingly similar, but lets disregard that point. Considering your interpretation of the likelihood of how successful the team might be at winning was in fact zero, I can completely understand why you would want to blow it up. But if you for a moment consider that I thought we had almost as likely of a chance of winning this year prior to injuries as Golden State, I think it should not be too much of a leap of logic to see why I, personally, otherwise would not be for blowing it up. I seriously, honestly believed that had Wes not been injured, we were an Iguodala type bench player away from really competing. Hopefully this makes sense, because I really am at a loss for how else to explain my position. Certainly it is far more nuanced, and certainly it was the wrong position in hindsight - but I don't think it is really that unreasonable. Plus, as a complete aside, given our luck with the draft in the last decade with BRoy, and Oden, I am not exactly excited to spend multiple seasons sucking simply to see a bunch of missed opportunities (CP3), or promising young players that have injuries ruin their careers before they are started. Call me the cynical one here, but merely looking forward to simply praying a prospect pans out, rather than praying someone that has already panned out stays is a much harder pill for me to swallow.
Small difference there though Miami had already won a title the previous year so it was not exactly a gamble that the team could compete again. Additionally, unlike Portland or OKC people are attracted to Miami the beaches, the sun, the no income tax, Miami is a free agent destination. Just look at all the big name vets that Miami attracted with nothing more than a title shot and veterans minimums.
This thread screams silliness. This is like a guy with a Prius claiming "I told you I can beat the Ferrari" after the guy in the Ferrari blew his clutch right out the gate.
I'm the guy with the Prius driving past the guy in the Ferrari with a gas can in his hand waiting for a ride
