I will say this - when Petro was drafted, the talking heads predicted that it meant Sabonis would never play in Portland because he and Petro had some deep-seated personal animosity. If that claim was true, I am just fine with Petro being traded. Pre-injury Sabonis was arguably better than David Robinson. Even post-injury he was a heck of a player.
I have a feeling that literally nobody on this board would support trading the #6 and a re-signed Nurk for Rudy Gobert - but if you're going to start a backcourt of Dame and Anfernee it sure would help to have the best defensive center in the league behind them.
You just can't tie up that much of your salary cap in a defensive specialist - even an elite one like Gobert. If he was on a more team friendly contract, I would actually consider that deal.
That's what can happen if you draft a good player that can't get enough playing time. Like Jermaine O'Neal.
No thanks! He's trending in the wrong direction. He's 4 years older than Jerami Grant and has a worse true shooting % than Grant. You were kidding, right?
Portland had the 8th rated defense in 2017-18 with Dame and CJ as the starting back court. The Blazers don't need to pay Gobert 43M/year to solve defensive issues. They just need to NOT build the defensively deficient rosters around Dame/Simons that olshey kept trying to reboot, over and over the Blazer situation is not as hopeless as you keep making it out to be
How much of that "8th rated defense" was a side effect of playing at a glacial pace? It was incredibly conservative, and may I remind you that we ditched that coach for one with a completely different coaching philosophy. Also, if we're going to trash Olshey (I have no objection) - who built the team that had that 8th-ranked defense? There are good reasons to be opposed to getting Gobert, but convincing yourself that a team with a Dame-Ant backcourt doesn't need fucking amazing defenders elsewhere is not one of them.
same thing that happened 6 straight times in 6 straight playoffs: the opponent sold out their defense to stop Dame and Portland didn't have the talent to punish the opponent for that strategy. That series was just the 4th in the string