* if you average out the previous 2 seasons to this one, 2019-20 & 2020-21, Portland had a .527 winning percentage; that's a 43 win season. And those two rosters sure seemed to be typical of the opposite ends of the spectrum of rosters that Olshey was capable of building. * if you go back to the 2015-16 season, the beginning of the Dame/CJ team, and normalize for 82 game seasons while including Covid seasons (normalized) & this season up to the trade deadline, the Blazers averaged 43.7 wins over an 82 game season. In other words, that first season, 2015-16, when they won 44 games was about the average season for the Dame/CJ years * if you include the first 3 seasons of the Olshey era, the Aldridge teams, the Blazers then averaged 44.4 wins over the 10 year olshey-era, and somewhere between a 6th-8th seed depending on how you factor year 1 and year 10 to summarize, the 10 year track record of Olshey teams saw Portland average around 44 wins in the regular season and 2.2 wins in the playoffs. They averaged o.4 playoff series victories. And out of the 12 playoff series they played, they lost four series by 1-4 and were swept out of the playoff 3 times. A 22-40 overall playoff record and a 6-28 record in the elimination series so then, 44 reg. season wins & 2.2 playoff wins with whimpering exits seems to be what some of you are pining for. To roll it back an 8th time and hope somehow there was a better return for the traded players in the off-season or next season. But if not, then what? Roll it back a 9th time? Keep Olshey as GM? Did people really expect that Portland could trade 4 players that weren't altering Portland's trajectory for players that would? Portland was stuck on a treadmill with those 4 players. They had Portland's upside flat-lined while they hogged half of the payroll those trade deadline moves were a pivot point to be sure. But it's myopic to believe that there was any optimism left for the roster that was dismantled at the deadline. That was a dead end roster and that was obvious. In fact it had been obvious for years. I don't have much problem with people complaining about the execution of the trades. I think there are a lot of false assumptions about outgoing trade value, but that's a real subjective debate. I do have a problem with the idea that somehow the current Blazers situation is more negative than the one at the beginning of February. That February roster offered no optimism at all
Mic drop. Fuck ya, great post!!! I forget who it was, maybe JJ Reddick? They were talking about regular season rosters vs post season rosters, and how you need long defensive guys that surround stars to balance the roster, that can guard multiple positions to be successful in the playoffs.
Just because some posters such as myself are very critical of Cronin, Jody and Vulcan it doesn't mean they were proponents of Neil or running back the status quo. I was for changes and as you say a pivot, but what I would have liked is a realistic chance for improvements. Or a risky gamble of trading for a star with issues but a chance to greatly improve. Instead the team traded away four staters for a bench player and Didi with a 2025 Bucks pick. Thats a huge downgrade of talent, and no the team has no significant assets to replace them. The team is now seemingly locked into a path that is leading to even worse talent than when Olshey was here. And this was done for no intelligent reason with no significant upside and against no deadline, besides of course saving ownership money. Our GM's comments about other GM's being tough negotiators and the reports of the team planning for pipe dream Ben Simmons cap space plans is extremely disappointing. Also disappointing in that this rebuild has some of the biggest key steps already completed, those should have not been done with an interim GM that is unproven, before the team decides on a long term management and vision. That is some of what frustrates me and I suspect some other posters. Not that there was a change going away from Olshey.
this season went south right from the beginning. That can't be disputed. Why? Because Dame wasn't 100%. That was obvious. It has always been about Dame meaning that the "talent" that Olshey assembled, season after season, was entirely dependent on Dame being a superstar. If he wasn't a superstar than the cumulative talent of guys like CJ-Powell-RoCo-Nance....or their earlier substitutes like Aminu-Harkless-Plumlee-Curry...was always mainly illusion based upon Dame; or at least it was mainly replaceable again, the guys traded had Portland's trajectory flat-lined. Their averaged talent was that slightly above role players; but they were 4 slightly-above-average-role-players hogging half of the payroll and 60% of the salary cap. Them being removed from the roster is not a meaningful loss. It just isn't. And you are agreeing, or at least implying you agree, that the outgoing trades were needed, and that the Blazers couldn't just keep rebooting rosters like Olshey always did. You just object to the payoff for the trades, even though you can't be certain, at all, that there would have been better pay-offs under a different interim GM back in February, or a permanent GM a year from February so, because you can't see a path to a better team than the past half-dozen reboots, you seem to assume there are none. Maybe you're right...I can't predict the future any better than you. But the point of my previous post was to illustrate that any nostalgia about olshey-rosters is loopy. And those rosters are not a high standard to meet. In fact, it's a standard that shouldn't be met because winning 44 games, being a late seed, and mostly getting steam-rolled in the first round is fucking purgatory for a small market team like Portland. Either get HCA or get a lottery pick. Quit straddling fences edit: this is the second time you said the team traded away 4 starters. That's false, literally. Nance wasn't a starter. But more than that is that Powell was the starting SF and Portland was the only team in the league he'd be the starting SF for. And a lot of the teams wouldn't even have him as the starting SG. Meanwhile, RoCo was the starting PF by default because the Blazers didn't have anybody better....which they have needed since Aldridge left
