A Lillard trade is instant Rockets, Pistons, a super tank. Full rebuilds take a lot time and a lot of luck in the draft to get headed in the right direction. Blazers are getting those similar picks with a grumpy Lillard. I say give Dame one more year to tank it up. The bigger 4 year deals for Simons and Nurkic will be easier to trade by next summer, and the Blazers will be absolutely loaded with top young ballers on cheap rookie contracts as Lillard enters his super max era.
I don't think Dame wants to wait another year. He has been a good soldier but dude won't want to tank another year. Significant upgrades need to happen this summer or I think he's going to ask for a trade.
I'm in total lockstep with Nate on this one ... it has nothing to do with wanting Dame gone for any nefarious reason, or even worrying about Jody's money, but more so that I want the team to succeed and put that above any one player. If the team being a legit contender with Dame isn't going to happen, best to get what you can from a trade and hopefully if all falls into place, send him to a destination that allows Dame to fight for a title. End of the day though I put the TEAM needs/wants over Dame.
Dame just lit it up this year. He's never going to have more value than he does right now. If there isn't a trade for a legit top 10 player this summer, we need to move on.
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Good post, funny how you actually listed the #3 pick salary amount back in April. So cap space would be about 18 million if Grant/Reddish/Thybulle are renounced and picks traded away - add 3rd pick of $9m and 23rd pick of 2.6m and its about 6-7 million of space. Both are less than the full MLE. It seems like the Blazers are extremely likely to either resign Grant or use the #3 pick. I can't imagine there is a way the Blazers are able to use actual cap space this summer. The question to me is if the Blazers will use the full MLE and or duck the tax again this year? Especially with that wall street journal article days ago, it seems like Jody might get a big cut of the profits each year while she has control as the "CEO" but she will get no profit on the multi billion franchise sale. So thats likely a big reason why she's pushing so hard to stay under the tax at prior deadlines, prior offseasons, not take back any contracts in trades, and I'd expect continue to duck the tax aggressively in the years ahead while she retains control and profits. I hope the NBA has a date where her governorship ends sooner and pressures her to sell because this really harms the Blazers ability to compete with Dame immediately or long term. Just really sad that Paul Allen left the franchise ownership in such a mess of a trust with a related party having both huge conflicts of interest but also significant control.
I guess the extremely pessimistic view of Jody's ownership will be if she holds the team at the salary floor of 90% so she can direct extra profits to herself. $134 million x 90% salary floor is $121 million. So thats only about $9 million away. Having Grant/Thybulle/etc all cut; signing vet minimum players and using the #3 pick will get the Blazers above that. I'd have to imagine Dame asks out if Jody becomes such an excessive cheapskate. Plus there could be major fan or even NBA league blowback. Jody having the team spend some more but stay under the tax can be something the Blazers try to spin as a competitive advantage, so they probably at the least go that direction.
my thinking is in line with this. There was a post, somewhere in this forum, that apparently had an expert speculating that JA is 'earning' 150-200M/year in salary for managing the trust (a fixed percentage of the estate value) there's a thread on ownership and it baffles me how many people are saying she's a good owner. She isn't as bad as Sterling or Sarver, and not as nuts as Ballmer, but she's bad news for any Blazer fan that's hoping that management views building a contender as a priority. That's not the Vulcan mind-meld-set. Up there in the Seattle shithole, the Blazers are just a cash-cow, nothing more
A full rebuild would make it a lot easier to get close to the salary floor. The fact that management has given no indication that they want to go that route seems to suggest that slashing payroll is not on the agenda.
He was quoting Clownzano. https://www.johncanzano.com/p/canzano-digging-up-bones-in-the-trail He just didn't cite the source. It makes sense though. I don't doubt that she is actually collecting a fee.
Maybe or maybe not. Full rebuild might harm franchise value, so even if the team saves a couple million Jody wouldn't be able to pull as much out to keep herself. Hard to know.
Even if Canzano's dubious claims about the size of Jody's trustee-management fees are legit, you realize that money wouldn't get pulled out of the team's P&L, right? It would be paid by the trust's liquid assets.
I wonder how JC derived 3 billion as the trust value. Blazers' franchise value is 2.1B, and I'm not sure that includes the Moda. Seahawks estimated vakue is 4.5B. Assuming those two franchises are in the trust. What else would be included?
Even selling the team and not profiting, she's inherited most everything else of his, I believe. Does she have to get rid of everything with no profit? She's listed as having a net worth now of 20 billion. I don't think she's strategically waiting to sell just to pocket some extra scratch for herself. But it's the dog days of summer, I guess we speculate away.
Agreed, she might pull the cash out of the trust, not the Blazers directly. Blazers have higher profit from reduced expenses could increase the trust value and allow her to yank out more. But doing profitable outlays of cash such as capital improvement (rose garden renovation) may raise the trust value as well again letting her take more money personally.
When the team has done nothing but penny pinching moves for years it's very different issue than fans just complaining on dog days. If she was spending like the SPAM years or Golden State or something, or heck just spending like Milwaukee, or paid $1 of luxury tax, yeah then maybe some of us fans wouldn't be as worried. Instead she's proven to be one of the cheapest owners in all major US sports and the team has been a joke competitively since she got control. Now we've learned she has a personal financial incentive unlike any ownership group out there. If your not concerned I question if your a rational Blazers fan.
More rational than taking JC's muckraking speculation as gospel. And here's the thing. Even if Jody were receiving 5% of the value of the trust as a management fee, selling the team wouldn't change the value of the trust. The compensation from the sale would also be a part of the value of the trust, and her trustee-management fee would remain the same. In fact, it's possible that the trust's value would increase after sale of the team if the asset valuation is its original basis value as of the initiation of the trust, rather than the current estimated value (standard accounting procedure). So long story short, Canzano's claim that Jody has a financial incentive to not sell the team is BS.
One of the cheapest owners just comes across as sounding stupid as hell, sorry. There's plenty of penny pinching owners. I'm sure the cheapest in all of sports wouldn't extend a 120 million dollar extension to an aging star, right? And wouldn't overpay their free agents, right? gimme a break. John fucking Canzano of all people is now able to get the forum in to a tizzy? Because she didn't go in to the tax for a shitty team? SPAM ended a long time before Paul died. But whatever. All hail the bald one.
