Just a small correction, Batum was a restricted free agent Olshey's first summer. He did have to decide if Batum was worth keeping while matching that big offer from Minnesota.
I believe you took it out of context as what i heard him say it would be foolish to retain a player and pay the tax on them if they can't play.
1) You'd be right if we were talking about prior to Thursday but now that the trade deadline has passed 2-way guys can't be traded this summer because they are free agents. 2) Just so everyone is on the same page here, the repeater tax doesn't start until after the 4th season of being in the tax for 3 out of those 4 years so the repeater tax will not be next season. If we finish the 2020-21 season in the tax then the repeater tax would only effect tax payments in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. Stay out of the tax in those seasons two and three years from now and the repeater penalties would have no effect. Furthermore, even if they started the season in the tax next year there would be ways to get under. 3) We aren't trading CJ so as long as Olshey is the GM he is indeed untradeable, ha ha. 4) Again, technically you're right on this one but the optics of trading someone who got hurt after taking a significant discount to stay might be bad for similar situations in the future. I'm not saying we can't trade him but I don't want to do Hood dirty either. He might be unwilling to accept his player option if traded anyway. 5) @BonesJones is talking about future seasons. If Zach and Nurk are healthy then having a great backup center isn't more important than having capable wings, in my opinion.
good question and I don't really have an answer. I mean, what is a better decade...3 or 4 losing seasons and the lotteries, but also 3 or 4 great playoff runs and a championship?...or 10 years of around 50 wins, the playoffs including 4 or 5 HCA's, but no conference championship? I'll take the down years every time if a championship is part of the equation. I think playoff success is the best way to gauge teams. I think Portland is a better regular season team than a playoff team. In Olshey's tenure, Portland is 19-32 in the playoffs, and 3 of those wins came against a Clippers team decimated by injury. For perspective, that winning rate would be only 30 wins over the course of a season; and if you toss out those wins against LAC, it would only be 26 wins over a season. Worse, in my view, is that Portland never bows out of the playoffs with a fight. No bang, just whimper. They've gone 1-4; 1-4; 1-4; 0-4; 0-4; 0-4. That's a 3-24 record in close-out series, and they've lost 14 games in a row. Fuck that ultimately it's just entertainment and the Blazers have supplied a lot over the years. But I'm not sure where the entertainment value stacks up against other teams. I find the style and the tendency of the offense to go iso all the time is not very entertaining. The worst was a couple of seasons ago when it was iso-heavy & the ultra boring Dame's-turn-Cj's-turn-Turner's-turn-Napier's-turn-rinse-repeat. I wanted to gouge out an eye watching that shit I think Portland is on a treadmill and Olshey put them there. It's a higher-level treadmill than most but it's still moving in place
Exactly, I hate when people resort to saying stuff like "you don't know." Olshey told us they were interested in saving money. Olshey told us they weren't willing to undo the savings of the Skal trade to help this team. The math still doesn't add up to me.
It doesn't make sense? If you are going to get under the cap? Get under it! If you trying to improve? Improve! If you are looking for a roster spot? Fill it! If you are thinking about the sale of the team? Do something that makes the team more marketable! I don't buy much of what he said after the deadline either. But i do understand he can't sit there and make statements that put Hassan in a bad light. Or anyone else on the team for that matter.
How do you know he didn't explore ways to get better? Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean he wasn't trying. And I'm not saying this because I'm on Team Olshey. Compared to past GMs, Olshey is bad for the forum. The 3 previous GMs we got meet and greets with them. Olshey won't. Sometimes you have to made a move to be ready for a 2nd move. One thing I do like about Olshey is he has the front office on lockdown. No leaks come out of there. We only hear about it afterwards when Woj tweets it. Just because he didn't do what you wanted him to do doesn't mean he wasn't doing anything.
This is the key. He may very well have been exploring. We just don't know? But he did say Whiteside was never on the trading block.
Exactly as that was my point. Hard to be mad if you don't know what was attempted. I have ideas as to what i would like to happen but it isn't my call nor do i have any information as to what they tried.
Sly I'm sorry but this is just a ridiculous post by you and you obviously didn't understand my point. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NOT DOING WHAT I WANTED. Do I have to put that in the biggest font possible for people to read it? Yes, in my opinion they should've traded Whiteside. Please show me one post where I've been mad that "MY CHOICE" wasn't the path followed? In fact I've gone OUT OF MY WAY to show that is NOT what I'm mad about. It's a fact that this team doesn't want to field the best possible team from this point forward. Olshey said there was ZERO chance they pick up a buyout candidate. Say whatever you want about how much of a factor a buyout candidate would or wouldn't be but if they had the same approach last year we wouldn't have had Kanter. So the fact they would choose $2 million in savings, which does nothing to get out of the tax, over the possibility of picking up a player that could help them make the playoffs or get them more playoff games (MEANING MORE REVENUE THAN THE $2 MILLION) is proof that they don't want to get better. I'm mad because no matter what direction this franchise is headed we are not doing what it takes to win with Dame. Or if we're not going to do that then get out of the tax completely! At least then there would be an actual reason why they can't add another player to the roster. Keep Whiteside! It's fine! Just don't keep him and then not try to make a run this year. It doesn't make sense!
I'm talking about the open roster spot though. They absolutely did not look into filling that roster spot as Olshey said they weren't interested in putting that money saved in the Skal trade back on the books. I get trading Skal if they wanted to bring in a healthy body or if it was the difference between getting under the tax or not but neither is the case.
So Ive read a few of your posts in regards to trading whiteside and I think you had at least alluded to it that you were gonna be upset if WS wasn't traded. Which is fine, but do you feel differently now? Im not gonna stalk down all your posts to see if it was you but I have seen posts on here that were, “Im gonna be pissed if they dont trade Whiteside”. It seems to me (and again Im not saying this was you), there were at least some people who were ready to jump if he didnt get traded. - I even understand it to some degree, I think his contract was our last big piece to trade (though after seeing the Drummond trade Maybe there wasnt much of a market for him).
I sort of get the Skal trade but in another sense, I think its a weird one that doesnt accomplish much in any direction.
Leading up to the trade deadline I knew they weren't going to trade Whiteside. Yes, I'm mad at that decision, but all of my posts since have been about other things, not keeping Whiteside. I've even said multiple times that keeping Whiteside was fine IF they were willing to give this team a legit shot this year. So my problem isn't that they didn't trade Whiteside. It's that they kept him without accomplishing any other goal. If trading Skal opened up the roster spot that led to the team getting better then great! But they aren't even going to explore that. If they got out of the luxury tax then great! But they weren't even close. If they were trying to give this team the best "possible chance to compete" this year (again Olshey's words) the team is no better than they were on the deadline and they aren't willing to add a piece that could possibly change that. If they wanted to compete this year but also improve future assets or get the best lineup for next year they didn't accomplish that either.