Wiz, you articulate your points very well, that was a good post. I'm all for improvements, and even can handle the risk of changes that could flop but have upside. But I don't want to see change just for the sake of change. Many fans do want to desperately see something change if there isn't a title. I want the Blazers to collect the most talent possible, and ideally contend, but if not contend at least have some exciting moments as we had with Dame in the bubble, the WCF run, and Houston 0.9. It seems some fans forget how much better those years are than the dark period of 2000-2014 without a Blazers playoff series win and a lot of lottery seasons. I look at the Blazers being one of the only teams with 6 players ranked in the top 100 prior to this 2021-22 season as evidence there were legit rotational player talents up and down this roster besides Dame. 100 players over 30 NBA teams is 3.3 such players per team, so clearly the Blazers had nice rotational talent. That doesn't include Simons either who blossomed, he makes 7 players. As you said Dame being healthy was the #1 cause of the Blazer being elite other years, agreed. He was horrible this year, really a minus player. But the roster wasn't as terrible as many of the Neil bashers are portraying. Even all the evidence you have listed show the many rosters over the years were middling to decent, never truly terrible until this season. With a healthy Dame the Blazers likely needed some sort of break to be able to contend with the way Olshey built this team; Little or Simons need to become an allstar, Nurk beast for a season and super healthy, a star from another team becoming available in trade, etc. What is the chance the Blazer contend now? I'd say much lower than the chance of one of those breaks happening under Olshey. The problem is now the team needs to add a number of starting quality players, unlikely, plus get one of those breaks I just mentioned. Back in 2016 I said Neil deserved to be fired from that offseason alone. Signing Turner was horrific. So it's not that I'm some Neil fan boy that believes he was making tons of great moves every year. Derrick Jones Jr and the restricted free agents Neil whiffed on were all troubling. Neil had many faults, but I also give him some credit when due, and credit for some of the team success. I don't believe the playoff wins were all 100% Dame. Look at the defense of those Aminu/Harkless teams, it was ranked #8th even with a DameCJ backcourt. One of the best Blazer defenses in the last 20 years. Part of the problem of signing all the players the Blazers did back in 2016 was those guys weren't starter/quality bench level players, and they were paid huge portions of the cap, while there were other valuable options available in free agency, such as Milsap for $7 million, or Aminu/Ed Davis type contracts. But NBA free agency has changed since that time. The way teams can add talent to their roster has changed. The players drafted that organically grow to be key starting players is much higher. We don't have star players becoming free agents and jumping to new teams. There is another huge TV deal with a cap spike coming. Teams are not trying to cut bad contracts for cap space. There isn't an opportunity to acquire talented players with cap and salary flexibility as there were just a number of years ago. So cutting the Nance and Powell contracts doesn't give the Blazers a way to add talent to the roster next season. The Traded Player Exception is another mirage of value, its sadly very similar as trading Bledsoe and both of those are worth less than Nance. If the Blazers had kept Powell/Roco rights, and CJ/Nance they would have more options to make improvements to the roster this summer than where they are now. I prefer the team make moves that add value, either rotational talents that better fit this roster, or young draft assets. Instead doing nothing was better than what was done. The Blazers lost talented veterans, with no way to replace them, and they didn't get draft talent. Yes the Blazers have saved payroll, but without being able to turn that payroll savings into talent on the roster why do I care what Jody Allen's inheritance is? Ultimately yes we will see how this plays out next season. What I've seen so far reminds me of horrific moves in this league that not everybody completely recognizes initially; the Lakers trading for Westbrook as an example. Yes there's fans talking about how great the move could be, or how the players traded away had faults, but seeing what I have over the years of how teams add talent, the difficulty Portland has with free agents, and the amount of players that move in free agency, the lack of draft assets in Portland, and the obvious poor negotiations of Cronin just has me super dejected with the future of this Blazers franchise. It bogles my mind that some fans can be positive right now.
