For a superstar who is sitting out the year while he recovers from surgery. Yeah, pretty small sample group.
By the way, whatever the "next" deal may be, it just became harder to get value for whatever we trade. Whether we like it or not, the RoCo/Powell deal set expectations around the league. Any GM that doesn't similarly fleece us will look poor in comparison to the Clippers GM.
I disagree with your analysis. Those trades happen simultaneously. There isn't a lag this long. They happen immediately after a player is attached to a roster, and for PR purposes, those "next" deals are always leaked. As for Cronin being respected around the league, I have no idea. All I know is we received suboptimal value for two reasonably priced assets. That's just my opinion, but the opinion of most people who cover the NBA. I'm certain his story to other franchises will not be that he received comparable value, but the message for ownership was to get under the cap. A more clever GM could have done so in a manner that garnered more assets. His move was ill-timed and ham-handed. What is irksome about the deal to me is that it reeks of desperation to clear cap space. There's a lot of time left until the trade deadline. If you're offered an excrement sandwich for dinner, you don't accept it at breakfast. You wait until closer to dinner to see if anything else will be offered you would rather eat.
I would have no problem with that. At this point, it is not about this year. When you consider that 6 guys of our top 9 players have missed a major amount of games, this season has been in tank mode for a while. Might as well complete it.
CJ McCollum to Pelicans Jusuf Nurkic and Josh Hart to Indy Domantas Sabonis, Jackson Hayes and Tomáš Satoranský to Portland
The only high marks going to Portland for this trade I have seen are on this board. So what is it an A? Please give it your grade, if you'd like to. I give it a D. Clippers gave Portland the worse of their two prospects, a perpetually injured player, and a guy who will never wear a Blazers uniform. Oh and that sweet juicy SRP.
I don't think anyone believes Cronin turned down superior deals. I think people believe that from a talent standpoint, making no deal would have been superior to this deal, and that there were ways to accomplish the same tax savings without devaluing existing assets. I think people also believe that given nearly a week remaining before the trade deadline, there was still plenty of time to explore superior deals before settling for one with such an obvious talent deficit. And I think people also believe (and this is purely speculation), that if this was in fact the best deal Cronin was able to come up with in trading Powell, he either doesn't have enough cachet around the league to obtain a decent offer from other GMs, or doesn't have the necessary negotiation skills to maximize value when exploring trades.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/clutch...eted-in-portlands-trade-talks-with-kings/amp/ RUMOR: The former lottery pick targeted in Blazers’ trade talks with Kings “The Trail Blazers and Kings held talks bout disgruntled young forward Marvin Bagley. Given the multi-season tension with Bagley, he’s another player whom it’s surprising hasn’t been dealt.”
Brad Botkin (CBS Sports) has an article speculating the Lillard is going as well. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/...rebuild-by-trading-norman-powell-for-nothing/
