Fair enough. So tell me who you do not want to trade? Ant and Nurk are the two most mentioned because of their contracts. So essentially you are saying do not trade them. I admit I am a huge Ant fan and would prefer to keep him. Nurk on the other hand I would be ok with moving his contract. However, I think you are embellishing on what most Keep Dame fans are saying about trading future draft picks. The vast majority are not talking about trading away all of our future picks...... just 2 this year, or maybe one this year and one later. We can always improve the immediate team by keeping Dame and trading only #3 for say...... Franz. No depth or future picks are needed. Then you draft a young center at 23 and add a vet with the MLE. You can still make an additional minor trade using Nurk and a future pick while still keeping the young depth you apparently like. The bottom line keeping Dame does not necessarily mean mortgaging the future.
As WM said, the problem is that the contracts you have to send out will necessitate trading at least Ant and Nurk and that's still not enough to land the type of players this roster would need. First off you can cross off Grant, Reddish, Thybulle, Winslow, Eubanks as all of those guys are on holds and we'd have to use Bird rights on them, meaning no deals until January. That leaves Simons (24M), Nurk (17M), Sharpe (6M), Little (6M), Knox (3M) and Keon (3M) in tradable assets along with draft picks. So the Blazers in theory have 59 million in tradeable contracts. If you want to shoot for the moon and get a guy like Embiid, it takes at a MINIMUM both Nurk and Simons plus all the picks and most likely Sharpe. So now it's a roster of Dame, Embiid, Grant, Thyballe, Reddish, Little etc. If you were to just take Simons or Nurk out of that trade, than the Blazers don't have enough available money to make any trade for Embiid work. Or maybe you try to make a play for Brown and Bridges, you're again sending out nearly everyone that's available for those two, plus the picks and are left with Dame, Brown, Bridges, Grant, Thyballe, Reddish. Personally I don't think either of those groups are really competing for a title but maybe they do. I think it would end up being a situation like Phoenix this year, where they gave up all their depth to get a true SUPERSTAR and then didn't have the depth to make an actual run.
"Enough players" to be a contender is debatable. Based on what I am watching right now between Denver and LA...it only takes one more star. Embiid is not realistic IMO. ..but if he was all it would take for him is Nurk and Ant to match salaries. Bridges could be had for Nurk and Little (To match salaries) Brown for Ant and Little. So then it comes down to how they value #3 and 23. If any teams want us to give them a shitload of unprotected draft picks then we walk. Just like most teams would do if we ask them to give us a young star plus a bunch of draft picks for Dame and his salary. Neither scenario is going to guarantee us anything but I like our chances better with Dame. But again most sane "Keep Dame" supporters are NOT advocating to sell the farm to get him help.
Because of the one & done era, i'm not as big on draft capital as in the past. There's a ton of luck needed in the draft. We might have got that luck with Sharpe. Banchero was the truth last year. But all the others were inconsistent, and didn't knock my socks off. Sharpe's end of the season run ws very exciting to see what his future holds. I am not for trading Sharpe at all, unless if Wemby could be in the return . But the # 3, and future picks til 2029 , opened up by conveying something (#23 , or those 5 2nd rdrs. from GSW ) to the Bulls to pick up a couple game changers , All In on that.
The key word in your post is " couple". One game-changer is hard enough, let alone acquiring 2. But yeah if one of them was young enough to fit with Sharpe's timeline then giving up future picks every other year is a little easier to accept. Still, I think it is unlikely.
Another underrated aspect of the situation is that we are gonna trade away a potential All Star at controlled cost with rookie salary for the next 8 years for the whims of Lillard.. imagine if we trade for Siakam and then he walks away like Aldridge for nothing..... meanwhile Scoot and Miller ends up All Star for other teams..........
lol....so, essentially what you're saying is that whatever Portland does will be the worst things ever; and whatever it is they could have done, but don't, will be the best things ever for other teams.... you need to look at the sunny side:
