The Blazers made a series of baffling trades to blow up their team around Damian Lillard (yahoo.com) The Blazers have blown up their roster with two trades in the last week. The moves are confusing as they traded valuable veteran players for very little in return. Portland wants to build around Damian Lillard with another star, but they may not have the assets needed. The Portland Trail Blazers needed a shake-up, but perhaps not this shake-u
Having taken some time to give this some thought, I give the moves so far a D. If we move a majority of the few assets we have for Jerami Grant, the grade drops to an F. Cronin just didn't get enough back, IMO.
I have to wonder if the fact that the Blazers are in Paul Allen's estate isn't the biggest thing dictating these moves.
I'm actually ok with both, depending on what happens now. We have a lot of options. Cronin cleaned up Olshey's mess (which people claimed screwed us for years, and there was nothing that could be done about that), and he did it in a couple months. Portland now has a TON of flexibility. I'm cautiously optimistic.
I am in the same boat as I am not thrilled by the haul on the first trade, but overall I think both trades have provided us some intriguing paths forward. This is certainly not a grand slam that we all were hoping for, but considering other teams have to be involved in trades that are appealing to them this may in fact have been the best option to take. If nothing else at least we finally have direction, it's clear what path we're taking and we're being decisive. I appreciate the decisiveness and I am hopeful Cronin can take advantage of this new flexibility he's provided the team. I am going to finally start paying more attention to the team again, thank you Cronin for having the balls to pull the trigger on some trades and deciding on a path forward rather than running it back again.
Nobody wanted Norm or CJ's contracts... You weren't going to get a more productive or better fitting equivalent player in return for either player, and you weren't going to have the flexibility to make moves in other places if you kept them. That was out of Cronin's control, IMO. He made the tough choices that had to be made if we want to compete. Now we'll find out if he can build a team.
Number one these guys got traded didn't fit the system that Billups what's here in Portland. No doubt they all was pretty good individual basketball players but as group together they didn't mesh. Majority the players that we got stand between 6'5" and 6'7" tall and some will be interchangeable from the 2 guard and the 3. Plus majority of them has a even or better defense rating then the ones that left. I believe where this all going is we going be bigger and longer when it all said and for except of few players. So really we won't know if either of these trades are good until next year. Maybe we get glimpse at some of these after the all star when we they all settled in. On paper the clippers wasn't great for us and the other was little bit better. But on paper was the Lakers and Nets supposed on top of the league also but there not both hanging on as play-in teams right now. The teams there on top they all play as team with good chemistry between them. You can't throw a bunch players and think there going fit system or have good chemistry.
I'm not buying that at all. We've seen worse contracts moved for more, and we had reports of other teams interested in both of those players -- as well as RoCo and Nance -- for more than we got.
This seems to be as good of a place to drop this John Hollinger take on the trades: “The Blazers dropped off underperforming deals on Nance, Covington and McCollum, got out of the luxury tax, added a likely lottery pick, three seconds and a 20-year-old 2021 first-rounder, have a $21 million trade exception, added a legitimately good player on a decent contract in Hart and didn’t have to take back any dead money or bad contracts. In short, I don’t agree with the hot take du jour that this is some crazy fire sale by Portland. It’s a completely reasonable response to a bad, expensive team. The Blazers have flexibility they haven’t had in half a decade, and that’s without yet making a call on the biggest piece of all in Damian Lillard.” For all of the bitching around here about Olshey and CJ, seeing all of that mess undone in less than a week is pretty impressive. Maybe Cronin does know what he’s doing. We’re going to find out once he starts rebuilding now that the demo is done.
Maybe Cronin knows what he's doing. I'm certainly not sold yet. Thing is, nobody disagrees that this was a bad, underperforming team. And few disagree that the contract for CJ, and the deals for RoCo and Powell and Nance were all probably just bad trades made by Olshey. The implication that most of us take issue with is the notion that these expendable, overpaid pieces from a bad, underperforming team didn't have value to other teams who could utilize them to fill needs/roles they couldn't fill here. The three seconds and the TPE are fools gold. In all reality, we exchanged four useful players for one and a pick. Yes, that absolutely is a fire sale, regardless of the spin tossed out by Hollinger.
YAY!!! Just so happy to be blowing up this purgatory! We’ve won a single title in like 50 years. In 1976 a new coach, an ABA dispersal draft one (sleeping) star (Walton) along with a motley crew was cast together. And following a 49-win regular season, pulled off a Cinderella playoff run that ended in the slaying of the great dragon (76’ers) culminating into our ONE nba title. The formula for a Title is not certain. It takes the planets, moons and “star” to align, a little magic, a lot of luck, and blessings from the basketball gods. Blowing this stagnant mess up, with a new leader, a new coach, one star…may very well be what is required to realize another miracle; a SECOND nba championship in P-town. The week has been ugly so far BUT today is another day in our rebirth!