How's everyone feel about Smokin' Joe Cronin now?

Regardless of what we end up getting, jrue is more valuable than Herro, and in trading Dame for Jrue Joe increased the value and market demand for point guards right now.

Regardless of what happens, sending Dame to the Bucks is the better move.

It's just a better, smarter move, which maximizes the potential value we can get in return.

 

He said he wanted to maximize the amount of talent on the team so we could be most competitive with Dame. He can't force teams to trade their players.

Scoot, Sharpe and Grant were the best talent that appeared to have been within Cronin's power to get. There was nothing better available for what we off loaded.

I'd include Hart as well if we could have kept him, but that was beyond Cronin's control.

It was a really tough job to improve the team Cronin took over. I don't see a path to anybody doing better.

 

Good job digging up my takes from what a year plus ago? Also, if they had gone your route it would have screwed us and the NBA as I said. Reporting now shows Dame asked for Bucks and Brooklyn. My guy, you sound like a Heat fan, still in denial, take the L, or change your stance. Dame got paid, Dame's gonna get rings. Joe did as right by Dame as is humanly possible.

The only other reportage we have that's credible, was that Joe could have gotten OG for #3 plus Sharpe. I'm not aware of any other credible trades out there, ergo Joe didn't "do Dame wrong". Anything other than that, is as speculative as my take about what would have happened to the league if Joe had bent to Dame...like you seemed to want. Joe did right by Dame, and more importantly the team. Just not what some Podcaster wanted, or what he thinks happened based on supposed sauces.

 

BJ has terrible takes, and then when reportage comes out that Dame agreed to the Bucks trade, he "sticks with his guns". Pathetic.

 

I have no doubt it was personal.

I have strong suspicions that there was tampering going on & my guess is that the league was not willing to investigate at this point.

 

I'm hearing a lot of excuses. What I expected was results. We have no positive results. When someone doesn't do good, the opposite of that is bad. So Joe did bad.

 

What?

Shaedon is a positive result.

Scoot is a positive result.

Ayton is a positive result.

Thybulle is a positive result.

Grant is a positive result.

The unprotected pick and swaps from Milwaukee are a positive result.

Too early to tell on Murray or Rupert.

 

Not a huge Marang guy, but I just did a Twitter search and nowhere do I see him saying Portland would be getting Giannis this summer. Can you point us to where he said such a thing?

 

Marang is growing on me. He was literally the only non-Fentress reporter in Portland who was reporting things. Were those things true? They turned out to be true. Not sure if he's connected but all the other Portland media was just doing nothing. Sitting on their hands. Or... shilling for Dame.

 

I think he said "Wouldn't that be awesome!" or something like that but i don't recall reading that he said anything more than that?

 

that’s because he never said that

 

He's been granted exclusive interviews by Cronin himself so he has that going for him

 

Marang appears to me to have his own agenda and once he decides he's going to defend/knock down a player/issue, it's very one sided from that point on; I believe he was that way with the Dame trade. I do think he has connections and he certainly knows the game better than the Fentress types, which I really appreciate. I agree with your overall point that this market would be better off with more people who are serious about the game, even if it comes with the cost of their ego being way too big.

 

Most of the local media seems too lazy to actually care or do any research. It sucks because we used to have some decent reporters in this market.

 

I agree with this!

 

I don't think it helps that newspapers died, and the Blazers haven't been the easiest team to get dirt from... at least that's what I have heard.

 

So....are you a proud member of the instant gratification generation?

What Joe inherited was an absolute mess. Little flexibility and little hope for the future.

What do we have now? More than likely we are still a losing team but at least I now have some hope when I look to the future whereas I really didn't before.

I'll take the trade-off of consistent mediocrity now and being bad in the not-so-distant future for the bad now and hope for the future we now have.

Anyone thinking we were going to build a contender around Dame with the talent and tradable assets we had was delusional.

Just because we aren't instantly better (and thus instantly gratified), you deem it a failure.

I think Joe is doing a pretty decent job of giving us a chance of being good in the future. Not sure it will all pan out but at least there is hope.

 

If the deal was indeed Lowry, Herro, Jovic, 3 firsts then I would have rather had that than Holiday, a pick and 2 pick swaps….depending on what we can get for Holiday

 

Yeah, the "this is all Joe's roster now" take made by many is short-sighted. The implication of saying "this is all Joe's roster" because every player on it has been re-signed or accquired by Cronin, and therefore means what was done by the previous GM no longer has any impact is frankly silly.

Does that mean Cronin shouldn't have to take ownership for the moves he's made? Heck no. But the theory that once you've moved a bad asset that you're on even footing with those who already had great assets is disingenuous.