we're not going to agree on that. RoCo's rights wouldn't have meant much because I'm convinced he had no intention of re-signing with Portland. None. as for Powell, CJ, Nance....I just don't think as much value is available in the off-season as there is before the trade deadline. There certainly isn't as much appetite for acquiring contracts like CJ's and Powell's. And expiring contracts like Nance's have a better chance of fetching value around the deadline besides that, with CJ-Powell-Nance still Blazers, the team would be at 115M in guaranteed salary with only 7 players and they'd need to re-sign Simons and Nurkic. And that would have very likely pushed them close to, or over, the tax line while only having 9 players under contract. They'd still have to sign 5 more players. The rest of the NBA would know all that and Portland would have very little leverage in shopping CJ-Powell-Nance the Blazers definitely needed to be dismantled two months ago, not 10 months from now I'm certainly 'positive' right now, but that is relative to the pessimism I felt about Portland for at least 5 years. It has to have been a couple of decades since I came into a Blazer season with as low a level of enthusiasm as I had this season. Failed reboot after failed reboot of olshey-vision rosters with no end in sight as long as he was GM. Then, he was fired and for me the dark cloud was lifted. And then, finally, the Dame/CJ pairing was broken up a few days after the Powell-at-SF experiment was shit-canned. the parts of the roster that I felt needed to go were gone. Like most, I wasn't real happy with the total return from those trades, and I've said that before. But I also am convinced the players traded did not have near the value that many imagined. And I don't dismiss the financial components of the trades. so yeah, my optimism is informed by the long delayed actions finally taken and concession by the FO that the status quo sucked in just about every meaningful way. I'm optimistic but also realistic. I know there's probably a small chance that the Blazers can contend over the next 3-4 years. But in my view they at least have some options for getting there now that they didn't have on Feb 1
What is the affect of acquiring a player in a S&T in relation to being 'hard capped'? Would that affect the order of how you do things? For example: Many teams can offer Mo Bamba the full MLE. Could we do a S&T for him and offer him more money that fit him into either the ~$21M TPE? Don't have to offer him all of that money. The MLE is ~$10M this year. Can we offer him say $12M and fit him into the TPE? Would we have to do that as our final transaction due to possibly then being hard capped? Trying to come up with a better understanding of how that works.
I believe yes we could recieve him for $12 million in TPE. But Orlando has to agree to it too so we'd have to send them an asset. Order doesn't really matter, Blazers would be hard capped during and after the trade. Only way order could matter is if Nurk or Simons sign for less than their cap hold, sign for so much the Blazer go above hard cap, or sign elsewhere.
I followed a discussion about this 2 or 3 years ago on RealGM. Not all things discussed were in the 'for-absolutely-certain' category, but their are some pretty knowledgeable posters there the hard cap line is a specific number set during the moratorium. let's say it's set at 154M that would inform any discussion of a S&T. And all the other rules and components of a roster would have impact. Especially Portland's cap-holds: CJ Elleby 1,966,970 Jusuf Nurkic 18,000,000 Anfernee Simons 11,816,454 Ben McLemore 1,766,970 obviously, Elleby and McLemore are not significant concerns. The 30M for Simons/Nurkic are, but the cap-holds may very well be less than their actual 1st year salaries on their new contracts. If Portland can re-sign them for 30M I'd be pretty excited anyway, say the Blazers want to S&T somebody but his 1st year salary puts Portland at 153M with only 11 players under contract (including the Simons/Nurk cap-holds). Portland couldn't do the S&T because adding the 3 players to take Portland to the league-minimum roster pushed them over the apron (hard-cap line). Well, they could but they'd first have to renounce either Nurkic or Simons. And they'd have to renounce their MLE, BAE, AND their 30M in TPE's in other words, an analysis of the trade needs to be completed before the fact to see if the Blazers would still be under the apron after the trade AND meet the minimum roster threshold. another factor discussed was that the language of the hard cap was restrictive. As in a team could not exceed the hard cap line for any reason at any time. That cuts down flexibility. Mainly, for trades because normally, for trades, teams can temporarily exceed limits (like roster size and tax line) just as long as they end below those limits at the completion of a trade. But being hard-capped eliminates that flexibility if a team is just below the apron. so, if it's a 154M apron, a team should be 3-4M below that line just so they have some maneuverability during the season in terms of trades, disabled player exception, 10-day contract, etc. *********************************************** Damian Lillard $42,492,492 Eric Bledsoe $3,900,000 Josh Hart $12,960,000 Nassir Little $4,171,548 Justise Winslow $4,097,561 Keon Johnson $2,681,040 Didi Louzada $1,876,222 Greg Brown III $1,563,518 Trendon Watford $1,563,518 about 79.2M Andrew Nicholson $2,844,430 (dead cap) Jusuf Nurkić $18,000,000 (cap-hold) Anfernee Simons $11,816,454 (cap-hold) 7th pick $5,900,000 (estimate) or 2nd pick $9,750,000 (estimate) 36th pick $1,000,000 (estimate) that puts Portland around 120M with the minimum roster of 12, so no roster charges. So right around the cap line with some work to be done. Signing Simons, Nurkic and a tax-MLE player could add 10-20M to that number. And the Blazers would still need to consider the impact of using their TPE's
