This is not a thread...This is a way of life for many. It won't go away anytime soon. Have to say, watching Ant/Hart/Nurkic playing an exciting style of basketball while keeping games interesting, I've been super excited to see the same style with a full roster. Going to be a fun year!
Some people want to drink Koolaid and have rose colored glasses of whatever the team is doing is great and the team will do nothing but the best. Some fans have nothing but shit to say about the team, harp excessively on every tiny mistakes, and always predict failure. Then there are many who split between both extremes. I've been a huge supporter of many actions this team has done, thought the DameCJ duo was better than many, liked much of Olsheys moves, loved the Sharpe pick. I've also said Olshey deserved to be fired for 2016, hated Meyers, and have been negative on many moves this franchise has done, especially the last year. Posters can be positive or negative whenever they want and explain their rationale whenever they want. If you think your a better fan because you say nothing but rainbows and gumdrops about this team then sure go keep sticking your nose up high and tooting your own horn. If you want to shit on this team at every moment then keep on doing that too. If you want to tell it how it is and give a mix of praise or blame where it is warranted; you can do that. None of these types of fans are better than the other, or inherently more correct than the other. We all have an obsession, possibly unhealthy, of following the Blazers franchise and all can do it in our own ways. So if you don't want to hear fans post that they think this is an epic disaster; then go fuck off and read another thread. Nobody forced you to read or post in this one.
I want to clarify my comments : I have no issue with having issues with how this roster is constructed but to go from 0 to 100 and act like this is the worst thing ever is kind of silly and unwarranted at least AT THIS time. Now around the all star break this might turn out to be true and if that is the case ME and guessing a few others will be eating a little crow about how some were right to be this concerned. All I am asking for is people to bring it down a notch or two and try not to be chicken little and act like the DAMN sky is falling when at this time IT"S NOT. -- This is a FACT not an opinion Also Wes -- Please chill out cause you have a good point up until the very end and I am pretty sure the end was kind of aimed at me and maybe others but I will not take it personal but I will say -- Have a nice day and GO BLAZERS
I honestly think Joe is being very transparent without giving up too much leverage in current or future negotiations to acquire players with more size. He didn't say this team was a finished product but he did say he liked the collection of talent and personalities on the roster and wants to see how they play together. I think that means he is cool with this step in what he called a retool and isn't going to specify when he's moving onto the next step. I really wish the media would ask him more meaningful questions because he's not going to volunteer information in that setting, he probably won't have another open presser and if they did it would make him take the opportunity to further clarify if this is the team that's at the peak (which I sincerely doubt he thinks) or if this is a time to evaluate how the talent they assembled works together in order to make informed roster moves down the road.
Very few, if any poster expected 3 all-stars. What some of us wanted was young players who had a chance to be more than journeymen while not putting us right back into payroll purgatory. What did we get? Mr unscratched lotto ticket, Mr hard-cap, and a guy even the Pistons said "gee, we can do better and cheaper!" He also took a huge gamble on Nurk finally being healthy and Simons actually meshing with Dame better than CJ did.
"Mr. Unscratched Lotto Ticket" is the young player who has a chance to be more than a journeyman. Most experts are saying he's likely the steal of the draft. Detroit didn't want Grant because he's nowhere close to their timeline but he's right on ours. Gary is a headscratcher because we do have a lot of guys 6'6" and under but like Joe said today they're just in talent acquisition mode right now and they like who they got. He said that he wants to see them play together and that infers that after he sees them do that for a while he'll then know who fits best and then be able to balance the roster by trading those that don't fit as well. By no means was it a perfect offseason and I really wish we would have got Nurk and Ant on more team friendly deals or at least made them go out there and shop themselves before giving them such big paydays (we bid against ourselves again) but I think we have a more competitive team today than we did during the entire Dame/CJ era. I know that era was us just treading water as an also ran but I think we're moving in the right direction overall.
I'm not a huge fan of most of the moves (Grant was solid). Sharpe certainly fits the bill of a having a chance to be more than journeyman.
I think I saw a few comments along the lines of, "wait for the trade deadline, Joe will add more talent". that last trade deadline completely nullified all the ideas in this thread about Hart & GP2 being good defenders. Those guys aren't even Blazers anymore.
I think some posters here just copy and paste the same things they said in this thread 11 months ago about how Cronin is not done and the team is still in the middle of building a contender around Dame.
This makes me worry that Cronin will not take a big swing and Dame will have had enough of Joe's punting on the season, every season. I did think he'd make moves that made us relevant at the deadline and he did the opposite again. I get it that everyone is saying that Dame understands the value of picks and he's loyal to the soil but if Joe continues to just do a youth rebuild and disregard the fact that the best player in this team's history is in his prime... that player regardless of loyalty being his brand is going to ask to be traded.
We were right, though. So, yeah. It makes sense we're saying much of the same stuff. Again, it's like some of you haven't been watching the team the last couple of years and are stuck in some fantasy world where we're one player away.
This discussion is so stupid. Nobody, including Cronin, thought that the roster as constructed at the start of the season was a finished product or a serious contender. Joe said as much at the end of free agency last summer. The roster was short on size, had too many guards and was too young. The plan was to make some trades before the deadline. The team started out great and then the injury bug hit in a big way. The record at the deadline was bad, there weren’t any big trades that Cronin liked, and he needed to do a move to avoid losing Hart for nothing at the end of the season. The move was to get a first round pick and take a look at some young players. The intentional tank was on to try to get more draft capital. Looking at the record and saying you were right last summer about the rebuild is just silly.
